280
In a First, America Dropped 30,000-Pound Bunker-Busters—But Iran’s Concrete May Be Unbreakable, Scientists Say
(www.popularmechanics.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
280 points (80.4% liked)
Technology
71939 readers
3805 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
My first thought is actually getting the corrosive substance onto enough of the concrete would be difficult, assuming they aren’t able to penetrate the concrete then they have to rely on it seeping from the ground, or if they can penetrate then the substance is only really going to be in the chamber where the buster detonated.
I have zero experience with ordnance or busting bunkers though so that’s just a shot in the dark
Yeah, if the concrete is 40' thick and they're only getting 10' of penetration with the explosives, then this isn't going to do much. But if it's 20' thick and they got through the first 12 with HE, the remaining 8 are going to have a lot of cracks to admit slow liquid death.
I have zero information on what the reinforcers are in the concrete, so shot in the dark is about right. Glass might be tough - unless you could deliver hydrofluoric acid effectively. Metals - we're not going to want to wait for iron to oxidize, looks like hydrogen embrittlement with HF again - so maybe that's the magic sauce. Nasty stuff, but that's what weapons manufacturers are good at handling and packaging: nasty stuff.
2000 lbs of HF poured on the surface isn't going to do much to the buried chamber, but 2000 lbs of HF delivered into the freshly stressed and heavily cracked concrete layer under all the dirt - that could be a problem for future use of the facility.
Unfortunately (?) HF is a gas.
inste-edit: I know I'm being pedantic and a reasonable concentration of hydroflouric acid is what you were talking about. There was an article somewhere about a 1 tonne spill on chlorine triflouride
There was a "etch your VIN in your car window glass" campaign around here years back, they had a liquid solution of HF that they were wiping across printed stencils to do the glass etching. The fact that its natural state is a gas just makes it all the nastier to handle - and possibly even more effective at diffusing through the cracks to cause hydrogen embrittlement of any steel reinforcement it may come into contact with.