Some interesting stats on bombs from that link..
(I was looking for those earlier when BBC John Simpson had a bomb (he reported) land 10 to 12 feet from him)
Message 18803060
That site does not mention about the guided bombs filled with concrete.
prorev.com
THINGS THE MEDIA DOESN'T TELL YOU ABOUT PRECISION BOMBING
[The media loves to talk about smart bombs, but its reportage is not all that precise. For example, the public is given the false impression that because the bombs are precisely targeted they do limited damage. But as the following article notes, "Blast wave and shrapnel effects can reach as far as 4,000 feet beyond the hit." That would be a diameter of 1.5 miles. That means you could cause damage over all of Washington DC with, say, 50-100 of these bombs precisely placed. Bush has used some 1,300 on Baghdad as this is written.]
RALPH KINNEY BENNETT, TECH CENTRAL - No matter how "smart" they are, aerial bombs have big footprints. One of the most commonly used weapons, for instance, the 2000-pound JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition), is an ordinary "iron" bomb with a sophisticated guidance package bolted onto it. But what this bomb does is not ordinary. The average citizen, used to slow motion movie explosions with their thickly blossoming flames, has no conception of the destructiveness of this steel cylinder stuffed with 945 pounds of a silvery solid substance called Tritonal - good old-fashioned TNT mixed with 20 percent aluminum powder. The aluminum greatly increases what bomb-builders call "brisance," the speed with which the TNT explodes. . .
Any human being within the immediate radius of the detonation (about 200 feet in the open) has no choice but to die, instantly roasted, blown to bits (shockwave and overpressure) hurled at high speed against some object, or pierced through countless times by shrapnel.
The air where the explosion takes place is compressed and driven outward at supersonic speed, creating a pressure wave that results in, as one medical treatise chastely puts it, "patterns ranging from traumatic amputation to total body disruption." If you are not blown apart or don't suffer massive trauma from being slammed into a wall or other object, chances are your internal organs will be crushed by overpressure that may reach thousands of pounds per square inch (normal pressure on a human being at sea level is 14.5 psi). The inner ear, lungs and intestines are usually the first to go.
You get the picture. Bombs are ugly things. And although we have the amply proven ability to drop JDAMs in the windows or doors of "embedded" military targets, it's still not a good thing to be in the adjoining building or the mosque across the street when they go off. Blast wave and shrapnel effects can reach as far as 4000 feet beyond the hit.
ROBERT HIGGS, INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE - One must distinguish between the precision with which a bomb or missile hits its intended point of impact - often claimed to be only a few meters most of the time - and the area within which lethal damage will be wreaked when the warhead explodes. In Iraq, for example, the much-used Joint Direct Attack Munition, a 2,000-pound Mark-84 dumb bomb with a global-positioning-system) guidance kit attached to enhance its accuracy, is supposed to strike within 13 meters of its intended point of impact, as compared to an error range of some 60-70 meters for its dumb counterpart. Evidently, this difference is what elicited Rumsfeld's remark about the humanity of the use of such weapons: whereas the dumb bomb places at risk innocent souls 70 meters away, the smart one spares everybody beyond, say, 15 meters. If only it were so. . .
For purposes of the present discussion, however, let us concede that the bombs and missiles strike with all the accuracy claimed for them. What happens then? As described recently by Newhouse reporter David Wood, the 2000-pound JDAM "releases a crushing shock wave and showers jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shattering concrete, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction." Hardly anyone survives within 120 meters of the blast, where pressures of several thousand pounds per square inch and 8,500-degree heat simply obliterate everything, human and material. Metal fragments are spewed nearly three-quarters of a mile, and bigger pieces may fly twice that far; no one within 365 meters can expect to remain unharmed, and persons up to 1000 meters or farther away from the point of impact may be harmed by flying fragments. Of course, the explosions also start fires over a wide area, which themselves may do vast damage, even to structures and people unharmed by the initial blast.
PAUL F. WALKER AND ERIC STAMBLER, BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS - Today's aircraft may carry a cluster bomb unit filled with 1,800 one-pound bomblets such as the BLU-26 Sadeye - a cast steel shell with aerodynamic vanes and 0.7 pound of TNT in which 600 razor-sharp steel shards are imbedded. The Sadeye can be equipped with fuses to explode upon impact, several yards above ground, or some time after landing. It is lethal up to about 40 feet. Thus a container of 1,800 Sadeyes, called a CBU-75, disperses destruction over more than double the territory of the standard 2,000-pound bomb. A typical bomb is the 2,000 pound Mk-84, developed in the 1950s. The Mk-84 creates a crater 50 feet in diameter and 36 feet deep or, exploding before it hits the ground, disperses shrapnel to a lethal radius of 400 yards [a diameter of half a mile]. . .
One 950-pound cluster bomb, the CBU-87/B, was described by air force officials as the weapon of choice in the Middle East. . . The air force claims one such bomblet will disable heavy vehicles over a 50-foot radius and aircraft over a 250-foot radius [one-quarter mile diameter] Troops would be still more vulnerable at greater ranges.
A single B-52 strategic bomber can carry 40 such cluster bombs, with a total of 8,080 bomblets. Theoretically, assuming a danger radius of 250 feet, one B-52 could carpet-bomb over 176 million square yards, equal to 27,500 football fields. The 28 B-52s which reportedly dropped 470 tons of explosives on Iraqi ground forces on one day, January 30, could have obliterated 1,600 square miles, an area one-third the size of Connecticut. |
