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Air Force Armament Museum
The Air Force Armament Museum is a military aviation museum adjacent to Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Florida, dedicated to the display of Air Force armament. It is supported by the private, non-profit Air Force Armament Museum Foundation. History The museum opened to the public on 22 June 1974 in a converted 1940s era chapel. Two years later, the Air Force Armament Museum Foundation was established with the goal of constructing a new building. The foundation faced significant public opposition in its early years driven by a referendum to appropriate county funding for the new building. After the referendum failed, the original building was condemned and the museum was forced to close in 1981. A new square foot building located outside the base's west gate was eventually funded entirely through private donations. The new museum building opened on 15 November 1985. Shortly thereafter, an exhibit on prisoners of war was inaugurated. Starting in 1990, a number of aircraft wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB , colloquially known as the "Mother of All Bombs") is a large-yield bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. It was first tested in 2003. At the time of development, it was said to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. The bomb is designed to be delivered by a C-130 Hercules, primarily the MC-130E Combat Talon I or MC-130H Combat Talon II variants. The MOAB was first deployed in combat in the 13 April 2017 airstrike against an Islamic State – Khorasan Province tunnel complex in Achin District, Afghanistan. Design and development The basic principle resembles that of the BLU-82 ''Daisy Cutter'', which was used to clear heavily wooded areas in the Vietnam War. Decades later, the BLU-82 was used in Afghanistan in November 2001 against the Taliban. Its success as a weapon of intimidation led to the decision to develop the MOAB. Pent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AMRAAM
The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM (pronounced ), is an American beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. It is 7 inches (18 cm) in diameter, and employs active transmit-receive radar guidance instead of semi-active receive-only radar guidance. It is a fire-and-forget weapon, unlike the previous generation Sparrow missiles which needed guidance from the firing aircraft. When an AMRAAM missile is launched, NATO pilots use the brevity code Fox Three. more than 14,000 had been produced for the United States Air Force, the United States Navy, and 33 international customers. The AMRAAM has been used in several engagements, achieving sixteen air-to-air kills in conflicts over Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, India, and Syria. Origins AIM-7 Sparrow MRM The AIM-7 Sparrow medium range missile (MRM) was purchased by the US Navy from original developer Hughes Aircraft in the 1950s as its first operational ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BLU-82B
The BLU-82B/C-130 weapon system, known under program "Commando Vault" and nicknamed " Daisy Cutter" in Vietnam for its ability to flatten a section of forest into a helicopter landing zone, is an American conventional bomb, delivered from either a C-130 or MC-130 transport aircraft or a CH-54 heavy-lift "Skycrane" helicopter from the 1st Air Cavalry. A total of 225 were constructed. It was successfully used during military operations in Vietnam, the Gulf War and Afghanistan. The BLU-82 was retired in 2008 and replaced with the more powerful GBU-43/B MOAB. Overview The designation "BLU" stands for Bomb Live Unit, as opposed to "BDU" (Bomb Dummy Units) used for practice. Originally designed to create an instant clearing in the jungles of Vietnam, the BLU-82B/C-130 was test-dropped there from a CH-54 Tarhe "Flying crane" helicopter. Later it was used in Afghanistan as an anti-personnel weapon and as an intimidation weapon because of its very large blast radius (variously reporte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fat Man
"Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) is the codename for the type of nuclear bomb the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, and it was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress '' Bockscar'' piloted by Major Charles Sweeney. The name Fat Man refers to the early design of the bomb because it had a wide, round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. The first of that type to be detonated was the Gadget in the Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. Two more were detonated during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946, and some 120 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earthquake Bomb
The earthquake bomb, or seismic bomb, was a concept that was invented by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis early in World War II and subsequently developed and used during the war against strategic targets in Europe. A seismic bomb differs somewhat in concept from traditional bombs, which usually explode at or near the surface, and destroy their target directly by explosive force. In contrast, a seismic bomb is dropped from high altitude to attain very high speed as it falls and upon impact, penetrates and explodes deep underground, causing massive caverns or craters known as ''camouflets'', as well as intense shockwaves. In this way, the seismic bomb can affect targets that are too massive to be affected by a conventional bomb, as well as damage or destroy difficult targets such as bridges and viaducts. Earthquake bombs were used towards the end of World War II on massively reinforced installations, such as submarine pens with concrete walls several meters thick, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
T-12 Cloudmaker
The T-12 (also known as Cloudmaker) earthquake bomb was developed by the United States from 1944 to 1948 and deployed until the withdrawal of the Convair B-36 Peacemaker bomber aircraft in 1958. It was one of a small class of bombs designed to attack targets invulnerable to conventional "soft" bombs, such as bunkers and viaducts. It achieved this by having an extremely thick, hardened nose section designed to penetrate deeply into hardened concrete structures and then detonate inside the target after a short time delay. Development The T-12 was a further development of the concept initiated with the United Kingdom's Tallboy and Grand Slam weapons developed by British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis during the Second World War: a hardened, highly aerodynamic bomb of the greatest possible weight designed to be dropped from the highest possible altitude. Penetrating deeply in the earth before exploding, the resulting shock wave was transmitted through the earth into targets ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guided Munition
A precision-guided munition (PGM, smart weapon, smart munition, smart bomb) is a guided munition intended to precisely hit a specific target, to minimize collateral damage and increase lethality against intended targets. During the First Gulf War guided munitions accounted for only 9% of weapons fired, but accounted for 75% of all successful hits. Despite guided weapons generally being used on more difficult targets, they were still 35 times more likely to destroy their targets per weapon dropped. Because the damage effects of explosive weapons decrease with distance due to an inverse cube law, even modest improvements in accuracy (hence reduction in miss distance) enable a target to be attacked with fewer or smaller bombs. Thus, even if some guided bombs miss, fewer air crews are put at risk and the harm to civilians and the amount of collateral damage may be reduced. The advent of precision-guided munitions resulted in the renaming of older, low-technology, bombs as "ungui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AGM-28 Hound Dog
The North American Aviation AGM-28 Hound Dog was a supersonic, turbojet-propelled, nuclear armed, air-launched cruise missile developed in 1959 for the United States Air Force. It was primarily designed to be capable of attacking Soviet ground-based air defense sites prior to a potential air attack by B-52 Stratofortress long range bombers during the Cold War. The Hound Dog was first given the designation B-77, then redesignated GAM-77, and finally AGM-28. It was conceived as a temporary standoff missile for the B-52, to be used until the GAM-87 Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile was available. Instead, the Skybolt was cancelled within a few years and the Hound Dog continued to be deployed for a total of 15 years until its replacement by newer missiles, including the AGM-69 SRAM and then the AGM-86 ALCM. Development During the 1950s the US became aware of developments regarding the Soviet Union's surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), notably at large installations being constru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
