Another Weapon for F-35? - HVPW

[eloise]

AFRL Moves Ahead on Bunker-Buster for F-35 by Graham Warwick, Jul 06, 2012b8

"The US Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded two more contracts under the High Velocity Penetrating Weapon (HVPW) program to develop technology for a rocket-boosted bunker-buster that can fit inside an F-35.

Lockheed Martin has been awarded $1.7 million and MBDA $1.3 million, but what they will do for the money has not been revealed. In January, Raytheon received an $11 million contract to develop GPS-degraded guidance technology for the HVPW, including anti-jam GPS, angle-of-attack sensing and RF seeker....

...As conceived, the HVPW is a solid-rocket-boosted 2,000lb-class weapon with the penetration of a 5,000lb gravity bomb, design for internal carriage in an F-35 and also able to increase the load-out on other bombers and fighters...."

MORE at the JUMP - BLAST! http://www.aviationweek.com/Portals/AWe ... al_p01.JPG
&
http://www.aviationweek.com/Portals/AWe ... %20FCC.jpg

Why does the development process take so long when it is practically a modern Disney bomb?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_bo ... y_bomb.png

While there are not enough F-35s, IMO, at this point to take out Iranian nuclear facilities, Natanz (33°43'24.4"N 51°43'37.5"E) is apparently only buried 8m deep. That depth should not pose problems for 2000lb class penetrators

i think it depends on whether the facility is heavily reinforced with concrete or not, currently
GBU-39 can penetrate 1 meter (3 ft 3 inches ) of 5000 psi steel reinforced concrete
BLU-109 can penetrate 1.8 meters (5.9 ft) of 5000 psi steel reinforced concrete
BLU-116 can penetrate 2.4-3.6 meters (8-12 ft) of 5000 psi steel reinforced concrete
Even GBU-28 can only penetrate 6.7 meters (22 ft) of 5000 psi steel reinforced concrete

Quick comparison with WW II bombs:

A quick comparison with 16 inches battleship AP round.

[hythelday]

i think it depends on whether the facility is heavily reinforced with concrete or not,
....
BLU-109 can penetrate 1.8 meters (5.9 ft) of 5000 psi steel reinforced concrete
Even GBU-28 can only penetrate 6.7 meters (22 ft) of 5000 psi steel reinforced concrete

Either this is a very conservative estimate, or they used 90% of sand in the cement mixture for this test:

BLU-113 is apparently 3,9m long, in the video it penetrates at least two times of own length.

Here BLU-109 goes through ~3x own length (about 2,5 meters) worth of concrete, then penetrates completely another ~1m slab and keeps going in an almost straight line up, meaning it still retained a great deal of energy.


Seems like someone is underselling penetrating capabilities of those bombs.

[eloise]

Either this is a very conservative estimate, or they used 90% of sand in the cement mixture for this test:

BLU-113 is apparently 3,9m long, in the video it penetrates at least two times of own length.

Here BLU-109 goes through ~3x own length (about 2,5 meters) worth of concrete, then penetrates completely another ~1m slab and keeps going in an almost straight line up, meaning it still retained a great deal of energy.


Seems like someone is underselling penetrating capabilities of those bombs.

The penetration rating is against 5000 psi steel reinforced concrete, the concrete block in the video might not have reinforce steel, or they are only 3000 psi. If you look at the WW II bomb chart, they can penetrate around 21% further against 3000 PSI concrete.
SDB seem to penetrate further than its rating also

There are some others estimates too.