Talk:BLU-82
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I marked the last sentence as dubious. This is a slurry weapon. The MOAB or the SMAW are pressure weapons or thermobaric. PETN 04:12, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
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- WRT that last sentence- http://www.megabrain.com/daisy.htm
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"[...]
The day before, their target area had been rained with leaflets warning the soldiers below: "Tomorrow if you don't surrender we're going to drop on you the largest conventional weapon in the world." The Iraqis who dared to sleep that night found out the allies weren't kidding. The explosion of a Daisy Cutter looks like an atomic bomb detonating. In the southwest corner of Kuwait that night, an enormous mushroom cloud flared into the dark. Sound travels for miles in the barren desert, and soon Iraqi radio nets along the border crackled with traffic. Col. Mike Samuel, Schwarzkopf's special-operations commander, cabled a message back to the U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida: "We're not too sure how you say 'Jesus Christ' in Iraqi." A British SAS commando team on a secret reconnaissance mission near the explosion frantically radioed back to its headquarters: "Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait!"
The next day a Combat Talon swept over the bomb site for another leaflet drop with a follow-up message: "You have just been hit with the largest conventional bomb in the world. More are on the way." The victims below didn't need much more convincing. The day after the BLU-82 attack, an Iraqi battalion commander and his staff raced across the border to surrender. Among the defectors was the commander's intelligence officer, clutching maps of the minefields along the Kuwait border. The intelligence bonanza enabled Central Command officers to pick out the gaps and weak spots in the mine defenses. When the ground war began Marine and allied forces breached them within hours.
[...]" I'm a harvard student and one of my professors is a defense department employee at the naval war college. The way he tells the story that I believe the above user is refering to is that it was not the British but the Australian troops that having seen the mushroom cloud at a distance radioed their commanders with the message that the Americans had gone mad and started using battlefield (tactical) nukes against iraqi occupation forces. I would assume that he knows what hes talking about because he knows lots of defense department officials.
[edit] Weight
What is the weight of this device. The photo says 15,000 lb, but it is not in th earticle. The source of the weight info should be cited. Cafe Nervosa | talk 18:42, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
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- Weight and size is quoted here [1] in the article, and note that although the factsheet states that the Daisycutter was delivered via the cargo doors of a transport aircraft it does not claim that it was too heavy to be carried on the bomb racks of bombers. The B52 will provide an example: it can carry 60,000 lbs of bombs in various configurations. These include the B41 nuclear bomb, (physically as large as the Daisycutter), and any bomb in the inventory past or present. The claim that the Daisycutter cannot be carried by current bombers needs to be substantiated or removed. Of course thare may have been other reasons why transport aircraft were used, but weight was surely not among the reasons. Brian.Burnell 16:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
"which is an understatement, see daisy)"
- huh??? - Omegatron 03:07, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
Daises are notoriously easy to cut, whereas the BLU-82 pulverizes small trees. just a bit of humor on the author's part, IMHO. ArrowmanCoder
"1991 Second Gulf War"? pretty sure it should be 1991 gulf war of 2003 Second Gulf War, not sure which though. say1988 15:36, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
1980s Iran-Iraq War = First Gulf War; 1991 Gulf War (Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait & Coalition liberation) = Second Gulf War; 2003 Gulf War (Coalition invasion to depost Hussein) = Third Gulf War
Hope this helps. Knave
- Are you really that naive? Do you have any clue how many wars have happened in or near the Persian Gulf?? Hope this helps. PETN 04:16, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Converted metric tons to kilograms, as the previous could be confused with short tons by American readers and others accustomed to using the short avoirdupois units. Hyuri 08:04, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
"The Air Force successfully lobbied for the development of an even larger, 30,000 lb (13,600 kg) weapon, which would be deployed from a traditional bomber". If you see the MOAB page, the actual weight of the bomb is 9800 kgs. Someone should disprove one of these weights or I will change it; it seems remarkably like Original Research. --The1exile 19:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
New Scientist quotes the USAF research lab as saying they are developing a 13 ton version of the MOAB. This may be where the original number came from. This is in the article at http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3495 --kfitzner, 28 Mar 2006
Much of the content of this page seems to be a mediocre re-write of this URL: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm -- 02 March 2006.
[edit] Older daisycutter?
I have read stories about WWII pilots dropping "daisy cutter" bombs which were some type of fragmentation anti-personell weapon. I remember them being something like in the 200-350 pound range, not the monster mentioned here. I think the vietnam era jungle clearer was just an adaptation of this name.
Straight from the USAF Museums web site: the BLU-82/B was essentially a large thin-walled tank (1/4-inch steel plate) filled with a 12,600-lb. explosive "slurry" mixture. The designers optimized this bomb to clear vegetation while creating little or no crater, and it cleared landing zones about 260 feet in diameter-just right for helicopter operations. Since only cargo aircraft could carry them, C-130 crews delivered the BLU-82/B with normal parachute cargo extraction systems.
[edit] Something Completely Different
I heard about the daisy cutter today from someone who worked in a chemical research laboratory. He said that the daisy cutter was a weapon that dispersed aerosol napalm over a large radius, then detonated, and the reason behind the "daisy cutter" nickname had less to do with the "daisies are notoriously easy to cut" rumour and more to do with the daisy-shaped crater or pattern the detonation of the bomb "cuts" into the countryside. I know nothing more, but thought it was interesting, and found some differing information here. Basseq 20:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
