PLA Air Force news, pics and videos
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
I posted the original Chinese link.
An interesting image of hardened aircraft shelters, which are not often photographed.
Any idea, where this is?
by78
General
Unfortunately no. But the video might become available in the coming days. Judging from the vegetation (temperate climate zone) and the color of the sky, it's probably in north or north-central China.
Steel blocks on top of cement? Two layers of doors thicker than battleship armor? The steel doors are at least 20 inches thick.An interesting image of hardened aircraft shelters, which are not often photographed.
The whole hardened shelter thing doesn't make much sense if it can't defeat at least one of three weapon types:
SDB (which is usually credited with penetrating 1 meter of reinforced concrete under 1 meter of soil/earth)
Tomahawk CM
JASSM CM
Did not find any penetration data for those missiles but there was a Raytheon text from 2008 - they tested a tandem warhead (Tomahawk block V will use a tandem warhead) with a precursor portion of warhead being 24 inches in diameter. And the precursor burned through 19.5 feet of reinforced concrete with compression strength of 12600 lb/in2, which is a lot.
Probably similar tech is used in tomahawk warhead, though that warhead is smaller, at 18 inches in diameter. block V remanufacture will commence shortly but it may be a few years until entire tomahawk arsenal is remanufactured.
JASSM warheads, however, are of similar dimension and they already possess a similar tech pentrating warhead.
So JASSM today may already be able to penetrate 3-5 meters of reinforced concrete, and tomahawks may be expected to perform similarly within several years from today.
SDB (which is usually credited with penetrating 1 meter of reinforced concrete under 1 meter of soil/earth)
Tomahawk CM
JASSM CM
Did not find any penetration data for those missiles but there was a Raytheon text from 2008 - they tested a tandem warhead (Tomahawk block V will use a tandem warhead) with a precursor portion of warhead being 24 inches in diameter. And the precursor burned through 19.5 feet of reinforced concrete with compression strength of 12600 lb/in2, which is a lot.
Probably similar tech is used in tomahawk warhead, though that warhead is smaller, at 18 inches in diameter. block V remanufacture will commence shortly but it may be a few years until entire tomahawk arsenal is remanufactured.
JASSM warheads, however, are of similar dimension and they already possess a similar tech pentrating warhead.
So JASSM today may already be able to penetrate 3-5 meters of reinforced concrete, and tomahawks may be expected to perform similarly within several years from today.
Afaik, bullpup-b (tomahawk) and wdu 42/b (jassm) belong to cat2 penetration depth of atleast 12ft of re concrete.
A better/cheaper solution for hangars will be Jsow based Broach warhead, that is, ofcourse if an aircraft can get into range to launch them. Tomahawks/jassm are a bit of an overkill and used only when maintaining distance is a top priority.