Two AF Weapons for Syrian CW stockpiles 'CrashPad and PAW'?

[bobbymike]

From Defenstech;

http://defensetech.org/2013/08/30/air-force-developed-bombs-capable-of-destroying-syrias-chemical-weapons/#more-21174

 

[Desert Dawn]

They are out of their mind if they want to use such a weapon and think they will neutralize or destroy the chemical stockpiles of Assad without causing large amount of civilian deaths in the process. There is no way to neutralize large stockpiles of chemical weapons that are spread over the country with any kind of supposed magical bullet weapon. Only a strike with nuclear tactical weapons could accomplish the total destruction of such stockpile without releasing the toxic gas, but we all know this 'remedy' would be worse than the chemical weapons effects themselves on the population. Like someone said, only troops on the ground, paratrooper units and commandos could accomplish that, and of course it is never 100% sure they would be able to seize and secure all the locations as there are so many things that can go wrong with any of the multiple teams that would have to secure the many sites where these are stockpiled.

The idea itself of pretending to burn even just 1 site with such new bombs where there are stockpiled chemical weapons and not release any toxic gas nor cause any civilian victims is science-fiction. If you attempt to burn a stockpile it may even release more toxins during the combustion process that are as harmful to populations as what they are trying to destroy in the first place. I see this as a recipe for disaster that might cause even more civilian victims than the gas attack caused. Kind of like the usage of depleted uranium rounds by A-10 bombers and helicopter in Iraq which is now all over the environment in the soil and in the dust in the air, including in urban areas, and now the population is paying for it up to this day and for decades to come. There is a similar mess here because our navy ships are shooting depleted uranium rounds into the ocean during exercises. All of that because someone sold them the idea that DE costs less than tungsten rounds. Well, yeah, stupid accounting process, it cost less to PURCHASE, but it certainly cost a LOT more to clean up the environment and to cure the cancers and all afterwards...

 

[quellish]

From Defenstech;

http://defensetech.org/2013/08/30/air-force-developed-bombs-capable-of-destroying-syrias-chemical-weapons/#more-21174

There was a very similar "war is boring" post a week ago.
AGENT DEFEAT and related programs have been ongoing since the mid 90s. There are a number of solutions to this problem at this point, with CrashPAD being just one of them. PAW though isn't really an agent defeat weapon, though it can be used to puncture things like precursor storage tanks. Cause, you know, that's an awesome idea.

The real problem is having the right intelligence to use these systems.

 

[Desert Dawn]

Too many variables, too many chance of things going wrong. That kind of weapons would only work if a country had one very localized stocking area, away from populated areas. In a country the size of Syria and with all the various types of agents and sites they have (and whose locations keep changing recently), say they decide to hit one large stockpile that's spread over a large area, and which have different buildings, and indoor, outdoors, underground, above ground stocks. Say they hit half of it directly, incinerate those tanks drums or ammo that contain the agents, other drums or containers nearby are not hit, start to heat up, release gas or start to burn one by one at a lower temperature than what the PAWS or similar new weapon was supposed to, you then get other toxic by-products from the combustion of those lower temp burning of chemical agents released in the air. When you start to play with something that dangerous, you know where it starts but you never know where it ends. Doesn't matter who pulls the trigger or who plans the missions. Like they said themselves, and there were a lot of ifs in their statements, these new weapons are designed only to LIMIT the number of civilian victims ('collateral damage') due to toxic gases that might be released in the process of bombing the stockpiles versus if they tried to destroy these with classic ammunitions. There is no 100% solution ever when it comes to trying to negate gas agent stockpiles in times of war. If we compare this to the percentage of success (or rather lack of success given the high amount of civilian casualties) of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen for example, you get the idea. Supposed magic bullets solutions do not solve problems like these.

 

[bobbymike]

Desert Dawn - I don't think anyone is claiming these are magic bullets that will perfectly eradicate the Syrian chemical weapons threat but I also think that many in the military scientific and technological community might have, maybe, thought of the things you have in your posts.

I am not a proponent of war in Syria but I do know one thing; measuring the effectiveness of these weapons when most data is probably highly classified is difficult if not impossible. As Quellish said these types/class of weapons have been tested and refined for close to 20 years.

We can however measure the effectiveness of the ACTUAL chemical weapons with the pictures of dead women and children gassed to death.

