MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 12:50:07 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 11:31:37 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


They are not 20 years old. Designed in 2003, produced sometime after.
So, maybe 12-13 years at most. But, that's beside the point.

So 20 may still be the number.

Some of your computers are much older than that and you still use them. :-)

My computers do not exude an explosive goo.

===

Yet.

Have you ever seen an old electrolytic capacitor blow up? One of my
childhood acquaintances had one go right through the ceiling.

MOAB story
 

On 4/15/2017 6:06 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 12:50:07 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 11:31:37 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


They are not 20 years old. Designed in 2003, produced sometime after.
So, maybe 12-13 years at most. But, that's beside the point.

So 20 may still be the number.

Some of your computers are much older than that and you still use them. :-)

My computers do not exude an explosive goo.

===

Yet.

Have you ever seen an old electrolytic capacitor blow up? One of my
childhood acquaintances had one go right through the ceiling.



Never saw one explode that violently. The ones I saw just bulged the
top or bottom out until one of them ruptured, releasing the gases.

MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 14:18:59 -0400, wrote:

Since when has DoD cared about the cost of things they throw away?
If it really has TNT in it, it certainly has a ticking clock. (I still
bet it is a mix of RDX and ammonium nitrate)

===

Here's the straight dope:

It’s made up of a cocktail of TNT, RDX, and aluminum, together with
some calcium chloride and a bit of paraffin wax for stability.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The “mother of all bombs” that the United States Air Force dropped on
eastern Afghanistan on Thursday weighed 21,600 pounds. The vast bulk
of the bomb’s weight came from the sheer amount of explosive material
inside it, specifically 18,600 pounds of an explosive substance
enigmatically called Composition H6.

H6 is powerful stuff. Packing a punch 1.35 times the power of TNT, the
substance is commonly found in general-purpose bombs as well as in
underwater blast weapons like mines, depth charges, torpedoes, and
mine disposal charges. The U.S. Army has been using it since World War
II, but Thursday’s deployment of the mother of all bombs — technically
known as the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB — is
probably the first time so much of it has been detonated at once.

H6 is a less volatile version of an older substance called Torpex —
short for “torpedo explosive” — which is now obsolete. Torpex, an
alternative to pure TNT, was crazy explosive, and H6’s relative
storage stability, insensitivity to shock, and higher test
temperatures made it more practical for military use. It’s made up of
a cocktail of TNT, RDX (a chemical cousin of TNT that’s more
explosive), and aluminum, together with some calcium chloride and a
bit of paraffin wax for stability. Aluminum was added in order to
increase the “explosive pulse” of the blast — that is, give the
explosive gases more time to expand — thereby making it even more
destructive. The calcium chloride was thrown into the mix in order to
absorb moisture, which could lead to the production of unwanted
hydrogen gas in humid conditions.

The explosive was originally developed in the United States, but it
seems now that it is largely associated with Australian production. A
report from the country’s Aeronautical and Maritime Research
Laboratory noted some slight differences between American and
Australian H6, noting that the Aussies add an extra step to remove any
residual acid from the explosive cocktail.

Despite differences in the recipes made to use it, one thing is clear:
This stuff is powerful, and reliably so. The 18,600 pounds of H6
contained inside the MOAB detonated to create a one-mile blast radius
with the strength of 11 tons of TNT, likely flattening everything in
sight.

---------------------------------------------------------------------


https://www.inverse.com/article/30368-mother-of-all-bombs-moab-h6-composition-explosive

MOAB story
 

Keyser Soze wrote:
On 4/15/17 3:29 PM, Bill wrote:
Keyser Soze wrote:
On 4/15/17 1:45 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/15/2017 12:30 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 4/15/17 11:27 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/15/2017 10:36 AM, wrote:
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


You, nor I, have any idea of what the "expiration date" is on those
bombs, so that's a pretty silly conclusion.

It's not "untested". It was designed and tested for a specific purpose.
Until now, there wasn't an appropriate target for it.

You and Harry are the most cynical people I know when it comes to
things like this ... or anything new. I have far more
faith in what experts in the defense department think we need as
options. Maybe it's because I worked with them often over the years.
They are not all job protecting, resource spending bureaucrats that some
people automatically assume they are. In fact, they were more
interested in reducing costs, reducing unnecessary complexity and making
program objectives more efficient. Even the "mil-spec" requirements for
most of the electronics were dropped in favor of qualified, commercial
grade components.


Perhaps I get my cynicism about the military from Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

The only way to make your dreams come true is to forever ban conflicts
and wars and expect everyone on the planet to honor it. How realistic
is that? I think Eisenhower had that in mind when he generated your
quote. It sure would be nice ... but....




Despite the trillions we have spent and the thousands of American
soldier lives we have sacrificed, we seem incapable of winning
"unconventional" wars against determined ideological enemies. We have to
find other, better ways of dealing with extremists. I don't think we
expend enough effort in that direction. Yet another aircraft carrier or
another supersonic fighter jet isn't going to make a difference.


We could be a lot closer to winning, if it could be called that, if we had
functional rules of engagement.



How so, Billy Boy? Napalm everything living? More Agent Orange? Nukes?


If you are getting shot at, you can kill the attackers! If you have group
attacking your unit and a bunch of kids are carrying ammo. They all die.
You do not wait for 10 hours before air support arrives. I said rules of
engagement. Not what weapons are used. If a town is full of The enemy and
no one in towns tries to warn us. Good chance everyone in town dies. The
culture understands brute force.

MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 14:44:35 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/15/2017 2:18 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 13:51:30 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


Come on Greg. A WWII vintage 5-inch shell or ammo for a .45 isn't the
same as a $15M bomb (not counting development costs) that undergoes
regular updating for improvements. We only built 15 of them. They
aren't "throwaways". Geeze.

