Bigger Bunker Buster for Iran
Or, Bigga Badda Boom.
What weighs 30,000 pounds, carries probably over three tons of HE (high explosives), and is the largest, heaviest conventional bomb ever made?
Answer: the US Air Force’s Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP. It can penetrate perhaps 200 feet or more of solid earth, concrete, or what-have-you before exploding. It has been in development for several years, and is now ready for prime time.
Do you think those seriously bad babies might be just the ticket for taking out Iran’s nuclear ambitions?
Apparently the Obama Administration does. Andy Bourland, US Air Force Spokesperson, told the press on Monday that if the Legislative Branch is okay with it, our B-2 Stealth Bomber could be retrofitted to carry such ordnance in 12 months. There was no doubt as to where and how they were to be used.
Could it be coincidence that the Brits are currently quoting 12 months for Iran to get a nuclear bomb and delivery system together?
Frankly, I think the timing is all lies and jest. There have been so many timetables for Iranian nuclear things that no time estimate is to be trusted.
And then there is the fact, not mentioned in the current smack talk against Iran, that the B2 currently can carry eight of the massive 5,000-pound GBU-37 bunker busters. Do we really need more than 5,000 pounds of superbomb to take out pretty much anything the Iranians are likely to have buried in the sand?
Perhaps. But in that case, we should consider that the new United States consolidated conventional/nuclear/chemical/biological Armed Forces very clearly does not differentiate between conventional and nuclear weapons. A lot of military people would love to see how our tactical nukes actually work on the battlefield.
Well, in any event, the MOP does provide significant funding for jobs in the US in whatever state(s) makes the bombs. And of course Northrop Grumman will be happy to get the stimulus money to retrofit the B2’s.
But really, why would it take 12 months to retrofit the B2’s? According to Stars and Stripes of January 5, 2008, engineers tested modifications to the B-2 bomber to carry two of the 30,000-pound bombs over a year and a half ago. On December 18, 2007, they test loaded a dummy version of the MOP into a mock-up of the B2 weapons bay. Could it possibly be that today’s stated timetable has a little ‘wriggle room’ in it?
Who knows? The important thing to take away from all this is the the US is rattling Iran’s cage pretty hard. Question is, are we bluffing… always a dangerous game… or are we serious?
Who can tell? Not me. And I’m guessing not Iran. Maybe not even we know for sure, because the collective ‘we’ of the US government includes some Admirals with awfully itchy trigger fingers.
Here at home, we’re keeping our pantry stocks up at maximum. But then, we pretty much always try to do that.