 

[quellish]

Say they hit half of it directly, incinerate those tanks drums or ammo that contain the agents, other drums or containers nearby are not hit, start to heat up, release gas or start to burn one by one at a lower temperature than what the PAWS or similar new weapon

There seems to be some confusion.

PAWS is the CBU-107/B. It contains a number of tungsten and steel rods, but no explosive or incendiary filler. It is a purely kinetic weapon.
CrashPAD (BLU-119/B)on the other hand, is a standard bomb shape with a special fuze, high explosive filler, AGENT DEFEAT filler, and a special casing.
Both of these weapons are now over 10 years old. Even 10 years ago, CrashPAD was not the only AGENT DEFEAT weapon. The current generation of thermobaric bomb shapes started out life in the AGENT DEFEAT programs.

Most chemical weapons are at least stored in their component parts. These components are called "precursors". This is also why you often hear the terms "binary chemical weapons" or "binary agents". The precursors themselves are relatively safe to handle and have a longer shelf life. It is only when they are mixed that you have your nerve agent. Depending on the user's level of sophistication, the mixing of the agents may be done at the depot level before the weapons are deployed, or it may happen as part of arming the weapon (i.e. the agents are mixed immediately before use, while the weapon is in flight). Once they are mixed the agent may be called "unitary". Mixing them obviously has some military disadvantages. It makes the weapons much more dangerous to handle. It significantly shortens the shelf life of the agent (i.e. precursors may have a shelf life of months or years, but the unitary agent days or weeks). It also cannot be undone.

Because of this, PAWS can be a viable solution to some CW scenarios. It would be common at the depot level to keep the precursors stored far apart, and the storage infrastructure for the two precursors for GB are quite different. They are also easy to discern from overhead reconnaissance. PAWS could be employed to puncture the storage tank for one precursor, which may be a militarily significant objective. Even if the precursors did mix in a strike on a depot, the effects may be confined. GB, for example, is a non persistent agent that doesn't hang around for very long, and as with any chemical or biological agent dispersion, local environment matters a great deal.

That said, incineration using weapons like CrashPAD is certainly a viable option. Incineration is actually one of the preferred ways of disposing of both binary and unitary weapons (both precursors and the mixed agents), as it is effective and produces predictable results. The chemistry is very straightforward, for both the unitary agent and it's precursors. Some of the AGENT DEFEAT fillers create temperatures well over 3000C. GB thermally decomposes at 160C. If you actually burn it, you get some interesting products - care to guess what?

You can read about some of the other options for AGENT DEFEAT and HDBT here:
http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6368
(and many, many other places on the interwebs)
CDC has a page on CW disposal, as do many others. Note that in some cases they are talking about methods that are required or prohibited by treaty rather than practicality.
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/demil/articles/safedisposal.htm

was supposed to, you then get other toxic by-products from the combustion of those lower temp burning of chemical agents released in the air. When you start to play with something that dangerous, you know where it starts but you never know where it ends.

Can you point to the specific toxic by products of thermal decomposition or combustion you are referring to?

Doesn't matter who pulls the trigger or who plans the missions.

Of course it does. And there has been extensive testing of these solutions, and training and tactics that go along with them.
This is science, man, not the dark ages!

 

[UpForce]

Still, I'm having a hard time believing that chemical weapons can be "defeated" by explosions, at least entirely. The Defense Tech article seems wildly optimistic, quellish's info in turn seems much more level-headed. There's much more to "precision" than coordinates and chemistry. Many variables, even if there might be special forces directing the strikes - an incredibly hazardous undertaking in itself. The decision to use agent defeat weapons may hinge on how much damage the CWs in themselves are likely to cause in relation to "collateral damage" from a preventative strike. Furthermore, to justify less than 100% effective "agent defeat" operations after the fact requires proving something of a negative which is not likely to be politically very easy or expedient.

Syria provides no easy answers which, lest we forget, is a fairly typical state of affairs in a war. There's no government left there, not in the traditional sense, even if the Assad faction might be referred to as such. I believe even a fairly limited use of force can achieve a lot on the ground. Major parts of their military/dual use infrastructure are sitting ducks for air/missile strikes. But the truly hard part is what comes thereafter, of that there's no doubt. The Syrian people and diaspora should absolutely know that the resources to carry them over the transition are there. Just the basics for a year or two - food, medical, electricity, fuel, communications, reliable media.

