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A bomb is an explosive device that generates and releases its energy very rapidly. The explosion creates a violent, very destructive shock wave. Bombs cause destruction and injury to objects and living things within the blast radius by the crushing action of the shockwave (pressure) and by mechanical impact of fragments, including shards of the bomb casing (often called "shrapnel") or objects from the surrounding area propelled by the blast. Bombs have been used for centuries in both conventional and unconventional warfare. Most bombs do not contain more energy than ordinary fuel, except in the case of a nuclear weapon.
The word comes from the Greek word βόμβος (bombos), an onomatopoetic term with approximately the same meaning as "boom" in English.
Bombs are first and foremost weapons; the term "bomb" is not usually applied to explosive devices used for civilian purposes, such as construction or mining, although the people using the devices may sometimes refer to them as bombs. Many military explosive devices are not called "bombs". The military mostly calls airdropped, unpowered explosive weapons "bombs," and such bombs are normally used by air forces and naval aviation. Other military explosive devices are called grenades, shells, depth charges (used in water), warheads when in missiles, or land mines.
Experts commonly distinguish between civilian and military bombs. The latter are almost always mass-produced weapons, developed and constructed to a standard design out of standard components and intended to be deployed in a standard way each time. By contrast, civilian bombs are usually custom-made, developed to any number of designs, use a wide range of explosives of varying levels of power and chemical stability, and are used in many different ways. For this reason, they are generally referred to as improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
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[edit] Types
Bombs fall into three distinct categories: conventional if filled with chemical explosives, dispersive if filled with submunitions, chemicals or other disruptive agents which are spread on or shortly before impact, or nuclear if relying on nuclear fission or nuclear fusion for their effect.
Thermobaric weapons are a type of conventional explosive that draws its oxidizer from oxygen in the air.
The most powerful kind of bomb in existence is the hydrogen bomb, a nuclear weapon with destructive power measured in megatons of TNT (Mt). The most powerful bombs ever used in combat were the two bombs dropped by the United States to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most powerful non-nuclear bombs are the United States Air Force's MOAB (officially Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or more commonly known as the "Mother Of All Bombs") and the Russian "Father of All Bombs" (tested in September 2007, is being claimed as being four times more powerful than MOAB)[1].
Bombs can also be classified according to the way they are set off and radius of effect.
[edit] Delivery
The usual method of delivering military bombs to their target is by bombing, i.e. dropping them from a bombing aircraft. The first air-dropped bombs were used in October 1912 by the Bulgarian Air Force at the Siege of Adrianople. [2] Large bombers are often designed with an internal bomb bay. Fighter bombers usually carry bombs externally on pylons or bomb racks, or on multiple ejection racks which enable mounting several bombs on a single pylon. Modern bombs, precision-guided munitions, may be guided after they leave an aircraft by remote control, or by autonomous guidance. When bombs such as nuclear weapons are mounted on a powered platform, they are called guided missiles.
Some bombs are equipped with a parachute, such as the World War II "parafrag", which was an 11 kg fragmentation bomb, the Vietnam-era daisy cutters, and the bomblets of some modern cluster bombs. Parachutes slow the bomb's descent, giving the dropping aircraft time to get to a safe distance from the explosion. This is especially important with airburst nuclear weapons, and in situations where the aircraft releases a bomb at low altitude.
A hand grenade is delivered by being thrown. Grenades can also be projected by other means using a grenade launcher, such as being launched from the muzzle of a rifle using the M203 or the GP-30 or by attaching a rocket to the explosive grenade as in a rocket propelled grenade (RPG).
A bomb may also be positioned in advance and concealed.
A bomb destroying a rail track just before a train arrives causes a train to derail. Apart from the damage to vehicles and people, a bomb exploding in a transport network often also damages, and is sometimes mainly intended to damage that network. This applies for railways, bridges, runways, and ports, and to a lesser extent, depending on circumstances, to roads.
In the case of suicide bombing the bomb is often carried by the attacker on his or her body, or in a vehicle driven to the target.
The Blue Peacock nuclear mines, which were also termed "bombs", were planned to be positioned during wartime and be constructed such that, if they were disturbed, they would explode within ten seconds.
The explosion of a bomb may be triggered by a detonator or a fuse. Detonators are triggered by clocks, remote controls like cell phones or some kind of sensor, such as pressure (altitude), radar, vibration or contact. Detonators vary in ways they work, they can be electrical, fire fuze or blast initiated detonators and others.
[edit] See also
- Bat bomb
- Bomb disposal
- Bomb threat
- Car bomb
- Chlorine bomb
- Cluster bomb
- Collateral damage
- Dirty bomb
- Dry Ice Bomb
- Earthquake bomb
- Electromagnetic bomb
- Firebomb
- General purpose bomb
- Gravity bomb
- Hand grenade
- Improvised Explosive Device (IED)
- Nail bomb
- Napalm bomb
- Neutron bomb
- Nuclear bomb
- Pipe bomb
- Plastic explosive
- Salted bomb
- Shaped charge
- Strategic Bombing
- Suicide bomber
- Time bomb
[edit] References
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2007) |
[edit] External links
- FAS.org Bombs for Beginners
- MakeItLouder.com How a bomb functions and rating their power
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