(Fwd) Armi sperimentali usate nella caccia a Bin Laden

["francesco iannuzzelli" <francesco@href.org>]

Washington, 18:13

Armi sperimentali usate nella caccia a Bin Laden 

Gli Usa stanno usando nella caccia ad Osama Bin Laden una serie 
di nuovi micidiali armamenti ideati a suo tempo per distruggere i 
bunker sotterranei in Iraq nella Corea del nord, rivela oggi il 
quotidiano New York Times. Il Pentagono ha deciso di usare le 
nuove armi, anche se sono ancora nella fase sperimentale, 
direttamente in Afghanistan nella speranza che contribuiscano al 
successo alla caccia scatenata contro il leader di Al Qaeda. 

Esperti militari Usa sostengono, visti i progressi della caccia, che a 
Bin Laden "restano al massimo due settimane di libertā" prima di 
cadere nella rete delle forze speciali americane. Tra le armi 
sperimentali figura un cannone a fuoco rapido, messo a punto dalla 
Defense Special Weapons Agency appositamente per le forze 
speciali, in grado di spazzare via gli strati rocciosi con una serie di 
esplosioni secondarie che rimuovono rapidamente le macerie 
create da quelle primarie. 

Una seconda arma disponibile č la bomba Agm-86d, una versione 
migliorata di una bomba ad alta penetrazione giā impiegata dalla 
Air Force nei missili Cruise lanciati dagli aerei. Un test č stato 
effettuato con successo la scorsa settimana nel New Mexico, nel 
poligono militare di White Sands, dove un bombardiere B-52 ha 
lanciato un missile dotato di questo tipo di ordigno, distruggendo 
"un bunker sotterraneo rinforzato". L'Air Force dispone di una 
cinquantina di questi missili che possono essere utilizzati subito 
contro Osama Bin Laden. 

Altre armi specializzate nella distruzione di bersagli sotterranei, 
come bunker e grotte, sono sperimentate in questi giorni in una 
serie di tunnel costruiti a suo tempo nel Poligono Nucleare del 
Nevada per studiare i test nucleari sotterranei. Questa serie di armi 
era stata ideata a partire dagli anni '90 al fine di essere impiegata 
contro paesi come l'Iraq, la Corea del nord, la Libia e l'Iran che 
hanno spostato in complessi sotterranei alcune delle loro attivitā 
per evitare la sorveglianza dei satelliti spia statunitensi.     

http://www.repubblica.it/news/ired/ultimora/rep_nazionale_151110.htm  


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Di seguito l'articolo del New York Times sul quale si basa la notizia 
puibblicata da Repubblica
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December 3, 2001

ADVANCED ARMAMENTS 
 
U.S. Making Weapons to Blast Underground Hide-Outs

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

he Pentagon is hurriedly developing powerful new earth-penetrating 
weapons even as American forces are striking dozens of 
suspected underground hide-outs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban with 
specialized tunnel-blasting bombs and missiles.

Despite the current focus in Afghanistan, the main target has been 
not Islamist terrorists, but instead the nuclear, biological and 
chemical weapons programs in countries like Iraq and North Korea.

The new weapons go far beyond the now familiar "bunker buster," 
the GBU-28 laser-guided bomb that along with similar guided 
missiles has been used extensively against Afghan caves and 
tunnels.

Some of the new bombs, missile warheads and other armaments 
have already been built and tested, including a system called Deep 
Digger, developed by the Defense Special Weapons Agency for 
Special Operations forces.

This rapid-fire cannon, most details of which are classified, is said 
to eat into rock or reinforced concrete with a series of blasts, using 
secondary explosions to remove the resulting rubble quickly.

A version that could be sent into battle is being refined by 
Advanced Power Technologies Inc., a company in Washington with 
a branch specializing in new drilling and excavation methods.
 
Another weapon that is ready for combat is the AGM-86D, a 
refurbished deep-penetrating version of the Air Force's formerly 
nuclear- tipped aircraft-launched cruise missile. Last Thursday, the 
contractor, Boeing, said a missile launched from a B-52 bomber 
over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico had 
successfully struck "a hardened, buried target complex" and 
detonated inside.

The Air Force has received part of an order of 50 of the missiles, on 
which nuclear warheads had been replaced with a slender, heavy 
conventional warhead that can drive deep into the earth.

Other weapons designed for destroying deep targets are to be test 
fired at tunnel systems being built at the old Nevada Test Site, 
once used for studying nuclear weapon blasts underground.

A classified status report on buried threats and the need for new 
weapons was delivered by the Pentagon to the Senate Armed 
Services Committee about a week ago, Congressional staff 
members said.

Pentagon and elected officials declined to comment on the 
contents, but experts said the danger hiding underground abroad 
was growing.

