Pentagon buying more bombs for destroying underground nuclear arsenal

WASHINGTON – The US just ordered a lot more of the bombs tailored formissions of “reaching and destroying our adversaries’ weapons of massdestruction located in well-protected facilities,” scenarios that call tomind potential military foes like Iran or North Korea.

The Pentagon is paying Boeing for about $21 million worth of MassiveOrdnance Penetrator bombs, the largest bomb in the US arsenal not packing anuclear punch. The 33,000-pound MOP outweighs the “Mother of All Bombs”by about 10,000 pounds and is intended for targets in caves or undergroundtunnels or bunkers. The US Air Force’s B-2 Spirit bomber can carryabout two at a time.

The number of munitions to be procured was not disclosed.

The February 8 contract announcement follows an apparently successfulupgrade of the bomb in late January, the fourth such round of upgrades thebombs have received. The modification “improved the weapon’s performanceagainst hard and deeply buried targets,” a US Air Force spokesman toldBloomberg.

The GPS-guided weapon is “designed to accomplish a difficult complicatedmissions or reaching and destroying our adversaries’ weapons of massdestruction located in well-protected facilities,” according to an AirForce fact sheet summary on the weapon.

It is not known if the bomb is currently deployed on US planes around theworld.

One pilot has described the joys of dropping the weapon from a B-2. “Whatis exciting is when we release our 30,000-pound MOP, the Massive OrdnancePenetrator,” Lt. Col. Justin Grieve told the Kansas City Star last month.”When you release that, you can feel it. The plane will actually raiseup about 100 feet, and then it’ll settle back down. It’s pretty cool. It’spretty fun.”

The bomb is more than 20 feet long and almost three feet in diameter.

In addition to Iran and North Korea, China is reported to have a 3,100-miletunnel network where the People’s Liberation Army’s strategic missileforces are quite active. The Jamestown Foundation said that Chinese statemedia reports describe the network as the “underground Great Wall.”