Obviously that is not the case here, at least not yet, so the use of force will have largely random effects among which CWs are probably the main technical and strategic complication. Syria is not a small country. 2M people have fled already. Behind the destroyers and the aircraft carrier battle group there should be ten times more freighters and container ships lined up with supplies for civilian needs, plus probably a hospital ship or two. I doubt that would cost more than the planned military operation, but I'm not seeing anything like that happening - even courtesy of the arab countries openly supporting Syrian regime change. The UN and the like are of course on the ground in Jordan and Turkey but they seem stretched as it is.

The Assad clan's CWs have to be put beyond use one way or another for there to be any basis for the situation to improve. I truly hope there are better options than just blowing the CWs up from afar, but we may be beyond those considerations already. I fear that inevitably the ugliest and costliest day of this conflict has yet to pass. I'm horrified by what has happened already and disheartened by how narrowly the situation has been framed.

 

[Desert Dawn]

The B-2 bomber was also studied for over a decade and is a product of science. That did not stop it from seeing its stealth characteristics being seriously degraded by... rain. Because this cute billion dollars gadget was never designed to operate in the rain. And they can't deploy them without storing them in special hangars away from the rain, something that considerably limit its deployment. Edwards AFB being a rather extremely dry test location where most of these things are created (nearby anyway). We could have a long conversation on how the F-35 is also a product of science and still is a flying lemon which is far behind the performances of the Sukhoi T-50, Chengdu J-20 and probably even the new F-22-like J-31 possibly rejected J-20 competing design.

Yes, i am well aware that old chemical stockpiles in the US are being destroyed through high temperature incineration. I'd be curious to see the data on any solid deposits and sooth and any combustion by-products though, even in trace amounts. What i DO know is that large size city incinerators (not military) ARE very contaminated places. You can find furanes and dioxine for exemple and some other quite toxic combustion by-products on the sites themselves. So i am extremely skeptical about the so called magical solution of destroying the Syrian stockpiles of of CW with specialized bombs. To me it smells nothing more than a cheapo solution done in a hurry because the US does not have the funds to go on the terrain with troops nor to start another lengthy and very costly war like in Iraq or Afghanistan. The victims in this sorry accounting equation will the the Syrian population who will be downwind or nearby those sites. They will be the first live human guinea pigs for this nice little experiment.

To say that these were tested for years or decades, well, i know many hypersonic engines and vehicles that are still being refined and tested to this day, many years or even decades after they were designed, and they still cannot make them work properly (remember those crashed X-43, X-51, HTV-2s....? That's all science too. And like burning CW with bombs, complicated science also. Doesn't mean that because science got paid by military contracts to design new weapons that those are the ultimate answers to a problem. Military solutions to problems (name any) usually give poor results at best and can take years of combat only to reach only a limited result. Last war i remember that got totally resolved by military solution was the 2nd WW, and it took 2 super-powers and dozens of other nations plus 7 years of efforts (and 2 atomic weapons) and many millions of dead.

Oh, i'm sure they tried it, (in laboratory like conditions, in the western desert), but in a real war situation over a whole country the size of Syria, with Russia no doubt having military counsellors there, and Iran and probably China, i can see a lot of things going wrong. Science if a wonderful thing on paper and in ideal test conditions, but with the exception perhaps of tactical nukes, i don't see these new bombs fixing this problem in one shot nor easily and without civilian victims. That is, unless those sites are all located in isolated areas in the desert or mountains, but i somehow doubt that, there must be some of those sites that are nearby populated areas, i don't know of course, but i would not be surprised if Assad moved them smack into residential areas in a bid to stop the US from bombing them, that would be so much like him to do something like that.

Remember the Star Wars program also which to work and be 100% effective would have had to destroy EVERY nuclear tiped missiles launched by the Soviet Union ? There was no chance in hell it could have worked. I remember the anti-missile batteries that were deployed during the 1st Gulf war to stop the dozens or hundreds of Scuds that were launched. I remember they did have a success rate that was far below 100% percent, more like 50% or less. Typical ordnance used by aircrafts and dropped or launched in recent wars (from Vietnam to the Israel-Arab conflict to the two Gulf wars and so on had a pretty low success rate (with usually less than half of them denonating, that's why we still find plenty of unexploded bombs in East Asia)(it was pretty common for Sparrow missiles to miss or not work as predicted for exemple, same with many types of bombs that were dropped. True, the percentage of duds diminished in recent years and have improved. But i remember many problems due to stored ordnance used by France in the recent Libyan conflict that did perform far less than good, and these were not Vietnam war era ordnances).

