Paveway bombs weighing 2,000lbs to be loaded onto RAF jets for possible strikes on Gaddafi command centres
Britain has ratcheted up the pressure on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi by preparing to load heavy "bunker buster" bombs on RAF jets ready to attack his compounds in and around Tripoli.
Paveway bombs, weighing 2,000lbs, the largest in the RAF's arsenal, have been dispatched to Gioia del Colle in southern Italy where RAF Tornado and Typhoon jets are based. While the Apache's cannon and Hellfire missiles are used against small or moving targets, the Paveway bombs are expected to be used against bunkers underneath the Gaddafi regime's Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli and elsewhere.
The MoD said on Sunday the enhanced Paveway III bombs, are designed "to punch through the roof or wall of a hardened building". The bombs join smaller laser or satellite-guided Paveway bombs, Brimstone missiles and Tomahawk submarine-launched cruise missiles, with which the army and navy have been attacking targets in Libya for more than two months.
The enhanced Paveway III "gives the RAF an additional capability to attack hardened structures in Libya like command centres or communications nodes", the MoD said. Gaddafi had "a lot of bunkers", Liam Fox, the defence secretary, said on Sunday. The facilities were used "partly for accommodation" but "largely for military control", he told the Andrew Marr show on BBC One.
Those who used "dual use facilities" would be vulnerable if they were in the bunkers', Fox added.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/libya-bunker-buster-bombs-assaults
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