According to a BBC report, Russia’s new thermobaric bomb “contains about seven tons of high explosives compared with more than eight for the Moab (the US developed Massive Ordnance Air Burst unofficially called Mother Of All Bombs) but is four times more powerful because it uses a new type of explosives developed with the use of nanotechnology”
Before anyone gets too worked up about killer nanoweapons ( and without sounding lik the US National Rifle Association who claim that people kill people not guns – but we won”t get into that now) it’s worth remembering that improving the combustion of a fuel air bomb is very much like improving the combustion of fuel in an automotive engine (although let’s hope they don’t use that questionable fuel borne catalyst!).
Does this make the ‘Father of All Bombs’ a CleanTech weapon?
Comments 2
There was a development many years ago of a ‘Boron Carbide’ bullet. It was designed for a 50 Cal. weapon and had the unique property of leaving a massive hole [Approximately 200X] in any hard target it came into contact with but left a 50 Cal. Hole usually ‘Through and through’ in soft tissue which made it not very useful for People killing people, but excellent for knocking out Armored cars. The one unique feature about it is that it disintegrated on contact and thus was very hard it trace. Boron Carbide has bee used ti increase the projected power of explosives used in demolition. I might suggest that the Russian development is a further application of this but would question its usefulness.
The US MOAB is another example of ‘If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough of it.
The description of a themrobaric explosion is erronous. A Fuel-air-explosive is the type of bomb you have described. a thermobaric (the russian term, strictly speaking all explosives are thermobaric) bomb is a type where the detonation have been tempered, usually by mixing metals in the explosive. This causes a detonation that has a much lower peak pressure, but a far longer peak pressure time. this gives the bomb a greatly enhanced effect on buildings or bunkers by moving structural parts and collapsing them.
the second effect is a large fireball, much wider and longer lasting than the one from high explosives such as RDX or Hexotol. this will set combustibles om fire, and will push debris along the pressure front, enabling fire to spread around corners inside structures.
The MOAB is a slurryfilled bomb, it is not two stage detonated.