How does the fancy bunker buster bomb work?

by philg

People are debating how much damage was done to the underground nuclear weapons facilities built and run by the noble Iranians (an analysis by the unfortunately named “ISIS”). Supposedly, the energy of an underground explosion weakens via an r^3 formula (i.e., falls off as the cube of the distance from the explosion), thus making it critical to place the explosion next to the entirely peaceful underground bunker that is the aggressor’s target. (By contrast, an explosion in air falls off as r^2 and an underwater explosion, e.g., from a depth charge, falls off even more gradually.) Putting the bomb into the desired latitude/longitude position is straightforward, but what control does an attacker have over the depth of explosion?

Despite my skepticism that precision weapons can achieve a decisive victory (as long as the Iranians have a functioning oil and gas industry they will, in my opinion, have the resources they need to develop whatever weapons they want to develop), I asked Prof. Dr. ChatGPT, PhD in Bomb Design: “What technical mechanisms does the GBU-57A/B MOP bomb have to ensure that it detonates at the proper depth to destroy an underground bunker?”

Answer (including an image generated by ChatGPT, which you can tell because “measurement” isn’t spelled correctly):

The GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) uses a combination of inertial sensing, hardened fuzing, and time-delay logic to ensure detonation at the proper depth. While detailed specifications are classified, here are the known or inferred technical mechanisms it likely uses:

1. Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) / Accelerometers

  • The bomb contains an IMU that tracks the weapon’s deceleration as it penetrates the ground.
  • By analyzing deceleration patterns, the system can estimate penetration depth and determine when the warhead has reached the intended depth or structural resistance (e.g., reinforced concrete).

2. Hard Target Smart Fuzing (HTSF)

  • MOP likely employs multi-event, programmable fuzes, capable of:
    • Delaying detonation for a set duration after impact
    • Using deceleration signatures to detect when it strikes different material layers (e.g., soil, rock, concrete)
    • Triggering detonation based on penetration depth estimates or when further penetration slows/stops

3. Time-Delay Fuze Programming

  • Before release, operators can program a preset time-delay for detonation based on intelligence about bunker depth.
  • This is used in combination with sensor data to refine detonation timing.

4. Structural Stress Sensors

  • Embedded strain gauges or piezoelectric sensors can detect physical resistance changes as the bomb passes through materials.
  • These help distinguish when the warhead has entered the actual bunker structure versus overlying rock or soil.

5. Robust Casing and Kinetic Penetration

  • Although not a sensor, the MOP’s hardened steel casing and over 30,000-pound weight give it the ability to reach over 60 meters (200 feet) into concrete or earth before detonation—making precise depth control essential and achievable only with advanced fuzing.

Summary

The MOP uses sensor-based inertial tracking, programmable fuzes, delay logic, and material sensing to control detonation at the correct depth. It does not rely on GPS during penetration, as signal loss is inevitable underground. Instead, it fuses inertial and physical resistance data to achieve its goal: destroying deeply buried, hardened targets like WMD bunkers.

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The righteous at Nature highlight the inferior math achievement of a subset of humanity

by philg

Nature officially endorsed Kamala Harris for President and thus fully established their righteous bona fides. Here’s a recent tweet from the same folks:

They’re highlighting the inferior achievement/ability of a subset of humans. When did that become okay?

A no-paywall version of the article: https://archive.is/dY45U

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One-year anniversary of CNN proclaiming Joe Biden to be an intellectual giant

by philg

“Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate” (CNN, exactly a year ago):

… particularly over the last few months, MAGA Media has portrayed Biden as a senile, mentally incapacitated elderly man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast, let alone run the federal government. That might sound like an exaggeration to those who don’t tune in to Fox News or listen to talk radio, but it has been a real and constant theme in the right-wing media universe. … the stage also will afford Biden a unique opportunity to puncture the narrative he lacks the mental fitness to be commander-in-chief. That’s a worry for right-wing media figures, which risk seeing their bogus narrative about Biden being ripped up in real time.

A screen shot:

Related…

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How’s the peasant uprising in New York City going?

by philg

Polls should just be closing in New York City for the mayoral election (this is the Democrat primary, but no Republican could possibly win).

It seems that elites don’t like the idea of Zohran Mamdani leading his promised peasant uprising.

Here’s a typical elite:

We need more worker power and less inequality. What happens when there is a candidate who promises to empower workers and reduce inequality (maybe by driving some rich people to lower-tax parts of the U.S., but isn’t that good if you truly hate inequality?)? “[Mamdani and] the Democratic Socialist program would be profound and dangerous for NYC, for the Democratic Party, and for the USA.”

We are all New Yorkers, it seems, and we all need New York City to stay unequal with disempowered peasants. Maybe Prof. Summers is channeling Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves everywhere except in all of the states that Lincoln controlled. Elite Democrats want workers empowered and inequality reduced in every city and state that isn’t currently run by elite Democrats?

Loosely related (to “every American is a citizen of New York City”), Michael Moore’s assertion that “We are all Muslim”:

Readers: What’s your prediction about who wins?

