Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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Thereby making their first use more credible to an adversary with, for instance, deep underground facilities.
The B61-12 will use the 300 ton to 50 kiloton field-variable yield ("dial-a-yield") warhead from the B61-4 gravity bomb but add the guidance unit tail kit to increase the accuracy and boost the target kill capability to one similar to the 360-kiloton strategic B61-7 bomb.
[video=youtube;pTNLThcV9K4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTNLThcV9K4[/video]
EDIT: According to the U.S. Air Force, the B61 is in the process of a life-extension program, which includes upgrading aging components and a new tail kit assembly. When the program is completed, the B61-12 will replace four different B61 variants in the inventory. The FAS in this interesting PDF FAQ claims we'll have about 400 of them when the program is completed. That should be enough. I suspect the F35 could be one of the delivery vehicles.
https://fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/publications1/Brief2013_B61-12.pdf
The B61-12 will use the 300 ton to 50 kiloton field-variable yield ("dial-a-yield") warhead from the B61-4 gravity bomb but add the guidance unit tail kit to increase the accuracy and boost the target kill capability to one similar to the 360-kiloton strategic B61-7 bomb.
[video=youtube;pTNLThcV9K4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTNLThcV9K4[/video]
EDIT: According to the U.S. Air Force, the B61 is in the process of a life-extension program, which includes upgrading aging components and a new tail kit assembly. When the program is completed, the B61-12 will replace four different B61 variants in the inventory. The FAS in this interesting PDF FAQ claims we'll have about 400 of them when the program is completed. That should be enough. I suspect the F35 could be one of the delivery vehicles.
https://fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/publications1/Brief2013_B61-12.pdf
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