Pentagon Developing Range of Penetrator Weapons

Concerned by the trend to dig sensative facilites deep into the earth for protection, the Pentagon has been working on a range of conventional bunker busting weapons.

Through years of work, AAC and Ellwood National Forge in Irvine, Pa., have developed a very strong steel that is being used on the BLU-122, the Air Force's newest penetrator, weighing in at 5,000 lb. The team has applied for a patent for the chemical composition and manufacturing process that has produced "Eglin Steel," a strong blend estimated at one-eighth the cost of experimental metals with similar strength.
Bigger and better

The new steel case will be used int he 5000 lb BLU-122. The challange according to the article is to not only design a case that can get through all that rock, concrete and earth, but to build internal components that can withstand 10000 g's of lateral acceleration and still be functional when it gets to the bunker level.

The MOP or Massive Ordnance Penetrator seen below comes in at 30000 pounds with penatrating capacity and some experts believe that it can penatrate up to 200 feet through earth and concrete




Another option is a kinetic energy round dropped by a high speed aircraft. travaling at 4200 feet per second, it would simply use brute force to burrow its way in and could penatrate 3-400 feet. However it would not have explosives on board.