After the <a href="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm" target="_blank">BLU-82</a> bomb, the americans designed a new 10 tones bomb, with an effect similar to a small nuke (well, it's only 0.01 megatons).
The goal is to scare the irakians, as it’s supposed to have a strong psychological impact. Any comments ?

<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/883752.asp?0cv=CB10#BODY" target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.com/news/883752.asp?0cv=CB10#BODY</a> thats the only thing i can find on it. Looks more like a rocket to me, teh BLU-82 was much stumpier than this. It believe it was used as much in Afganistan as a psychological warefare weapon as it was used against troops/ material targets.

The value of a munition like that is target penetration, bunkers, sub pens, large naval vessels etc. Much like the Tallboy and Grandslam of WW2.

The tallboy would break the sound barrier in its decent towards it's target. It's mass, spead and profile meant it would typically penetrate 100ft into the ground, even before the fuze went off.

This bomb filler is similar to the other general purpose bombs which is filled with Tritonal explosives.In this case the filler is 18,000 lbs of this explosive.
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/11/sprj.irq.moab/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/11/sprj.irq.moab/index.html</a>

When I heard about this bomb on the news. It was claimed that the USA had built and tested the largest conventional bomb.

To my knowledge this is not true. In WW2 Britain used 10 tonne "grand slam" bombs against Axis.

And that grand slam was filled with RDX as the rest of the tall boys and huge bombs Mr WAllis(?) have invented.
Unfortunately during those times cyclonite was still a novelty and was still under study as the quantities were limited and made by the old fashioned destructive nitration of hexamine.

<a href="http://www.bismarck-class.dk/tirpitz/miscellaneous/tallboy/tallboy.html" target="_blank">Torpex it would seem</a>

Is that the same as RDX?

No, Torpex is a mixture of RDX, TNT and Al powder in the ratio 41 : 41 : 18 with about 1% of wax.

<small>[ March 12, 2003, 10:54 PM: Message edited by: Rhadon ]</small>

During those times several explosive combination were tested in those gigantic bombs starting with those unique bombs planned of being used againts german dams.
Wallis was even using gelignite in his pilot scale trials with a small abandoned dam in England.
The report about the new explosive RDX fascinated Wallis and was the choice then for the new set of weapons that gradually increased in sizes.There were many formulations containing cyclonite being tested.
Now as the explosives manufacturer were complaining that they were not able to met the demands for RDX also assisted in the acceptance of formulation of a practical formulation torpex that was also used in mines and torpedoes in that time.
How torpex came to be the explosive of choice was the result of long discussion of ordnance developer of that time.
Now tritonal was a the economical explosive of choice at that time but as it has less penetrative ability then it was formulated to contain RDX to improve its power.In some other claims that it was composition B with added aluminum.The bottom line is the explosive filler should contain RDX.

Even wallis was praying hard that his bombs work as expected and was pleased with the result.

Offering 100 euro to see one go off!!!!!:D :D :D without being in Iraq

http://science.howstuffworks.com/moab1.htm