New View: New Anti-Ship Bomb Obliterates Full-Scale Ship Target in Gulf of Mexico

Back in May we coverd a lethal new anti-ship weapon being developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) that could provide a lower-cost and more widely-available method for sinking ships than traditional torpedoes.

While heavy-weight torpedoes are effective at sinking large ships, they are expensive and only usable by a small portion of naval vessels. With that in mind, the Department of Defense is exploring new methods of achieving similar anti-ship lethality with a new air-launched weapon that will not only cost less use, but also be more agile in terms of how its launched.

This new weapon, known as the GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM for short, is being developed under a program called the QUICKSINK Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

The weapon was recently tested for a second time during a demonstration in April in the Gulf of Mexico. The test involved a modified 2,000-pound JDAM precision-guided bomb fired from an F-15 fighter jet onto a full-scale target ship, successfully sinking the target in a matter of seconds. Video of the test went viral.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has now released a new video showing both a different view of the Quicksink excercise and also some radar imagery of what remains of the target, which is now resting at the bottom of Gulf of Mexico at Elgin Air Force Base’s 120,000-square-mile Test and Training Range.

I don’t know about you but seeing how fast that ship went down made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

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