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Picture of the Day: Mini Booms
By John
Airpower that enables the warfighter at the tactical level gives me warm fuzzies.
A GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb I strikes a BM-21 rocket launcher during a test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., in 2005. SDB I will be integrated on the F-15E Strike Eagle first, and is being delivered to combat units through the world for use in the war on terrorism.
Photo Courtesy of the US Air Force
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Yeah, if you notice the shrapnel is all going down in a cone which will really limit the kill radius of this weapon - which is the intent.
what I really liked about this pic was the shockwave bubble around the blast.
Yeah, I guess the shockwave compresses the air in front of it, forming a convex density barrier much like that of a convex lens. You can see the shockwave of bomb detonations in movies (e.g. all that WW2 B-52 footage on the History channel) but you can't see that it's actually distorting light like you can in this snapshot.
Will they make an artillery-delivered one?
Even a 250-lb bomb is larger than anything that's going to be artillery-delivered these days. After adding propellant, you'd probably need a battleship gun to fire one.
The artillery equivilent would probably be the "Excaliber" shells. GPS-guided 155mm rounds, supposed to be accurate within 10m.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/m982-155.htm
well I think the good colonel is just doing what arty officers do, and that's think of things that can be fired out of howitzers.
like tennis balls out of VMI's evening gun, for example.
Indeed! Back in the Old Corps, it was marbles and ball bearings, not tennis balls. :-)
Artillery lends dignity and elegance to what would otherwise be an unseemly brawl.
In my reenactor group we froze oranges, or filled pepsi can's with cement.
"Artillery lends dignity and elegance to what would otherwise be an unseemly brawl." -LtColP
This is true!
Does anyone remember hearing the story of a deceased alumnus whose family paid some cadets on the guard detail to fire a small silk pouch with some of the deceased's ashes in it out of the evening gun?
Just wondered if there was any truth to it or if there were any more details to this VMI "urban legend".
"...all that WW2 B-52 footage on the History channel"
You arty guys need to always remember to cover your ears and keep your mouths open... otherwise this is the kind of brain damage that can result! Everybody knows that aerial bombardment was pioneered by the Graf Zeppelin during the Spanish-American War... sheesh!
marbles and ball bearings? good lord where you trying to grape shot the corps?
Has there been any update on the proposals to use combustible bomb cases and tungsten dust in the filler?
That sounded like a rather neat idea for a blast-only bomb.
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Oh man! Do you see that firey shrapnel shooting out of the blast? Terrorist shredder!