The U.S. Air Force Wants To Build And Deploy This 'Very Expensive' Bomb To Minimize Civilian Casualties

Personnel at LLNL use a special machine to wrap carbon fiber filament to produce cases for prototype BLU-129/B bombs. LLNL

The Warzone/The Drive: This Is The USAF's "Safer" Carbon Fiber Bomb That's Also Extraordinarily Expensive

These weapons reduce the chances of inadvertently killing innocent bystanders, but cost nearly 40 times more than regular bombs in the same class.

For the third year in a row, the U.S. Air Force is asking for funds to buy a small number of bombs with special carbon fiber shells that make them less likely to endanger friendly forces, cause collateral damage, and accidentally kill civilians. It’s an increasingly important tool for the service to have, but it has yet to start buying them in bulk, likely in part because they’re amazingly expensive.

In the Air Force’s latest budget request for the 2019 fiscal year, which it released earlier in February 2018, the service asked for a little more than $8 million to buy just 70 of the 500-pound class carbon fiber BLU-129/Bs, also known as the Very Low Collateral Damage Weapon, or VLCDW. At that price, each one costs more than $116,000, or at least 40 times more than the regular 500-pound class BLU-111/B high explosive bomb and more than five times the cost of even the service’s new 2,000-pound class BLU-137/B bunker buster. This figure doesn’t include the cost of precision guidance kits or specialized fuzes either.

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WNU Editor: Each bomb will cost $116,000.