Warplanes: March 23, 2000

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A-ONE-UH AND A-TWO-UH: The Pentagon is considering an idea to penetrate deep buried targets that would previously have been dismissed as ridiculous: putting two bombs into the same hole. Nations around the world with things to hide are now tunneling into the sides of mountains to produce deep bunkers that are hard to destroy. The US has been seeking a way to deal with these targets, but there is a practical limit to the size of precision-guided bombs carried by combat aircraft. The solution, now under development, is to utilize the current and next generation of precision-guided weapons to do what was previously impossible, and drop two bombs within a few feet (single digits) of the same aiming point. One bomb would blast a crater while the second would penetrate the thinner remaining rock and earth to destroy the internal structure. The two weapons would be optimized for their specific role in the grand order of things.--Stephen V Cole