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From: oplinger@thor.crd.ge.com (B. S. Oplinger)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Fuel-Air Explosives
Message-ID: <1991Jan19.043310.6361@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 19 Jan 91 04:33:10 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: General Electric Corporate R&D Center
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From: oplinger@thor.crd.ge.com (B. S. Oplinger)

A previous poster asks (while describing ww2 blockbuster bombs):
>Does the gain from not carrying oxidizer in the bomb make up for the loss
>inherent in an atmospheric detonation?

Think of it this way (deliberately simple):
	A normal bomb explodes with an effect of x, because only y%
(some small amount) goes in a direction that is useful (the rest is
lost going up). Now if you can spread the explosive material out so
that for each little bomb, the same (100-y)% energy goes the 'wrong
way', you will gain because some of that lost energy isn't lost,
because the bomblet next to it pushes back and the net effect is to
strengthen the blast. The nice part about using a fuel (which needs
its own oxydizer) instead of an explosive (which will ignite on its
own) is that the fuels used are liquid and disperse quite evenly.

	This idea is used to create the current fragmentation (bad
choice of name, can't remember correct one) bombs, which are actually
many small bombs and can be used to completely strip a chunk of forest
of everything above ground for a much larger area than the same weight
conventional (iron) bomb would.
--
brian
oplinger@crd.ge.com

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