Air Force Loads Mockup of Megabomb

This falls into the category of "most bizarre press release" of 2007. The United States Air Force announced yesterday that they put a mock bomb on a mock bomber, with obvious pride and rejoicing for this new weapon on the War on Terrorism that, three years later, still has not gone into production.

From the press release, it is obvious that the target of this 30,000 pound bomb (yes, that's 30 THOUSAND pounds) are caves and underground facilities, since it is being designed to pierce 200 feet below the surface. Two... hundred... feet. At that depth, the nearly 3 tons of explosives this baby packs would be exploded.

Now, this is NOT the gigantic bomb you have probably seen on television being dropped from B-52s in some historical documentary film. Oh no. This is a SMART bomb, guided by a geo-positioning system (GPS) with vanes and other nifty ways of releasing it so it absolutely WILL hit the target, within a few feet.

Imagine this behemoth crashing through your front door, burrowing into the ground about 17 stories, then KABOOM! Imagine that baby flying into the mouth of a cave. No more cave, right? Hell, maybe no more MOUNTAIN.

The obvious target for this bomb are the caves being used by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the mountainous western regions of Pakistan. Maybe the mountains along the Turkey-Iraq border. Hell, imagine if this puppy hit a shallow oil field! KABOOM! No more oil field, instead there would be a massive fire burning underground, spewing who-knows-what for who-knows-how-long into the atmosphere.

Remember Sadaam Hussein setting fire to the oil wells in Iraq during the first invasion of Iraq in 1991? If not, go find some film clips. It looked like a vision from Dante's version of Hell.

One of these days, Boeing is going to finish this puppy, and the U.S. military really put it into use. I wonder where the test range will be?