If you are talking about conventional bombs that are comparable to a small nuke in a ground burst or air burst scenario, yes.
But not for ground penetration, no.
A conventional explosive displaces, creates a pressure wave that fractures and shatters things, but that pressure wave behaves differently when applied to different materials.
A nuke creates a ball of plasma that is so hot that it evaporates everything inside the primary blast radius, and then also a pressure wave when that miniature sun displaces things and wants to expand outward in every direction.
A 20 kt nuke will make an all incinerating fireball approximately 200m in diameter… so that means everything in a 100m radius from the point of impact, is now plasma… and then on top of that you get the massive pressure wave extending damage further beyond that.
Nukes are considerably more effective as deep pemetrator weapons than conventional explosives are.
The GBU 57 MOP, going off publically available info, can destroy earth (meaning soil) 60m under its point of impact… but only about 18m under reinforced concrete.
A mountain, with a reinforced bunker complex under it, is going to be a lot closer to reinforced concrete than it is to soil in some dry lakebed testing range.
And Fordow is roughly 80m, possibly more, underground.
So… the tactical nuke can basically guaranteed do that mission in one accurate hit, whereas with GBU 57s, you’d need a number of them, and you would have to basically drill a bore hole by dropping successive bombs into the same hole.
And uh, last note, the MOAB is just shy of 22,000 lbs, has a blast rating of about 11 tons of TNT. Its not a ground penetrator though, it is thermobaric, a fuel air bomb.
The GBU 57 MOP is a 30,000 lb bomb, and… rough math works out to about… maybe 1 kiloton, max, probably less?
I guess we’ll have to wait for Warthunder to add the B2 and GBU 57 and then eventually someone will leak the real specs.
If you are talking about conventional bombs that are comparable to a small nuke in a ground burst or air burst scenario, yes.
But not for ground penetration, no.
A conventional explosive displaces, creates a pressure wave that fractures and shatters things, but that pressure wave behaves differently when applied to different materials.
A nuke creates a ball of plasma that is so hot that it evaporates everything inside the primary blast radius, and then also a pressure wave when that miniature sun displaces things and wants to expand outward in every direction.
A 20 kt nuke will make an all incinerating fireball approximately 200m in diameter… so that means everything in a 100m radius from the point of impact, is now plasma… and then on top of that you get the massive pressure wave extending damage further beyond that.
Nukes are considerably more effective as deep pemetrator weapons than conventional explosives are.
The GBU 57 MOP, going off publically available info, can destroy earth (meaning soil) 60m under its point of impact… but only about 18m under reinforced concrete.
A mountain, with a reinforced bunker complex under it, is going to be a lot closer to reinforced concrete than it is to soil in some dry lakebed testing range.
And Fordow is roughly 80m, possibly more, underground.
So… the tactical nuke can basically guaranteed do that mission in one accurate hit, whereas with GBU 57s, you’d need a number of them, and you would have to basically drill a bore hole by dropping successive bombs into the same hole.
And uh, last note, the MOAB is just shy of 22,000 lbs, has a blast rating of about 11 tons of TNT. Its not a ground penetrator though, it is thermobaric, a fuel air bomb.
The GBU 57 MOP is a 30,000 lb bomb, and… rough math works out to about… maybe 1 kiloton, max, probably less?
I guess we’ll have to wait for Warthunder to add the B2 and GBU 57 and then eventually someone will leak the real specs.