The Air Force will begin fielding reconditioned armored vehicles this fall that are equipped with lasers to detonate unexploded ordnance on airfields following a $40 million development program. If the 13 planned bomb disposal vehicles are a success, the Air Force could order another 21 of them, the service’s Life Cycle Management Center said.
The Recovery of Airbase Denied By Ordnance vehicle, or RADBO, is based on a “Cougar” Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) with four crew stations. The 18-ton vehicle has a robotic arm, with which it can investigate runway craters for unexploded ordnance, and a three-kilowatt Zeus III laser that can detonate “heavily cased” unexploded bombs from as far as 300 meters away. Lighter-cased munitions could be destroyed from even farther away “depending on atmospheric conditions,” an LCMC spokesperson said. The laser heats the casing to “initiate” the explosive fill.
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Source: Air Force Magazine