It would be fantastic for Palm Beach County if Mamdani wins. On the grounds that a Mamdani victory would be too good to be true, my prediction is that Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 and 2021 Andrew Cuomo wins.

What happens with Andrew Cuomo, though, once he is surrounded by all of the model-grade females of Manhattan? He apparently had some challenges with the young females of Albany, as noted in “These are the women who were sexually harassed by Andrew Cuomo: AG report” (New York Post):

How many New Yorkers would actually move if subjected to a combination of sharia law and higher taxes? My prediction: very few. Hardly any of them moved when Covidcrats locked them down, closed their kids’ schools, forced them to wear masks, forced healthy young people to accept an injection of an experimental vaccine against a disease that mostly kills those aged 80 and over, etc. If New Yorkers cared about personal freedom and lower tax rates they would already have moved. Americans in general lack the gumption to move, according to the NYT (some of this may simply be because a record high percentage of us are on means-tested public assistance programs; it is tough to get established on what was formerly called “welfare” in a new state):

That said, if only a handful of billionaires set up shop in Palm Beach it will result in lower property tax bills for us here in the peasant neighborhoods of Jupiter (we’re part of the same county, if not part of the same world). Just how much can the tax base grow when one rich douche moves to Florida? “The Secret to Building a $100 Million Megamansion” (Wall Street Journal):

It used to be that 20,000 square feet was big. We are currently in development on single-family houses that are over 50,000 square feet. That’s because they’re adding all these amenities. … We did a shark aquarium for a Grammy Award-winning artist. There was a glass elevator and it landed on a nurse shark pond. That was over $1 million to do. We’re currently doing a $20 million remodel for a house owned by rapper Rick Ross. We’re doing a 2,000-gallon Japanese koi fish pond—that’s also about $1 million. It will go through the entire foyer. … BURRAGE: I had a client who would say, “What’s the question? The answer is money.” … GLASER: Even in my house—it’s 17,000-square-feet—our chef does a group text to tell us that dinner will be ready in 20 minutes. … KARP: It’s like, “What if, God forbid, I can’t get to my plane fast enough and go someplace else? I have to have a safe room.” They are standard in every home, both for violence and natural events. They have to have everything—a place to eat, a place to drink, a place to poop. They also can’t be disconnected from communication; you need to continue to work. These houses have backup generators that are connected to solar panels and glass designed to sustain Category 5 winds. The idea is that after a direct hit by a hurricane you come out of the safe room and your house is still air-conditioned, the art is untouched on the walls and everything is protected. … Kobi Karp’s firm recently designed a home for a New York developer in Miami. ‘The home is designed like a luxury resort where the family never crosses paths with the staff. These clients want an environment where people bring them their shoes and their newspaper and take care of their dry cleaning but they never have to see them,’ Karp said

The article shows $150 million in new tax base that is a 30-minute drive from our house:

(Florida has something similar to California’s Proposition 13, but only for a primary residence (“homestead”). A homestead can’t be reassessed at market value unless it is sold or is transformed via renovation. It’s not as crazy as California in that commercial property isn’t included, but a regular result is that a new arrival may pay 2-3X what his/her/zir/their long-term-resident neighbor pays for an identical house.)

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How to upcycle Tesla Cybertrucks

by philg

Californians found a way to upcycle the Cybertrucks whose creator they now hate:

Here’s how Tesla drivers in Los Angeles defend against vandalism:

I’m not sure why this excuses the inexcusable. “I voted for Hitler before I knew that he would attack Russia” would also work? Why doesn’t the Tesla owner have to sell the car to a Deplorable in Texas, for example, and buy a Chevy Tahoe (as Sen. Mark Kelly did) or a Toyota Prius or whatever?

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Memorial Day on Olvera Street in Los Angeles

by philg

Flash back to Memorial Day in the historic Olvera Street part of Los Angeles. This was prior to the outbreak of peace that resulted in the deployment of the U.S. military into the streets of the city.

The encampment and trash seen approaching the pedestrian street:

Some tips on hiding rom ICE, resisting Trump, and promoting immigration:

Information about the native-born residents of California who were all killed by immigrants:

One of the unhoused in a city and state where nearly everyone agrees that housing is a human right:

The street itself:

Any day is a good day to be an outdoor masker in California:

Nearby Union Station, ready for California’s High Speed Rail project, which the rich inequality-hating Californians say that they can complete only if working class taxpayers in less-wealthy states give them another $100+ billion in federal money. (Inequality haters in CA, MA, NJ, NY, and other rich states never say that they want federal money instead spent in poorer-than-average states such as Michigan.)

Walking back toward downtown:

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Why isn’t my basketball joke funny?

by philg

I posted the following on Facebook last night during Game 7 of the NBA Finals:

Watching a WNBA game right now. It’s awesome how these tall ladies hit almost every three-pointer. Huge crowd too. I don’t know why they say WNBA has trouble filling arenas.

I was hoping to conjure the image of a person who almost never watches basketball, flips on the TV, and finds the world’s best players (Indiana v. Oklahoma City) and then, due to all of the hype about the WNBA exhibiting the world’s most skilled players, imagining that it is a WNBA game. About six friends liked it and probably at least half of them are so disconnected from the world of pro sports that they imagined it to be in earnest.

