Moab
 

Pinched from another website

As reported on ABC World News the military is planning on dropping a bomb so powerful that its like a small nuclear explosion.......the MOAB or Massive Ordnance Air Burst bomb. It's a 21,000 lb bomb designed to take out anything buried and have psychological effect on troops lucky enough not to be in its destructive range.


http://www.astro.soton.ac.uk/~crk/boom.gif

Oh dear the media luuvies will not like this at all.

Its been done
 

I believe Barnes Wallis called his Grand Slam.

Rather effective against buried Huns, they tend to stay buried.


A Pox on Media Luvvies:* :* :*

The pic linked to above looks familiar. A US Army 155mm (?) nuke artillery shell tested in the 1950s?

Motf

Grand Slam? - I think not. That was definitely sub-surface burst, usually about 80 feet below the surface, which was why it was so effective against difficult targets such as bridges. It just created a huge underground void and the whole structure, along with a fair amount of the surrounding scenery, collapsed into it. This sounds more like an extra large FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) device which can create a huge overpressure, much higher than that from a nuclear device.

There was a thread about FAEs some time ago. I think they have tried up to 10,000 lb versions so far, this could be the logical (?!) progression.

Presumably this is the BLU-82 again?

Thermobaric weaponry is not very pretty.

What was the one they used in Vietnam for making instant helicopter landing sites in the jungle - Daisycutter was it called?

Memory tells me it was about 15,000lbs and detonated at just below treetop height.

Happy to be corrected on details.

Doesn't the BLU-82 (as dumped by the BLUes Brothers in GW1) fill a large amount of the local area with some dust (aluminium I think) then ignite it somehow?

OK, so they're the same thing. Now I feel like a tw@t, because I should have known that....

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/arm/arm38.htm