Earlier this week, AP reported that Russia tested a conventional bomb, which Russian television described as the “world’s most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered bomb.”
The TV station highlighted the importance of this weapon. In other words, our bomb is bigger than your bomb.
Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the “dad of all bombs” is four times more powerful than the U.S. “mother of all bombs.”
[snip]
The U.S. Massive Ordnance Air Blast, nicknamed the Mother Of All Bombs, is a large-yield satellite-guided, air-delivered bomb described as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in history.
Channel One said that while the Russian bomb contains 7.8 tons of high explosives compared to more than 8 tons of explosives in the U.S. bomb, it’s four times more powerful because it uses a new, highly efficient type of explosives that the report didn’t identify.
So, why does one need a bomb so big? A bomb that Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said “is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability.”
To get the terrorists of course.
Rukshin said the new bomb would allow the military to “protect the nation’s security and confront international terrorism in any situation and any region.”
What is this all about? I am not sure yet. But “showing off” seems to be a topic in Russia news lately. Flexing some muscles, first literally, and now with really big fireballs.
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Heck at least they did not accidentially ship it to Moscow and have it sit there for 10 hours before noticing it….
— Rob · Sep 12, 08:47 PM ·
Did you notice the other ‘bomb’ they are working on with no success?
Russians told to skip work and have sex
By Bonnie Malkin and agencies
Last Updated: 2:30am BST 13/09/2007
It certainly is a novel way to tackle declining birth rates. The governor of a central Russian province has urged couples to ditch work and stay home to have sex instead.
Russian army ‘tests the father of all bombs’
Regional governor Sergei Morozov has also promised that if anyone gives birth in exactly nine months time – on Russia’s national day on June 12 – she will qualify for a prize.
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The prize would be “something for the home – a fridge or a television set,” spokeswoman for the Ulyanovsk regional administration press office, Yelena Yakovleva, said.
“It doesn’t matter if [the baby] is a girl or a boy.”
Mr Morozov ordered employers to contribute to a Kremlin campaign to boost the birth rate by giving couples the day off to have sex.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/12/wruss112.xml
— Lao Tao Ren · Sep 12, 09:54 PM ·
Here is a British Counter to the Russian test: a 50 million pound Sterling bomb.
Brits destroy own Hercules
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007420642,00.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,11021-2006410749,00.html?channel=Sun%20Exclusive&clipID=1347_SUN3602
— Lao Tao Ren · Sep 12, 10:39 PM ·
Rushkin also noted that the bomb is “environmentally friendly, compared to a nuclear bomb.” Its good to know that DVDs of Inconvenient Truth have finally made their way to Russia.
— Justin Reed · Sep 13, 08:47 AM ·
U.S. develops 14-ton super bomb, bigger than Russian vacuum bomb
WASHINGTON, September 13 (RIA Novosti) – The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday.
The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
McInerney said the U.S. has “a new massive ordnance penetrator that’s 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates … Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can’t penetrate.”
He also said the new Russian bomb was not a “penetrator.”
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070913/78518873.html
— Tina · Sep 13, 11:05 AM ·
I hope for McInerney’s sake he had authorization to disclose that information.
— Carl · Sep 14, 05:42 AM ·
It’s amazing how a big piece of firework, essentially based on 1970s technology and with very limited functionality can attract so much attention. Compare with some pictures of a US 1970s fireball http://www.nawcwpns.navy.mil/clmf/faeseq.html
Most important conclusion: poor Chechens
— Pieter · Sep 14, 06:05 AM ·
Any thoughts on the John Bolton-pushed thesis of North Korean nuke involvement in Syria? (Supported by not-previously-thought-of-as-neocon Andrew Semmel of State in today’s Washington Post story, ‘US: Syria on Nuclear Watch List’).
— Nell · Sep 15, 01:35 PM ·
It would be easy to dismiss something as a ‘John Bolton-pushed thesis’ or a ‘neocon thesis’. Even if it is true that the neo-cons’ rationale for invading Iraq have been discredited, it does not follow that everything that comes from them is necessarily false.
The problem is what if there is a grain of truth to it?
DPRK, above all, needs hard currency money to sustain the regime. As such, they cannot be too choosy as to who they get funds from. Syria has dire security needs that drives them to desperate measures.
Money makes strange bed fellows. Far stranger ones than politics sometimes.
Proliferation of WMDs have driven far stranger bedfellows together:
e.g. Saudi Arabia buying Missiles from DPRK, India cozying up to the US after its long stint in the ‘non-aligned’ world, Israel worked with South Africa on nuclear weapons….
Need I go on?
— Lao Tao Ren · Sep 15, 05:47 PM ·
Oh no.. apologies for an error of fact in that last comment. It was China that sold missiles to Saudi Arabia.
Dr Lewis traveling in China must have caused the China Syndrome to hit my decrepit memory.
— Lao Tao Ren · Sep 16, 08:30 PM ·