Military bunkers were featured on the History channel the other night, a rather dreary topic I thought, tuning in midway in the program. I happened to watch the most incredible weapon I've ever seen - the bunker buster missile. I've heard of big payload conventional bombs as bunker busters, but this was a slender missile - perhaps 10" diameter and 6-7 ft. long - fired from aircraft. The footage showed this missle literally diving into the earth as easily and cleanly as an olympic diver into a pool. A few seconds later and KA-WHOOM! The earth just explodes upward. What was even more jaw dropping was footage of this same missile penetrating upright test slabs of reinforced concrete nearly 3 feet thick, arranged one behind the other like a row of dominos. The missle (in slow motion) penetrated those slabs as easily as you pushing a ball-point pen through a napkin. It looked absolutely impossible for that missile not to just crumple on impact with the first slab. (The test site slabs represented different levels of bunker shells or building floors. It can be programmed to detect each level penetrated and to detonate at a specific number.) Seen from the front, there was just a nice clean hole through those slabs with obvious rebar hanging out around the edges of the hole. What in the world could a missile be made of to survive this kind of impact? A segment definitely worth catching if you can.

 

If I remember correctly, during the 'first' Gulf War, our fantastic military minds came up with the 'bunker buster'.


I remember reading that the first ones were manufactured using barrels cut from old 'howitzers' or something like that.
The explosives were liquid and poured in, then solidified.

Incredible technology!!!!!! Puts new meaning into the word "Poof!"

 

And they did it in only weeks

 

I've always thought that being a weapons engineer/designer/fabricator would be a fun job. Getting paid to blow things up, that's cool.

 

They are great, but you have to hit the right bunker at the right time. They are good for eliminating hiding spots one by one, and putting some fear into the enemy, but without good old fashioned military intelligence they are just another item on the budget.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are very cool, but I really liked the bouncing bombs made 60 years ago to destroy dams in the German industrial sections during WWII. Some genius designed a huge bomb that could be dropped and it skipped across the water until it came upon the dam, and then POW!... no more dam!!! It eliminated the the need for 1000's of bombs it would have taken to destroy a dam from 26,000 feet over the dam. The allies flew in straight at the dam and let the bombs skip right into the target. Those bombs are legendary, and the men that made them and delivered them are Heroes! Search..DamBusters, Lancasters, May, 16 1943, Bouncing Bombs

 

Those bunker busters were developed right down the road from me, on the Eglin AFB military reservation, as was the Daisy Cutter. My whole house shakes sometimes, when they go off. I drive through the reservation to go to work, and the concrete slabs are piled up out by the road. They have a rail system out in the middle of the woods just to move the huge slabs around. We also have a Hellfire missle test site, as well as other sites I can't mention.

 

I was just stunned at the ease which these missiles could penetrate multiple slabs of hardend, reinforced concrete - as if they were no more than wet tissue paper. You almost have to see the video to appreciate this. I could see it bursting through one slab, but to keep going through successive ones just as easy was incredible. I can't imagine any material that would withstand that kind of impact. On the other hand, how do they get bullets to penetrate 6 inches of steel plate armour? Is it the same technology?

 

They may be made from depleted Uranium. Both tanks and the A-10 aircraft fired rounds made from that. It's one of the hardest metals known, and was able to penetrate the front armor (sometimes over 12" thick) of any battle tank out there.

 

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