Associated Press December 21, 2001
Pentagon Develops Bomb for Caves
By Matt Kelley
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has developed a new bomb to attack terrorist caves and tunnels: A weapon that forces a bone-crushing blast throughout the complex without destroying the entrance.
"It's something that we clearly have a need for in Afghanistan, and they're on their way over there," Pentagon official Pete Aldridge told reporters Friday.
Military researchers rushed the new "thermobaric" bomb to completion after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and it was tested in Nevada just last week, said Air Force spokesman Capt. Joe Della Vedova. The military was developing the weapon to use against bunkers and other buildings.
It works by creating a cloud of explosive particles that blow up with a force stronger and longer-lasting than one created by conventional explosives.
Thermobaric weapons work on the same principle that causes blasts in grain elevators and other dusty places - clouds of fine particles are highly explosive. Such explosions produce shock waves that can be directed and amplified in enclosed spaces such as buildings, caves or tunnels.
While the shock wave is powerful, it does not collapse a cave or tunnel but rather reverberates throughout an entire tunnel complex.
"The big advantage of it is it would enable you to destroy what is in the tunnel without collapsing the tunnel mouth," said military analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "In other words, you could kill people in tunnels and also be able to figure out who you've killed."
That could prove to be a big advantage in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida, since military officials are eager to determine which leaders of the Islamic militia and terrorist network have been killed by U.S. airstrikes. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said this week that Osama bin Laden could be buried in the rubble of a bombed tunnel, for example.
The military plans to send hundreds of U.S. Marines to the former al-Qaida stronghold in the Tora Bora area to help search caves and possibly dig into tunnels that were collapsed by bombs.
The United States had a similar kind of weapon, called a fuel-air explosive, during the Vietnam War. That weapon detonated a mist of liquid fuel, rather than the cloud of solid explosives used in the new version.
The old fuel-air explosives could create explosions of different sizes, depending on the size of the droplets produced, wind speed and other factors, Pike said.
"One of the reasons they didn't like the old ones was you couldn't predict how big of a bang you were going to get," Pike said. "I gather that the idea behind these new ones is that the size of the bang is more predictable."
Della Vedova, the Air Force spokesman, would not say how many thermobaric bombs the United States has or how much each would cost. The weapon, called the BLU-118b, can be used in several configurations, Della Vedova said.
The bombs are dropped from warplanes and guided to their targets by lasers or satellite positioning systems. They're designed to explode inside or just outside a cave or tunnel, sending the shock wave inside.
Pike said the bomb is so new the military probably does not have very many of them. "I think they're rolling their own, so to speak," Pike said.
© 2001 The Associated Press