"Long before we learned about bin Laden's caves, there were North 
Korea's caves," said Clark A. Murdock, who until last year was 
deputy director of long-range planning for the Air Force and now is 
a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 
a private research group in Washington.

"The crown jewels increasingly are buried," he said, "and that's 
why people are thinking about these things."

A major goal, according to Pentagon documents, is to assemble 
by 2004 a small arsenal of weapons that can - with potent 
precision blasts - destroy subterranean complexes in North Korea 
that may harbor nuclear weapons or the missiles that carry them.

Another target is Iraq's many suspected underground installations, 
in which President Saddam Hussein may be hiding deadly caches 
of microbes, nuclear materials and chemicals.

Some government scientists and Bush administration officials want 
to add a small deep-diving nuclear weapon to the collection, one 
that could destroy a dictator's bunkers without releasing significant 
radiation.

But many political and arms experts say it is extremely unlikely 
that such a weapon would be approved by Congress or desired by 
military officers, who would rather have conventional weapons that 
require no presidential approval to use.

The next-most-potent weapon, a conventional warhead on a space- 
skimming ballistic missile, is also being studied by the Air Force.

The push to improve ground-penetrating weapons began after the 
Persian Gulf war of 1991 revealed Iraq's subterranean activities. It 
accelerated later in the 1990's as Libya, Iran, North Korea, terrorist 
camps in Afghanistan and other adversaries shifted activities 
underground to avoid attack and detection by satellites and aircraft.

In 1998 the Senate Armed Services Committee authorized extra 
spending on a new generation of weapons to fill what it said was "a 
critical gap in the capabilities of our armed forces."

The new weapons work builds on research that began in a flurry of 
improvisation after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Indeed, 
many of the weapons being used now on tunnels and caves in 
Afghanistan had their genesis at that time, most notably the laser-
guided GBU-28 bomb, created to plunge as much as 100 feet into 
the earth to destroy command bunkers.

The gulf war ended so quickly that only two were used, one of 
which clearly accomplished its task, according to later Defense 
Department reports: smoke was seen billowing from ventilation 
shafts of a command bunker shortly after it struck.

Now a variety of more potent weapons are being developed. Eglin 
Air Force Base in Florida has a Precision Strike System Program 
Office, which has tested a hard-nosed bomb designed to penetrate 
and incinerate buried caches of chemical or biological weapons 
without releasing contamination into the air.

Another proposed warhead, carried on a missile or bomb, would 
attack tunnels by piercing a reinforced door, then skipping several 
times down a passageway - keeping track of the bounces and 
detonating only when it was deep inside.

To save money and speed development, the Pentagon is focusing 
on upgrading existing bomb and missile designs with heavier, 
slimmer casings and computer-controlled fuses that allow them to 
punch deeper into the ground and precisely control the point at 
which they explode.

The most established example is the Advanced Unitary Penetrator. 
It is the heart of a new version of the laser-guided GBU-24 bomb 
and has more than twice the penetrating power of the previous hard-
target warhead for that bomb.

It has a long, slim case made of a heavy, hard alloy of nickel, 
cobalt and steel, sheathed in a conventional aluminum fuselage 
that strips away as it collides with a target.

The combination of heavy weight and a small diameter 
concentrates enormous force that drives it through the earth the 
way a nail punches through wood when struck by a heavy hammer. 
The warhead had its first battlefield use in Kosovo in 1999.

A particularly potent weapon, being developed under a program 
managed by the United States forces in Korea, would attack North 
Korea's growing tunnel and silo complexes using high heat and 
deadly pressure. One proposed version would ride on a supersonic 
cruise missile.

The effectiveness of this "thermobaric" weapon lies in a new mix of 
highly explosive materials that when released and detonated in a 
tunnel create a long-lasting wave of high pressure that kills anyone 
or destroys equipment throughout a maze of passageways.

Fuel-air explosives of this sort have been widely used above the 
surface by the United States in the gulf war and by Russia in 
Chechnya. According to military documents, the above-ground 
blasts produce up to twice the pressure of conventional high 
explosive charges and searing temperatures above 5,000 degrees - 
far hotter than the fires that toppled the World Trade Center towers.

But getting underground is only the beginning. To guarantee an 
effective attack, the explosion - or multiple explosions in the case 
of several new weapons - must be precisely timed to occur at just 
the right moment or depth.

That is the job of the "hard target smart fuse," the newest computer-
 controlled fuse, which can, in the split-second as it strikes a 
target, discriminate between rock, concrete and soil and can also 
count, ticking off each ceiling or wall it strikes and only triggering 
the blast at the desired underground level.

The smart fuse controls several existing hard-target warheads, and 
Pentagon officials said they planned to use it to control a wide 
range of future weapons.

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francesco iannuzzelli   francesco@href.org
associazione peacelink - sez. disarmo
http://www.peacelink.it/tematiche/disarmo
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