Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire MOAB (mother of all bombs) gets an upgrade.....

I read where they dropped an early version of one of these bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan several years ago. It made a mushroom cloud like a nuclear bomb. Many of the people saw the mushroom cloud and thought the US was using nuclear weapons. Even the US soldiers were surprised by the mushroom cloud and the earth vibrations.

It just needs a little "operational test and evaluation"

'course he will. Truth is, he doesn't want to see a Muslim hurt if it can possibly be helped. Hope no one hear thinks he didn't have mixed emotions about taking out Bin Laden.

Now we can specifiy which bedroom we want to hit in a 4 bedroom house, and leave the other three realitively intact.

The MOAB was the 15,000# weapons that maximized the explosive affect, ergo the mushroom cloud. It used a proximity fuze and went off just above the ground. It was actually kicked out of the tail end of a C-141 or C-17. It had a thin case that and was not designed to penetrate. The original Bunker Buster, the BU-28, was a 105 Howitzer Barrel filled with explosives(500#). It had a tail fuze to protect the fuzing process to allow it to penetrate. It had a Laser Guidance in the nose and a tail section to help stabilize it. It impacted at 90 degrees and was going in excess of MACH I. An early Test at White Sands had it penetrate some 100 feet of hard pan when they quit digging. The MOAP is a 30,000# beast to be deployed out of the B-1 or B-2. It is purported to have 5,500# of explosives and a GPS Guidance system. The device will have a tail fuze to maximize penetration. The case is undoubtedly a thick steel alloy to maintain integrity until detonation. All available online.

Yes, what estacado said.

GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB), aka Mother of All Bombs.

GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)

Typo on my part. I saw MOP in the article but for some reason I typed MOAB when I posted the article.

I bet that tip is a slug of hardened steel. Concrete can only do 8000 or so PSI while steel can handle eight times that at least. That thing has to be going supersonic plus before it hits dirt, the tip just ablates off -- kind of like really hot Vaseline.
You can bet the fuse is in the TAIL end.

Yup, you're not the least bit curious what a 30,000 lb bomb cost that's the size of a hybrid?

The link didn't list specifics like that.

Were the most innovative sumbeeches on the planet wether it be war or industrial, nobody can beat us if we don't want them to.

A lot less than a nuclear armed Iran.

So what happens when the WMD's are only under 100' of concrete. Does it keep going another 100' through the floor and explode so deep that it does no damage? Just wondering.

Naw, before they drop one of these things they fly a plane over and use the 'campfire' special x-ray specs to see how deep the target is. Then the first plane sends a message to the plane with the bomb (the message is in secret code, so both planes have the 'campfire' secret decoder ring on board) and the plane fellars set the fuse to go off at the correct depth.

Easy as pie!

I figured if it had anything to do with "overpenetration" the name "Barnes" would be in there somewhere...

With that bomb I doubt 100' is going to make a whole lot of difference, especially if the bomb is 100' deeper than the target. It would probably give those that were 100' above it a really good idea of what being "blown up" actually means.

One of those classified briefings log ago revealed to me how a bomb can penetrate many feet of rock/concrete and detonate when it enters a cavern/room. It works to a tee - but I ain't telling. (Might still be classified.)

Function delay adjustments....

In a former life, I was a civilian munitions inspector at McClellan AFB. I'd love to take a look at the AFTO on that sucker.

Right. For some reason I had it stuck in my head that they used 155mm howitzer barrels, not 105's, but memory is tricky so I'll defer to your more recent research.

Regardless, the point is that the BU-28 was an improvised weapon using materials on hand. Our gearheads at Elgin have had 30 years since then to engineer a purpose-built penetrator case that will exceed the BU-28's performance many times over.

Iran's underground nuclear facilities are doomed. It's just a matter of how soon.

Doesn't surprise me in the least, RR.

But it seems to me that the physics of shock waves would favor detonation in rock rather than in an air-filled space. I guess it depends on what your objective is... kill air-breathing people, or destroy infrastructure.