.Did Russia Stage the Father of All Bombs Hoax?
"All that is alive merely evaporates."
That's how a Russian official described the effects of what is reportedly the world's most powerful non-nuclear bomb, tested on Sept. 11. A video released by state media shows a Tupolev 160 bomber, a bomb falling as a parachute unfurls and a huge fireball.
The Russians call the device the "Father of All Bombs," an homage to the American GBU-43 Massive-Ordnance Air Blast munition nicknamed "Mother of All Bombs."
Both weapons weigh around 8 tons, but the Russian device reportedly has a more powerful blast: equivalent to 44 tons of TNT, whereas the American bomb is equivalent to 10 tons.
Father of All Bombs "has no match in the world," a military officer boasts in the official video.
Western media reacted with alarm. An editor for Jane's told the BBC it was likely that FOAB indeed represented "the world's biggest non-nuclear bomb." UPI claimed the device "would enormously boost Russia's conventional military capabilities."
But close analysis of the video reveals inconsistencies that have led some U.S. experts to question the veracity of the Russian claims, and to downgrade assessments of the weapon. It's possible, they say, that the video was partially faked, and that the test was hyped for political reasons.
"You've got to approach Russian claims with skepticism," says John Pike, an analyst at the think tank GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Virginia.
It's not even clear what kind of weapon the Russians tested -- if it was what some experts call a "fuel-air explosive," or if it was a "thermobaric" weapon. Fuel-air and thermobaric bombs differ in usefulness.
Traditional bombs rely on metal fragments propelled by TNT to do their damage. Thermobaric weapons, by contrast, release a massive shockwave. They're meant for taking out big buildings and cave complexes, places where fragmentation doesn't work very well, explains Tom Burky, a senior research scientist at Battelle, an Ohio-based defense contractor. Thermobaric blasts can push around corners and down corridors.
Fuel-air bombs, on the other hand, have a small explosive device connected to a large tank of compressed fuel. The tank cracks on impact with the ground, spreading a cloud of fuel vapor. The warhead explodes, igniting the fuel. The effect is roughly the same, but fuel-air bombs are much more finicky than thermobarics, according to Burky. "The mixing process is highly randomized -- very difficult to control on the battlefield."
The official video compares the Russian bomb to the thermobaric GBU-43, but the weapon depicted in the video appears to be a fuel-air explosive, based on its shape, Burky says.
Regardless, Phillip Coyle, an adviser to the Washington, D.C., Center for Defense Information, says he is skeptical about Father of All Bombs' true power. "It (the blast) may be bigger than MOAB," he concedes, "but it's not four times bigger -- at best 50 percent bigger, just going on the bomb's size and how these bombs are designed."
The force of a thermobaric/fuel-air blast is a function of the fuel type, the proportions of fuel and high explosive, and the way these elements mix during the blast. "The difficulty with bombs of this type is predicting the shape of the blast," Pike says. Teasing a fourfold improvement over the MOAB would require sophisticated chemistry, according to Burky, and that would challenge what Pike describes as cash-strapped Russian military labs.
Despite his skepticism regarding many Russian military developments, Pike says he believes that the Father of All Bombs is roughly as powerful as the Russians claim. What he doesn't necessarily buy is that the weapon is actually new. The Russian military has a tendency to rename old weapons in order to create the impression that they are new, Pike says. The Russians have possessed a range of thermobaric weapons for at least four decades.
Wired
That's how a Russian official described the effects of what is reportedly the world's most powerful non-nuclear bomb, tested on Sept. 11. A video released by state media shows a Tupolev 160 bomber, a bomb falling as a parachute unfurls and a huge fireball.
The Russians call the device the "Father of All Bombs," an homage to the American GBU-43 Massive-Ordnance Air Blast munition nicknamed "Mother of All Bombs."
Both weapons weigh around 8 tons, but the Russian device reportedly has a more powerful blast: equivalent to 44 tons of TNT, whereas the American bomb is equivalent to 10 tons.
Father of All Bombs "has no match in the world," a military officer boasts in the official video.
Western media reacted with alarm. An editor for Jane's told the BBC it was likely that FOAB indeed represented "the world's biggest non-nuclear bomb." UPI claimed the device "would enormously boost Russia's conventional military capabilities."
But close analysis of the video reveals inconsistencies that have led some U.S. experts to question the veracity of the Russian claims, and to downgrade assessments of the weapon. It's possible, they say, that the video was partially faked, and that the test was hyped for political reasons.
"You've got to approach Russian claims with skepticism," says John Pike, an analyst at the think tank GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Virginia.
It's not even clear what kind of weapon the Russians tested -- if it was what some experts call a "fuel-air explosive," or if it was a "thermobaric" weapon. Fuel-air and thermobaric bombs differ in usefulness.
Traditional bombs rely on metal fragments propelled by TNT to do their damage. Thermobaric weapons, by contrast, release a massive shockwave. They're meant for taking out big buildings and cave complexes, places where fragmentation doesn't work very well, explains Tom Burky, a senior research scientist at Battelle, an Ohio-based defense contractor. Thermobaric blasts can push around corners and down corridors.
Fuel-air bombs, on the other hand, have a small explosive device connected to a large tank of compressed fuel. The tank cracks on impact with the ground, spreading a cloud of fuel vapor. The warhead explodes, igniting the fuel. The effect is roughly the same, but fuel-air bombs are much more finicky than thermobarics, according to Burky. "The mixing process is highly randomized -- very difficult to control on the battlefield."
The official video compares the Russian bomb to the thermobaric GBU-43, but the weapon depicted in the video appears to be a fuel-air explosive, based on its shape, Burky says.
Regardless, Phillip Coyle, an adviser to the Washington, D.C., Center for Defense Information, says he is skeptical about Father of All Bombs' true power. "It (the blast) may be bigger than MOAB," he concedes, "but it's not four times bigger -- at best 50 percent bigger, just going on the bomb's size and how these bombs are designed."
The force of a thermobaric/fuel-air blast is a function of the fuel type, the proportions of fuel and high explosive, and the way these elements mix during the blast. "The difficulty with bombs of this type is predicting the shape of the blast," Pike says. Teasing a fourfold improvement over the MOAB would require sophisticated chemistry, according to Burky, and that would challenge what Pike describes as cash-strapped Russian military labs.
Despite his skepticism regarding many Russian military developments, Pike says he believes that the Father of All Bombs is roughly as powerful as the Russians claim. What he doesn't necessarily buy is that the weapon is actually new. The Russian military has a tendency to rename old weapons in order to create the impression that they are new, Pike says. The Russians have possessed a range of thermobaric weapons for at least four decades.
Wired
posted by madtom at 11:01 PM
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