Forum: F-16 Armament & Stores

How effective would JDAM or JSOW or other "Bunker Busters" be against the caves and bunkers of North Korea?

Would they be able to penetrate soil/rock/concrete ?

Thank you...

from S.Korea

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Good question. It might however fall under the realm of "fraggers" (people that make up target plans ) and "BDA" experts, ( Bomb Damage Assessment ) people and might if talked about in detail be classified ( weapons true ability etc etc ) Some interesting food for thought though from public comsumption sources:

-In Afganistan, various types of "themobaric" weapons ( custom I assume ) were tried out in caves.... words describing the results as very good. ( metalic dust is puffed out inside the cave and then ignited in milliseconds, to a nice warm toasty brown.)

-In OIF, USMC used a "themobaric" version of the Hellfire missile at least once. ( nice for taking out specific rooms of a building without dropping the building and throwing concrete )

-A USAF team went around after OIF composed of BDA types and looked at, in detail results of specific targets hit with specific bombs of various flavors and documented the results for some study.

-The Hitler Channel.....er I mean the History Channel had a show on bunkers, and some of Iraqs larger special made deep bunkers, were not taken out by "bunker buster" class weapons ( GBU-37 and the Paveway version number which I can't remember off hand 27? 28? )

So hard to say. It is a given though that any serious Korea scenario will involve a large JDAM party and will really give that old Curt Lemay saying of : "Bomb them back into the stone age...." real teeth. Mess with a JDAM party and you will lose large.

My thoughts on caves are that if the enemy is in them, they can be contained, there has to be an enterance(s) and and exit(s). Twisted Evil

I think the biggest challenge will be to get the JDAM party to the bunkers, as I suspect there are few countries with a more built up air defence and limited to no respect for own human losses than N.K.

The paveway you were thinking of is the GBU-28 it was heavy enough to make the F-111's that carried them lean and the tritinol in the casing's was still warm when they arrived in Saudi during Desert Storm. The test drop made at Edwards in Jan 91 was said to have penetrated over 100 ft into the ground, the inert was never recovered. So I imagine we can hit whatever bunkers the North Koreans have if we would have too.

Rigo

Keep in mind that JDAM is just a guidance kit. Put one on a BLU-109 2000 lb penetrator and you bet your a__ it would be effective! In 1985 or so we dropped a BLU-109 at China Lake (1985) into a mountain of solid granite to see how far it would penetrate without relief. The base of the bomb was 10 feet deep..nose was over 18 ft deep.

JSOW is a self contained weapon but the USAF bailed on it last year...too little bang for the buck. I believe it was to have a 1000lb version of the BLU-109 embedded within one version.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/blu-109.htm

Something else we're working on that might help is the new "Massive Ordinance Penetrator." It's basically the penetrator version of the MOAB. I don't know what it's future will be due to some of the unique problems with employing it. I posted a topic about it over in the Military Aviation (non F-16 related) section a while back. If we can get it sorted out, I think it would probably work great!

Here's a link to the other topic:
http://www.f-16.net/index.php?name=PNph ... ght=30+000

I say use multiple squadrons of C-130s dropping Daisy Cutters, using pressure effects to break whatever is in those caves.

So what's to keep the enemy from just digging new bunkers deeper or hardening existing bunkers against the new penetrators? All they need to do is pick up a copy of Aviation Leak or some such pub to get the public version of the penetration depth and make the necessary changes to make our new toys irrelevent. Or would penetration countermeasures be a logistics nitemare for the other side? Just wonderin'.

Salute!

Welcome to my wealth of history and wisdom concerning these things......

I worked on the product improvement effort for JDAM back in early 90's or so to get it's CEP down to 3 meters or less. Also to allow the sucker to achieve a more horizontal flight path to get those pesky caves in Korea.

At the time, JDAM was a dream and we were still conducting the 'operational concept demonstration' drops. So even before the thing got approval for production, USAF was looking at ways to make it even better.

Turned out that we got 10 meters or less CEP on the proof of concept articles, and GPS software dweebs were developing better and better Kalman filters, etc. that reduced CEP further. Nevertheless, it was still not classified as a 'precision' weapon due to the 3 meter criteria. Nor was it as accurate on a shallow approach trajectory as it was going straight down. Seems altitude was the biggest inherent error with GPS, and still is.

So we looked at various terminal guidance seekers and increased steering fins for the kits.

As with the Paveway 3 LGB's, bigger fins allowed more accurate shallow trajectories and lower release altitudes.

USAF never picked a scheme, nor went much further. The GPS-only version got better and better, meanwhile the Korean threat diminished.

My personal choice for the caves is the GBU-15 and AGM-130. Can datalink the steering in realtime, and can fly the suckers almost level to enter the caves and blow up. During 'nam, the laser guiding FAC's (Pave Nails) would illuminate a cave, watch the bomb, then move the spot to slightly above the cave and see the bomb sail right into the sucker! Heh heh heh.

later....

Hi Gums! ( waves ) Cool

GBU-15/AGM-130 would be great but there's some problems with that. 1. What platform on the ROK right now can drop them? 2.How many caves are in nK vs. how many GBU-15/AGM-130s in our inventory. 3. The weather usually sucks in Korea. What if war kicks off on a humid, foggy day?

Im in Korea right now and the fog has got to be extreme to stop these birds from flying here. I have seen nights where we swear they would weather canx and the only dropped 1 or 2 lines at the most. We would just bring in the Strkes from Elmendorf to drop them until they arrived we use the JDAM's and anything else we have that can hit a cave.

Rigo

It's easy to fly in the weather but employing EO/IR weapons effectively is a different story.

Salute Flankert and Rigamortis!

Two good points.

Meanwhile, back in the Pentagon, USAF is developing it's own weapons to meet the 'threat' that faces we Americans today.

Sad to say, but ROK's capability to use any of the neat gadgets being developed and tested here at Eglin is not a consideration. So sorry, but we are looking out for number one. Let the other suckers develop their own weapons, in short.

The cool stuff we have now is easy for ROK AF or anyone else if we provide them the p-codes for GPS. Hitting a cave is neat, but I personally don't think that will win the war. 'nuff on that.

Hate to get political in the sense of weapon systems we (USA) provide to other folks, but I shall.
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We must be careful about we provide to other countries unless they have proven time and again that they are trustworthy. I seem to recall that Israel 'jumped on' the chance to scarf up the F-16's we had signed a contract for with Iran. Hmmmmmmmm. I was an instructor pilot for both the Israeli cadre and the Pakistan cadre. Loved them both. Unfortunately, USA had a falling -out with the Pakis, hence no more Vipers for a long time.

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Gums' political observations are now put aside. Forgive me, but I was there, and I saw it, and I have many tee-shirts
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When dealing with weapons, one must realize that there are operational/tactical requirements that themselves are directed toward achieving strategic goals and operational needs. Many cool weapons never made it past the paper proposals. Some got to actual testing here at Eglin. But most could not satisfy the long-term requirements of the USA to defend itself here or fight a threat a long, long place away..

Enuf of my philosophy.

out

Yeah not to bag on the South Koreans but if I were them, I'd spend less time developing fancy cell phones and HDTVs and focus on detering the North with cool weaponery rather then depending on the United States to bail them out.

Forum: F-16 Armament & Stores

North Korea's Caves, Bunkers and JDAM...