Via Ry. Meet MOP, Boeing’s new bunker-busting super-bomb:
The 20-foot-long bomb that weighs 30,000 pounds — much heavier than the 21,000-pound MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Burst bomb, unveiled in the prelude to the Iraq war.
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MOP will go a lot deeper — 200 feet of 5,000 psi concrete. MOP pulls it off by not being all that explosive — less than 20% by weight, compared to almost 90% for the MOAB. That’s because bunker-busting bombs need very thick casings to survive the effects of impact.
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Potential targets for MOP or other deep penetrators would include the Iranian underground centrifuge cascade at Natanz and the heavy-water reactor complex under construction at Arak.
Ry told me about it yesterday. I thought about for a few seconds and announced, “I’ll bet I could defeat it with 100 feet or less of concrete.” I explained and Ry countered with a solution to my defense. I modified my defense and defeated that as well. About midnight last night I woke up with a solution to my modified defense–use more than one bomb per target. I thought about that solution for a few seconds and came up a defense against that attack plan too.
I incredibly impressed someone has designed a non-nuclear bomb that will penetrate 200 feet of high end concrete. But with a smartly designed bunker that may not enough. But my thought process over the course of just a few hours should be a lesson to Iran, don’t count on your bunkers being safe should you continue on your current path. You designs could be made obsolete in a matter of days. Can you redesign and rebuild as fast was we can come up with new attack plans? And you won’t know our plans until after the bombs start dropping.
The original US bunker busters were cruiser gun barrels stuffed with TNT with fins attached.
Put a tac-nuke in such a barrel.
Buh-bye bunker.
According to the article the tactical nukes are only good to about 50 meters. But maybe that was without the gun barrel deliver system. In any case the political fallout from using the “nuclear option” is a heavy price to pay. Yeah, I know it doesn’t make much sense. But it’s irrational to expect people to be rational.
There would be some nuclear fallout as well which could affect some so-called allies and that is to be avoid as well–if possible.
Don’t be so sure of these new bunker buster bomb’s abilities. We hit Sadam’s bunkers dead on with our old “bunker buster” bombs, (that were designed with exactly Sadam’s type of bunkers in mind). They failed. (Well, at least that is the inside word. The damaged done to Sadam’s bunkers is “classified”. Not sure how they are applying this “classified” status against the new Iraq government?) Still inside word was Sadam’s china was still hanging on the walls.
Why not attach a rocket motor to a bomb to accelerate the bomb instead of just relying on gravity?
Some bombs do have a rocket attached for just that purpose.
Well then … if you can’t get at the munitions factory, you then need to target factory workers.
I’ll bet their nuke techs aren’t holed up 24/7.
As for political consequences for nuking Iran … how would they be any different from what they are now? If Europe and the Islamics are going to treat us like “The Great Satan”, we should at least get the benefits of being such.
Something else that was pointed out to me is that people have to get in and out of the bunker. There are tunnels with doors that can be made “unusable” without much effort.
As for the political stuff I have a strong tendency to agree with you but I don’t think it’s a clear as you seem to be saying. We could have a bunch of trading partners decide to boycott us, freeze assets, and generally treat the US as an outcast. It might not be THAT big of a deal if they do, but it’s still not an action to be taken without giving it serious consideration for how the rest of the world might react.