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lonestar2004
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Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans
#7647163 - 11/17/07 10:22 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans (Diego Garcia)
Source: The Scotland Daily Herald http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/foreign/display.var.1792035.0.0.php
The US is secretly upgrading special stealth bomber hangars on the British island protectorate of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, according to military sources.
The improvement of the B1 Spirit jet infrastructure coincides with an "urgent operational need" request for £44m to fit racks to the long-range aircraft.
That would allow them to carry experimental 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs designed to smash underground bunkers buried as much as 200ft beneath the surface through reinforced concrete.
One MOP - known as Big Blu - has already been tested successfully at the US Air Force proving ground at White Sands in New Mexico. Tenders have now gone out for a production model to be ready for use in the next nine months.
The "static tunnel lethality test" on March 14 completely destroyed a mock-up of the kind of underground facility used to house Iran's nuclear centrifuge arrays at Natanz, about 150 miles from the capital, Tehran.
Although intelligence estimates vary as to when Iran will achieve the know-how for a bomb, the French government recently received a memo from the International Atomic Energy Agency stating that Iran will be ready to run almost 3000 centrifuges in 18 cascades by the end of this month. That is in defiance of a UN ban on uranium enrichment and would be enough to produce a nuclear weapon within a year.
Diego Garcia is ideally placed for strategic missions in the Middle East
Diego Garcia, part of Britain's Indian Ocean Territory, has several current missions. US Air Force bombers and Awacs surveillance planes operate from its 12,000ft runway and the USAF Space Command has built a satellite tracking station and communications facility.
The Ministry of Defence says the US government would need Britain's permission to use the island for offensive action. It has already been used for strategic strike missions during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars against Iraq.
The UK "sovereign territory" has a garrison of 50 British and 3200 US military personnel.
The atoll, the largest in the Chagos Archipelago chain, lies about 1000 miles from the southern coasts of India and Sri Lanka. It is ideally placed for strategic missions in the Middle East.
The US Department of Defence request for special bomb racks was hidden in a £95bn request to the US Congress last week for extra emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The new Big Blu bomb is 20ft long, weighs 30,000lb and carries 6000lb of high explosives. It is designed to go deeper than even existing nuclear bunker-busting weapons.
The bomb is designed to be dropped from as great a height as possible to achieve maximum velocity and penetrating power, guided on to target by satellite and accurate to within a few feet.
Each B2 bomber would be able to carry only one weapon because of its weight. The B2s, normally based at Barksdale, Missouri, flew round-trip strikes against Baghdad in 2003, but would ideally be positioned closer to its targets for missions against Iran.
The Pentagon has drawn up contingency plans for a range of attacks on Iran. The likeliest is a five-day bombardment, aiming to disable nuclear facilities and all major airbases and radar facilities; the most devastating would involve air and cruise missile attacks on 1000 targets, including headquarters and barracks of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps, over more than a month.
The US branded the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organisation last week in the latest round of diplomatic sanctions against Tehran.
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=204874
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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lonestar2004
Live to party,work to affordit.


Registered: 10/03/04
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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: lonestar2004]
#7647242 - 11/17/07 10:49 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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"The new Big Blu bomb is 20ft long, weighs 30,000lb and carries 6000lb of high explosives. It is designed to go deeper than even existing nuclear bunker-busting weapons."
can you just drop one of those on a Nuclear plant? who is going to clean up the mess?
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole


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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: lonestar2004]
#7647393 - 11/17/07 11:54 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Zappa
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Madtowntripper
Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers



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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: lonestar2004]
#7647849 - 11/17/07 03:03 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
The improvement of the B1 Spirit jet infrastructure coincides with an "urgent operational need" request for £44m to fit racks to the long-range aircraft.
Fucking Scots are dumb as hell.
Its either a B1 Lancer or a B2 Spirit, but its not a B1 Spirit. The two are in no way, shape, or form even remotely similar to one another. They dont even both have wings!
When the fucking moron doesn't even know what type of aircraft are launching his semi-truck sized missiles at super-duper top-secret nuclear weapons factories, it kind of makes you wonder what other minor details he might have messed up on.
-------------------- After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it. - Ernest Hemingway If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. -Cormac MacCarthy He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
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johnm214



Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 17,582
Loc: Americas
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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: Madtowntripper]
#7647923 - 11/17/07 03:27 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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I may have missed it, but where is the indication this is prep for an iranian strike?
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole


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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: johnm214]
#7647932 - 11/17/07 03:31 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Shhhhhhhh. It's a secret. I can say no more I don'
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Diploid
Cuban



Registered: 01/09/03
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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: lonestar2004]
#7648619 - 11/17/07 07:05 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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can you just drop one of those on a Nuclear plant? who is going to clean up the mess?
Not a nuclear plant. A centrifuge farm making enriched uranium.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: Diploid]
#7649964 - 11/18/07 03:08 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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> Not a nuclear plant. A centrifuge farm making enriched uranium.
Which would release a lot of UF6 gas into the atmosphere. Depending upon the state of enrichment, this could be fairly harmless to very nasty. Either way, I wouldn't want to be around as UF6 is chemically a highly reactive gas.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Diploid
Cuban



Registered: 01/09/03
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Re: Secret Move to Upgrade Air Base for Iran Attack Plans [Re: Seuss]
#7650057 - 11/18/07 05:11 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Wimp! 
Uranium hexafluoride will put hair on your chest. Or take it off. One of those.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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