Separately, who has something more interesting to say about the NBA final? Our kids were cruelly denied access to the final quarter due to it extending past their bedtime. I don’t think we missed anything, though, because the spread between the teams at the end of third quarter (the only one that we watched) seemed to be maintained.

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Grandma (or great-grandma) has trouble finding a hot date (NYT)

by philg

Buried in the middle of “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.” (New York Times, June 20; no-paywall version):

I’m 54. I’ve been dating since the mid-80s, been married, been a mother, gotten divorced, had many relationships long and short. I remember when part of heterosexual male culture involved showing up with a woman to signal something — status, success, desirability. Women were once signifiers of value, even to other men. It wasn’t always healthy, but it meant that men had to show up and put in some effort.

As best I can tell, she sued Husband #1 and now has an entire op-ed in the NYT about being surprised at low demand to become Husband/Defendant #2. (The above quote can likely be summarized as “I was a divorce plaintiff and child support profiteer“).

The author is older than the world’s typical grandma. If she had followed Palestinian reproductive practices she’d be a great-grandmother at age 54. So the NYT may actually be running dating advice for great-grandmothers. The editors wisely disabled comments so that 50-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio can’t comment about preference for 19-year-olds.

Speaking of the climate change alarmist, here is DiCaprio recently in Los Angeles (Daily Mail, of course) while his 27-year-old girlfriend (recession indicator?) is out of town:

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How soon before the United Nations begins to rebuild Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure?

by philg

The head of the UN decries the (attempted?) destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities:

Presumably the remedy for what Trump did is for the United Nations to undo. Alternatively, maybe the UN could get the Iranians onto the Palestinian plan in which all of their day-to-day expenses (shelter, food, health care, education) are paid for by EU and US taxpayers, thus freeing Iran to spend up to 100 percent of its GDP on military activities.

Speaking of Iranians, what’s our estimate for the percentage of Iranians who are working against their government? I don’t see how it is possible for Israel and the U.S. to hit the right targets unless there are a lot of traitors inside Iran (presumably they would call themselves “patriots”, of course, but they would be traitors from the perspective of the current recognized and legitimate government of Iran).

Loosely related, here’s a fun assemblage of quotes:

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Hate-filled Los Angeles at the Music Center

by philg

The Los Angeles Music Center has two huge outdoor video signs in its courtyard (get there before the 8 pm curfew imposed by the mayor who says that the city is completely peaceful and certainly doesn’t need a curfew). At five-minute intervals they show signs about “Los Angeles vs. Hate”. This contrasts to the 30-minute interval for a land acknowledgement (below). Can we conclude from this that LA is filled with hate? Here are the hate messages:

There’s so much hate in LA that they need a hate web site and at the same time they tell us that combining humans from wildly disparate cultures is the best way to ensure a tight “community” with a lack of hatred. Asylum-seekers from Syria, Haiti, and Venezuela don’t have a language or religion in common, but apparently they are all “one” (contrary to peer-reviewed research; see below):

Don’t try to get into the art show unless you identify as “Latina”:

The Music Center acknowledges that it sits on stolen land, but it won’t either

  1. give the land back and pay rent to the rightful owners, or
  2. provide free tickets to the Native Americans from whom they stole the land

Here’s the text from their web site:

As a steward of The Music Center of Los Angeles County, we recognize that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh and Chumash Peoples. We honor and pay respect to their elders and descendants — past, present and emerging — as they continue their stewardship of these lands and waters. We acknowledge that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide and multigenerational trauma. This acknowledgment demonstrates our responsibility and commitment to truth, healing and reconciliation and to elevating the stories, culture and community of the original inhabitants of Los Angeles County. We are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these ancestral lands. We are dedicated to growing and sustaining relationships with Native peoples and local tribal governments, including (in no particular order) the:

Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians,
Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Council,
Gabrieleno/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians,
Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians-Kizh Nation,
San Manuel Band of Mission Indians,
San Fernando Band of Mission Indians.

This acknowledgement, however, is empty without our efforts to counter the effects of structures that have long enabled injustice against Native Americans. The Music Center is committed to working with First Peoples to build and sustain partnerships and grow collaborations that engage and respect the knowledge, expertise and agency of First Peoples, past, present and future. The Music Center strives to be a champion of the arts in Los Angeles for all people. We are listening, learning, unlearning, and will evolve in the work ahead.

They admit that their acknowledgement is potentially “empty” and yet won’t give free tickets to any of the tribes they cite. What could be emptier?

In case the curfew is memory-holed, here’s a screen shot from the web page:

Since no human is illegal, the government can’t ask a migrant for documents in exchange for four generations of public housing, health care, SNAP/EBT food, and smartphone. On the other hand, the LA police can demand to see the ticket of anyone who is out after 8 pm because of attending a concert:

A person attending a ticketed event in an indoor establishment that ends after 8 PM should leave the curfew zone at the conclusion of the event. They should carry their ticket, if possible.

“The downside of diversity” (New York Times, August 5, 2007), reporting on peer-reviewed research:

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

How is this still on the Web? Where is the Ministry of Truth when we need it?

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