Russians and their new bomb

[Tonington]

Russia unveils its ‘vacuum bomb'


Reuters
September 11, 2007 at 5:21 PM EDT

MOSCOW — Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, an explosive device unleashing a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear weapon, the military said on Tuesday.

The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons and policy moves unveiled as President Vladimir Putin tries to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage. "Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," Alexander Rukshin, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff, told Russia's ORT First Channel television.

"You will now see it in action, the bomb which has no match in the world is being tested at a military site," the state-controlled channel said. It showed a Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber dropping the bomb over a testing ground. A large explosion followed.

Pictures followed of what looked like a flattened multi-storeyed block of flats, surrounded by scorched soil and boulders.

"The defence ministry stresses this military invention does not contradict a single international treaty. Russia is not unleashing a new arms race," the channel said.

Such devices generally detonate in two stages. First a small blast disperses a main load of explosive material into a cloud, which then either spontaneously ignites in air or is set off by a second charge.

This explosion generates a pressure wave that reaches much further than that from a conventional explosive. The consumption of gases in the blast also generates a partial vacuum that can compound damage and injuries caused by the explosion itself.

"The main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature," the report said. "All that is alive merely evaporates."

"At the same time, I want to stress that the action of this weapon does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one," Mr. Rukshin said.

 

[Unforgiven]

Eco friendly bombs. Very Suzuki!

 

[karrie]

Handy for clearing land and leaving it usable by the invaders. What nifty things we humans come up with.

 

[Tonington]

Indeed, green WMD's, lol

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

this is weird for a recall meeting up with some Russian guy a year or so back and getting involved in convo....He said that Putin was really trying to bring the military might with new weaponary up to modern standards....He warned that Russia would exceed our military might.....i fluffed it off as bravado from a guy who seemed really proud of Russia...

 

[hermanntrude]

scary stuff indeed. Imagine if a whole city just evaporated....

 

[#juan]

The Russian fuel-air bomb is likely the biggest non-nuclear bomb around. It has the equivalent of 44 tons of high explosive. The Americans have similar weapons but not quite that big.......yet.

http://tinyurl.com/2836kn

 

[lone wolf]

Another arms race might be good for the economy.... (just not so great for the nerves)

Wolf

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Sounds like Putin is trying to get another Cold War going.

OSLO, Norway - Norwegian and British fighters scrambled Thursday to intercept eight Russian bombers that neared the Nordic country's territory in the latest show of air power by the Kremlin, defense officials said.
The Tu-95 strategic bombers rounded Norway's northern tip over the Barents Sea and flew south over the North Atlantic before turning back, Norwegian defense officials said.
The Russian planes, known as "Bears" in NATO lingo, stayed inside international air space during the maneuvers, which officials described as an assertion of Russia's increasingly assertive posture on the world stage.
"This is a message that Russia is back as a superpower," Norwegian Deputy Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide said.
Norway did not see the increased activity as a threat "but a signal that Russia wants to be taken seriously by the West," he told The Associated Press.
British defense officials said four Royal Air Force fighters scrambled to monitor the flight, which did not enter British territory.
Lt. Col. John Inge Oeglaend, of the Norwegian Joint Headquarters, said two Norwegian F-16 fighters were sent up both times that the Russian aircraft approached the northern tip of Norway, in keeping with normal practice. He said it was the third time since mid-July that Norwegian fighters have scrambled to monitor Russian air maneuvers.
"They followed a normal route in international air space," Oeglaend said by telephone from the western Norway port of Stavanger.
Norway, a member of the NATO alliance, and Russia share land and ocean borders in the Arctic, including the vast Barents Sea.
Alliance spokesman James Appathurai said Norway and Britain launched quick-reaction interceptor and airborne-warning planes and tankers "as part of routine NATO procedure."
He added that the Russians had every right to carry out the maneuvers: "There is no controversy about this."
Russian news agencies quoted air force spokesman Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying the Tu-95 bombers had begun patrols of distant areas of the globe late Wednesday, in accordance with plans announced by President Vladimir Putin for a resumption of the flights.
The long-range bombers began the patrols "over the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans involving in-flight refueling," ITAR-Tass and Interfax quoted Drobyshevsky as saying.
According to ITAR-Tass, he said the bombers were "flying over neutral waters, not approaching close to the air borders of foreign countries."
"About 20 NATO jets were scrambled to escort our strategic bombers, including F-16s and Tornadoes, but there were no excesses from the foreign planes," Interfax quoted Drobyshevsky as saying.
Putin said in August that he had ordered strategic bombers to resume regular long-range patrols, which analysts say signaled a significant change for Russian military policy.
Analysts said the increased activity shows that the Russians have the aircraft, the trained pilots, the fuel and the funds to use them, all of which were lacking in the years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Fredrik Westerlund, an analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said Russia was reviving maneuvers along Soviet-era routes down the North Sea and toward Guam in the Pacific.
"These are Cold War routes," he said. "These are the routes they had before for nuclear weapons strikes. ... The closest route to the U.S. is over the North Pole. And the route over the North Sea makes it possible to reach Great Britain.
Jakub M. Godzimirski, an expert on NATO and Russia at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo, said the increased activity is directed at the West in general.
"It shows they have the ability to do it, that they have the economic means and the political will to take steps that could increase tensions," he said by telephone.
In mid-August, Norwegian fighters scrambled to monitor a flight of 11 Russian bombers off western Norway in the biggest show of Russian air power over the Norwegian Sea since the early 1990s.
In recent months, there have been repeated incidents, including two of the RAF's new Typhoon Eurofighter jets last month shadowing a Tu-95 over the North Atlantic, and in July two Russian aircraft were warned off by RAF jets as they headed toward British airspace. In May, two Tornado F3s were scrambled to intercept a Tu-95 observing the Royal Navy exercise Neptune Warrior.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070906/ap_on_re_eu/norway_russia_bombers