Since when has DoD cared about the cost of things they throw away?
If it really has TNT in it, it certainly has a ticking clock. (I still
bet it is a mix of RDX and ammonium nitrate)


I don't know and you don't know. You are "betting".

I am sure a few minutes poking around and you could find a more
knowledgable article than Time magazine and they would tell you the
explosive. These are still just blunt force weapons and there is no
reason to keep the filler secret.

There are strict rules about classes of ordinance and what is service
ready, training or trash, based on the age. They know nothing lasts
forever. There are certainly expiration dates on ordinance.
The guidance package may actually expire before the bomb, just because
of capacitor degradation. My 20 year old PCs are becoming few and far
between because of that fact alone. I do not have a single socket 7
board that still works.


Heh. You're comparing your 20 year old PC with a mil-spec guidance
system that is subject to regular upgrades?

Maybe you have forgotten some of your USCG days Greg. The military
doesn't just store away equipment in a storage shed for 20 years in
case they may need it someday. Each branch of the services has a
"Planned Maintenance Program" for virtually *everything* they use or
have in inventory. Regular tests are done, some weekly, some monthly,
some annually depending on what the equipment is and there are specific
requirements the equipment must meet. If they don't they are repaired,
if the repair is not economically feasible there is a complex procedure
for retiring it and taking it off the books.

The Planned Maintenance Program also deals with scheduled upgrades and
improvements as they become available.

In the case of the actual ordinance, the "plan" is you throw the old
stuff away. Ammo, explosives and the fuzes degrade chemically and
there is no "fixing" that.
A agree the guidance package might get "fixed" but that fix is
probably throw away all of the cards and install new ones.
The world of electronics has changed a lot since we were soldering
parts in on the ship. If they still fixed things, I might still be at
IBM. ;-)

MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 14:47:04 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

You won't like this, but I believe it. We haven't fought a "war" since
WWII that politics didn't over-ride military objectives.

When you are in civil wars, you have political decisions being made.
We stay in denial about what the fighting and dying is about because
there is no real military objective.
Syria is an excellent example. What is the strategic military
objective there?

Defeat ISIS?
ISIS is an idea, not an army and they are everywhere

Take down Assad?
Not really. We don't even have a plan for a successor, that is Putin's
problem with it.

Liberate the Kurds?
Turkey is against that idea.

Tell me again, why are we in Syria?

That really goes double for Afghanistan. We should have got out of
there when Delta ran Bin Laden off into Pakistan at Tora Bora.

MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 19:29:46 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:



We could be a lot closer to winning, if it could be called that, if we had
functional rules of engagement.

Winning is not included in the game plan. We don't even have a plan of
what a win looks like, same as Vietnam.

MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 18:06:45 -0400,
wrote:

My computers do not exude an explosive goo.

===

Yet.

Have you ever seen an old electrolytic capacitor blow up? One of my
childhood acquaintances had one go right through the ceiling.

If you look at the capacitors in a PC, you will see they have an X cut
in the top of the can. They just pop open like a dinner roll instead
of exploding. The guys who still fix these things start right away by
replacing all of the capacitors or at least the ones that show any
sign of swelling or cracking open. These are hobbyists, not business
people.

MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 14:55:11 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:

On 4/15/17 2:42 PM, Poco Deplorevole wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:21:15 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:

On 4/15/17 7:40 AM, 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 read where the bomb killed a couple of dozen people. Big ****ing Deal.
At some point, we'll just pull out of Afghanistan and stop wasting
American lives and American money. Your not-so-almighty military isn't
going to solve it.

Thanks, Krause, I'd predicted the liberals would whine about the cost. Took you a couple days, but
you didn't let me down.



Indeed, Afghanistan isn't worth the price of another American soldier's
life...unless, of course, it would be your life.
As for the dollars we are wasting there, there is better use for them at
home, rebuilding this crumbling country.

It's so funny. You weren't spouting your crap a few years back.

MOAB story
 

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:34:22 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:

On 4/15/17 3:29 PM, Bill wrote:
Keyser Soze wrote:
On 4/15/17 1:45 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/15/2017 12:30 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 4/15/17 11:27 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/15/2017 10:36 AM, wrote:
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


You, nor I, have any idea of what the "expiration date" is on those
bombs, so that's a pretty silly conclusion.

It's not "untested". It was designed and tested for a specific purpose.
Until now, there wasn't an appropriate target for it.

You and Harry are the most cynical people I know when it comes to
things like this ... or anything new. I have far more
faith in what experts in the defense department think we need as
options. Maybe it's because I worked with them often over the years.
They are not all job protecting, resource spending bureaucrats that some
people automatically assume they are. In fact, they were more
interested in reducing costs, reducing unnecessary complexity and making
program objectives more efficient. Even the "mil-spec" requirements for
most of the electronics were dropped in favor of qualified, commercial
grade components.


Perhaps I get my cynicism about the military from Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

The only way to make your dreams come true is to forever ban conflicts
and wars and expect everyone on the planet to honor it. How realistic
is that? I think Eisenhower had that in mind when he generated your
quote. It sure would be nice ... but....




Despite the trillions we have spent and the thousands of American
soldier lives we have sacrificed, we seem incapable of winning
"unconventional" wars against determined ideological enemies. We have to
find other, better ways of dealing with extremists. I don't think we
expend enough effort in that direction. Yet another aircraft carrier or
another supersonic fighter jet isn't going to make a difference.


We could be a lot closer to winning, if it could be called that, if we had
functional rules of engagement.



How so, Billy Boy? Napalm everything living? More Agent Orange? Nukes?

Agent Orange could definitely cut down the opium production.