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From: scott@sting.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Silvey)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Hardened structures.
Message-ID: <1991Jan23.033625.1497@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 23 Jan 91 03:36:25 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: UC Berkeley Experimental Computing Facility
Lines: 33
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: scott@sting.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Silvey)
Supposedly, Iraq still has many aircraft, SCUD missiles, and one militant
  dictator holed up in hardened bomb-resistant bunkers.  From what the media
  says, it seems that the Air Force isn't even bothering going after these
  targets.

Is this because we don't posess munitions capable of penetrating or at least
  shaking up the contents of these bunkers?  Is it even possible that some
  man-made structure is capable of resisting a direct hit from a 2000lb bomb
  travelling at several hundred knots?!  If so, how are such structures made?
  Wouldn't a direct hit at least damage a fragile airplane inside?

Also, I assume most people have seen the video from the F-117A dropping a 
  2000lb bomb down the elevator shaft of some military HQ building.  I was
  suprised to see (in a later video) that the direct hit merely seemed to 
  blast out the windows.  I'm sure the insides of the building were quite
  tangled up, but why wouldn't a bomb exploding from the INSIDE completely
  level the structure?  I think that they used to call 1000lb bombs in WWII
  "blockbusters", implying they would destroy all buildings on a single city
  block (I don't know if this is the literal affect though).

One more ... does anyone happen to know the terminal velocity of ballistic
  bombs? (I would think it's around 600-700kts)  How soon would a bomb reach
  this velocity?


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| Scott Silvey           |                                                    |
| scott@xcf.berkeley.edu | Seen on bumper sticker: "US OUT OF NORTH AMERICA!" |
| Flames to /dev/null.   |                                                    |
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