There is no such thing as perfection when it comes to equipment and weapons used in war situations.

(Hi, thank for the information Quellish, i will have a look at your links).

 

[bobbymike]

Remember the Star Wars program also which to work and be 100% effective would have had to destroy EVERY nuclear tiped missiles launched by the Soviet Union ?

There is no such thing as perfection when it comes to equipment and weapons used in war situations.

I don't recall anyone sayng SDI would be 100% effective nor was anyone making an argument that these or any weapons are perfect making your entire statement a straw man argument

 

[Desert Dawn]

It was supposed to be a missile umbrella to protect North America, including Canada. You miss just one missile and that's a dozen cities that get vitrified. The whole idea was preposterous (not to mention the enormous means that would have been required to put all those high power lasers in orbit to cover the continent. To me that was nothing more than a giant advertising campaign from the defense industry to get fat checks. The politicians went with it partly because it was also meant to accelerate the technological race of armaments to ruin the Soviet Union, but in facts it would not have worked, too easy to sabotage in orbit with a few satellite destruction vehicles like the 105-13 and so on.

Straw man ? I love straw ! By the way isn't it the national sport here to play armchair generals ?

Just remember what was in that link The only thing they admit works is the Flintstone bomb... and it they drop the 'Flintstone' on Syria (does not sound too serious to me, kinds of reminds me of that weirdo website that was dedicated to nuclear power where all the avatars where characters from the Simpsons) i do expect it will be a far less than perfect result, as expected.

 

[bobbymike]

It was supposed to be a missile umbrella to protect North America, including Canada. You miss just one missile and that's a dozen cities that get vitrified. The whole idea was preposterous (not to mention the enormous means that would have been required to put all those high power lasers in orbit to cover the continent. To me that was nothing more than a giant advertising campaign from the defense industry to get fat checks. The politicians went with it partly because it was also meant to accelerate the technological race of armaments to ruin the Soviet Union, but in facts it would not have worked, too easy to sabotage in orbit with a few satellite destruction vehicles like the 105-13 and so on.

Straw man ? I love straw ! By the way isn't it the national sport here to play armchair generals ?

Just remember what was in that link The only thing they admit works is the Flintstone bomb... and it they drop the 'Flintstone' on Syria (does not sound too serious to me, kinds of reminds me of that weirdo website that was dedicated to nuclear power where all the avatars where characters from the Simpsons) i do expect it will be a far less than perfect result, as expected.

Answers to questions no one is asking.

 

[SOC]

Another option: flaming rocketballs!

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/11/secret-rocket-b/

 

[SOC]

Does anybody have this thing, or a newer version?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/56603153/2009-Weapons-File

 

[Desert Dawn]

Another option: flaming rocketballs!

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/11/secret-rocket-b/

Ah, now they are giving out more details. Looks like it could be that "Flintstone", they had mentionned rocket fuel in one section of the earlier link i had checked. This might be a type of solid fuel similar to that used by SpaceShip One and other hybrid rocket engines. Stable and storable, which would be what one would be looking for in applications where they need the weapon on call.

 

[quellish]

Ah, now they are giving out more details. Looks like it could be that "Flintstone", they had mentionned rocket fuel in one section of the earlier link i had checked. This might be a type of solid fuel similar to that used by SpaceShip One and other hybrid rocket engines. Stable and storable, which would be what one would be looking for in applications where they need the weapon on call.

"now"? This article is from 2008.
These weapons do not use "rocket fuel" but an AGENT DEFEAT filler that is conceptually similar.

Shredder was never produced. It was a technology demonstration program. It did not use an AGENT DEFEAT filler. Externally it looks like any other BLU-109.
CrashPAD was produced in (very) limited quantities.

