-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- For the confused... ~F. http://ebird.dtic.mil/Oct2001/s20011015created.htm Bunker Bombs Created In N.Y. Watervliet Arsenal designed, manufactured the weapons that ended the Gulf War. By Erik Kriss, Watervliet The "bunker buster" bomb--the weapon that could doom terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden-- sits quietly on display here in a huge machining building in the United State's oldest continuously active arsenal, just eight miles north of the state Capitol. The 5,000-pound, 20 foot-long cylinder of two-inch-thick olive-green gun metal steel can penetrate bunkers more than 100 feet below the ground--the kind of bunkers from which bin Laden, his al-Qaida network and ruling Taliban leaders are believed to operate in Afghanistan. It was at the Watervliet Arsenal, owned and operated by the U.S. government, that the bomb was conceived and its body casing designed and manufactured in 23 days. That was a decade ago, when the enemy was Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who had built a network of deep bunkers to escape American fire during the Gulf War. The bunker bomb on display here is the only one left in Watervliet. The Air Force shifted production elsewhere, officials said. The laser-guided, needle-shaped bomb, with an improved guidance system, is now made by Raytheon, according to The Associated Press. The U.S. Air Force has begun using the bomb, technically known as a GBU-28 (Guided Bomb Unit), in its efforts to destroy terrorist operations bunkers. The Watervliet Arsenal, founded in 1813 in this blue-collar town where the Erie Canal meets the Hudson River, proudly tells the story of its 1991 invention in a seven-minute video at its museum, which is temporarily closed to the public. The film shows how arsenal personnel employed a heating and cooling process to extract steel from previously used self-propelled howitzers, then cut the steel to the proper length. "Engineering changes were literally phoned in while manufacturing was in progress," the narrator says. They made 15 changes in all. It took 12 hours of welding to attach the nickel-cobalt-steel "Super-Penetrator" warhead. C-130 cargo planes at nearby Stratton Air Force Base in Schenectady were revving their engines to transport the weapons "while the first two bunker bombs were still wet with paint." In late February 1991 two of the bombs were tested, one dropped from a plane in the Nevada desert and one launched horizontally on a "rocket sled" through a 22-foot concrete wall. Officials say the air-dropped bomb burrowed beyond 100 feet, too deep for special earth-moving equipment to extract. The sled-launched bomb, they said, continued a half-mile after smashing through the wall before hitting the ground. Five hours after arriving in Saudi Arabia Feb. 27, 1991, another bomb was dropped into an Iraqi bunker that officials say was occupied by "senior Iraqi military staff." "Within 48 hours," the narrator declares, "the Iraqis agreed to a cease-fire." It was Jan. 25, 1991, that arsenal officials got the call from Lockheed Missile and Space Co. of San Jose, Calif., asking if the facility could make a "hard core penetrator" using existing material. The 2,000-pound bombs in use at the time weren't doing the job, officials said. The first two "bunker busters" were shipped Feb. 17. The bomb was built in secret at the north end of the Watervliet Arsenal's Building 35, a finished machining facility that resembles a giant airplane hangar. John Swantek, who was then and still is the arsenal's director of public information, said he didn't find out about the bomb's production until afterward. The arsenal keeps one of the bombs on display for marketing purposes, Swantek said. "We thought we could get some business after the Gulf War," he said. "We have folks come through and we show them this as one of the items we've made." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Hush 2.0 wl8EARECAB8FAjvLLKUYHGF1dG8zMDEwOTRAaHVzaG1haWwuY29tAAoJEKadvsVlUK4P xVIAoIHfM0GGq+CgNaqEbNugEOou2cBdAKCXHlrpAtYUKP73XIbQsPUxzqDKCA== =4tJ9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----