It's late at night. The enemy is out there, lying in wait. Only he's well protected, impervious to your advances, hidden deep inside his fortified bunker. Your mission is clear: you need that thing torn up. But your missile lacks heft, girth and thrust. Your answer? The HARDBUT.
Meet the Hard and Deeply Buried Target Next Generation Multiple Warhead System, known as -- yes -- the HARDBUT. It's designed to go deep where others can't, penetrating the most secure command centers, hardened infrastructure and "underground facilities including caves," according to its manufacturer. As you might have presumed, it's European, designed by the Euro mega-missile giant MBDA, with research cash for testing it provided by the French and British defense ministries.
And it performs under pressure. MBDA announced today that the HARDBUT missile successfully smashed through a "massive concrete target" on September 14. The company boasted that the HARDBUT "penetrated through and exited the rear face of the target, demonstrating a penetration capability significantly in excess of any warhead currently produced by MBDA." It sounds like it's been raring to go, having not gotten any action since its first test in May.
Unfortunately, we've only got the company's word to go on in assessing the power of the HARDBUT. MBDA didn't reveal how thick the concrete target was, nor how big the multi-warheaded missile actually is. Here in the U.S., the Air Force is getting ready to unleash a 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator by 2012, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is bolstering its own bunker-buster capability. That's on top of the 5000-pound "Divine Thunderbolt" missile that the Air Force already has. Can HARDBUT top their performance?
The jury's still out on whether Americans or Europeans make the more effective penetrators. Still, judging from MBDA, the HARDBUT is certainly nothing to laugh at.
Photo: MBDA
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