 

[Desert Dawn]

Quote from the link you provided:

Still, the logic of the team's work points to two likely possibilities. A hightech idea the team calls "the Buck Rogers solution" involves "emitters" -- a broad category covering everything from low-level radiation to extremely low-frequency vibrators that can break down the bonds of hazardous chemicals into harmless substances. Feasibility and expense are concerns, but this sort of solution is likely to be the long-term goal.
In the interim, the team probably will propose what they call "the Fred Flintstone solution," an allusion to the old TV cartoon. It calls for a one-two punchan incendiary bomb loaded with solid rocket fuel to hit a target and burn as much material as possible, followed a few minutes later by a heavy penetrating bomb to go off well under the weapons bunker, collapsing it on itself and burying whatever remains.
But even this quick-and-dirty solution is "harder to do then you think," warns Mr. Martinez. Experts worry that the flash from a single bomb may last only a few seconds-not long enough to kill biological agents or disassociate chemical bonds. Defense Department experts say that a "heat spike" of at least 2,000 degrees for one to two minutes is needed to do that. Since the U.S. doesn't have a bomb now that can maintain that sort of "sustained burn," the idea is to do it with two -- which means pilots would need to get two bombs to the same place near the same time.
And partial success could make gathering postbombing intelligence hard: If only one bomb worked, the target would look the same from the air -- a blackened, twisted mess -- but most of the anthrax, say, might have survived. To tell whether the necessary heat spike had been generated, the team may propose a third step-having a drone aircraft circle and measure the postattack temperature.
The final step in the project will be to anticipate moves an adversary might make to defeat the new U.S. weapon. If it became clear that a U.S. attack depended on, say, boiling off an enemy's chemicals or biological agents, the adversary could parry by surrounding its weapons with thousands of gallons of water to absorb much of the heat. Similarly, the "Fred Flintstone" approach of fire and rubble might encourage adversaries to store weapons in the open air, where it is harder to sustain high temperatures. Yet open-air sites would be easier to hit with cluster bombs and other weapons -- one reason the U.S. wants to keep adversaries guessing.

In the case of the 2 drawings you included that you call by the fancy name Defeat Agent, this is just white phosophorus. Hardly anything new, that's what they used to bomb cities in WWII. Neither new nor high tech.

 

[quellish]

In the case of the 2 drawings you included that you call by the fancy name Defeat Agent, this is just white phosophorus. Hardly anything new, that's what they used to bomb cities in WWII. Neither new nor high tech.

Actually, it's not just run of the mill white phosphorous from Pine Bluff, and the delivery mechanism and fuzing are entirely new.
Both weapons are quite fancy, CrashPAD arguably more so than Shredder.

But yes, heat and pressure have been used for thousands of years in both chemistry and the biological sciences. Nothing new there

 

[Desert Dawn]

Thankfully the option of diplomacy is now being favored and is progressing. So the option of showing the Syrian gov't a big stick worked, at least that is progress, with them now even admitting they are in a stalemate and proposing a cease-fire. I just hope all this can stop soon, there'fts been enough suffering and destruction like that already, there is not much left of Syria. It's disheartening.

 

[Madoc]

Desert Dawn,

You're missing a few things.

First off, you're wrong about the effectiveness of the SDI. The primary goal of a nuclear war would be certainty. That is, you unleash enough missiles to be certain that you have destroyed your enemy's ability to retaliate to the degree that he destroys you. With no ABM capability on either side, certainty was pretty easy to achieve. You'd take into account some low percentage of failures in your missiles and / or warheads but it'd be pretty much one missile / one target and job done.

With the ABM capabilities of the SDI that certainty was eliminated. Yes, a certain percentage of the total missiles fired at it would get through. But, prior to their being launched, the enemy would have no way of knowing which ones would be those ones. Thus, there would be no certainty of destroying the enemy target. That makes it a much less attractive proposition to launch those missiles in the first place.

Thus the appeal and functionality of the SDI.

As to Syria, the only "big stick" Assad got show was the one weilded by Putin in the Kremlin. Assad still retains all of his chemical weapons and there has only been the vaguest of promises to eventually, perhaps, maybe, sometime, sort of, kind of, more or less, do "something" about them. And of late, even that pile of "unsubstantialness" has been called into question.

What happened was that President Obama demagogued himself - and the rest of the United States along with him - into a political corner. Comrade Czar threw him a lifeline that allowed Obama to slither out of that corner. Note how little otherwise has changed. Assad retains his chemical weapons and the slaughter in Syria continues unabated. In the meantime, the perception of the US has changed for the worse while Putin and Russia now seem far more powerful than they otherwise are.

Yes, the forces of freedom and humanity really emerged victorious in this one...

 

[jsport]

ttps://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/06/syria-chemical-weapons-trump-assad-russia-united-nations/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2010.07.20&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief

 

[jsport]

Syria Is Still Trying to Use Chemical Weapons

And not just against civilians at home—but potentially against regional rivals.

foreignpolicy.com