Feeling the Tip of the Spear

As you've likely heard by now Israel has destroyed the runways at Beirut International Airport as part of a rapidly-evolving campaign against various Palestinian terrorist organizations. Some reports cited bombs, some rockets, some naval gunfire for the destruction of the runways, but nobody bothered to do a simple Google search to turn up this interesting purpose-built munition, the BLU-107 Durandal.

According to Wikipedia, it works like this:

Durandal is designed to be dropped from low altitudes. The fall of the bomb is retarded by a parachute. When, due to the parachute action, the bomb is vertical, it fires a rocket booster that accelerates it into the runway surface. The bomb explodes after it has penetrated below the surface. This results in a large and difficult to repair crater in the runway.

Israel has used it to great effect before.

A predecessor to Durandal was developed jointly by France and Israel during the 1960s to destroy air base runways. The weapon was used to devastating effect by the Israelis during the Six Day War.

One of these days, the Arab nations surrounding Israel are going to realize that they are still militarily no match for the IDF. As the situation in Lebanon continues to escalate and Syria becomes a more likely target, they might find out sooner rather than later.