On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 07:40:14 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/15/2017 1:20 AM, wrote:
The Snooze Press (Ft Myers paper) had an interesting article about
this bomb. It was developed at Eglin AFB in the pan handle and they
were talking to a guy there.
It turns out this is the most expensive barrel bomb I have ever heard
of. These are 16 million a pop. I am not quite sure why you need
precision guidance on a bomb with a 1 mile blast radius but it has it.
I am still not sure why it is so expensive but it is a DoD project.
The guy was saying he really expected these things to be "demilled"
(scrapped) probably because they were approaching their expiration
date. I suppose it was "use it or lose it" for the air force.
I am still not sure how effective it actually was but since it is
really a "shock and awe" weapon, I suppose we shocked someone using
it.
In typical fashion, the russians just packed a bigger tank with
explosive and have a bigger one but I am not sure if it is guided and
I know it was a lot cheaper.



If you believe the Pentagon, it was the perfect weapon for the intended
purpose. Apparently several attempts by Afghan forces (with American
special force advisers) had been made with boots on the ground to clear
the caves and tunnels of ISIS without success. They just ran through
the tunnels into Pakistan. The MOAB took care of that problem.


I don't believe the pentagon on much, particularly on untested
weapons. When I see things like this I am reminded of the navy/marines
in the Pacific in WWII. They would lob thousands of 16" shells onto
islands to kill the nips in the caves, then go ashore and find out,
they might be shaken up but they were still alive and shooting.
Our ability to root people out of tunnels and caves has always been
spotty and we always seem to come up with a new idea that doesn't
really work as well as we hoped.
I still think we used that one because it was coming up on it's
expiration date and they knew Trump liked the idea of "biggest"
anything.
I am still waiting for a real BDA