I just realised that this bomb is not the same as the so called Mother of all bombs, which by the way has so far only been used once also by trump. That's the gbu 43. Why did they find it necessary to build an even bigger bomb? I wonder if they anticipated strikes on the me.
As to your other point iran seems to have a decent level of education. Building an entire home grown nuclear program under sanctions is impressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflet
> A camouflet, in military science, is an artificial cavern created by an explosion; if the resulting structure is open to the surface it is called a crater.[1]
US is developing a new generation of purpose-built deep penetration bombs that are a fraction of the size of the GBU-57.
I am sure the materials science aspects have come along since ww2, as has delivery technology, but I'd say how it goes fast, hits accurately and explodes is secondary to making a case survive impact and penetrate.
I would posit shaped charges could be amazing in this, if you could make big ones to send very high energy plasma out. I'm less sure depleted uranium would bring much to the table.
(Not in weapons engineering, happy to be corrected)
I was guessing either tungsten or depleted uranium, as for APDS, but the bomb's average density is only about 5 g/cc (14 tonnes in 3.1 m³). Length of 6.2 m times 5 tonnes per cubic meter gives a sectional density of 31 tonnes per square meter, which is about 15 meters of dirt. So Newton's impact depth approximation would predict a penetration depth one fourth of the reported 60-meter depth.
I don't know how to resolve the discrepancy. The plane wouldn't fly if the bomb weighed four times as much. Maybe most of the bomb's mass is in a small, dense shaft in the middle of the bomb, which detaches on impact?
This seems to assume that the weapon would penetrate until it displaced an equal amount of dirt by mass, which seems like nonsense. Why would that be the case?
It's not entirely home grown if they were part of the NPT is it? Signing the NPT (a pinky promise not to develop weapons) means other countries then help you develop nuclear energy, which of course has a lot of overlap to weapons tech...
- MOP: High penetration; most of its payload is not explosive. (Something heavy). Designed so its body, fuse, explosives etc remain intact after penetrating deep.
- MOAB: Fuel air explosive for massive blast effect.