New Bunker Busters

New Bunker Busters
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2007-08-14 16:25. Iran

By Andrew Schoerke

In case anyone missed it, Northrop Grumman announced in a little noticed July 19 press release, that the company had begun refitting B-2's with new bomb racks to hold and deliver a new 30,000-pound penetrator bomb or "bunker buster." Using the monster bunker buster, the company said in its release, the U.S. Air Force's B-2 Stealth bomber would be able to attack and destroy an expanded set of hardened, deeply buried military targets. "It is the first step in helping the Air Force make this new weapon available for operational use on the B-2" according to Dave Mazur, Northrop-Grumman VP " The company is doing the work under a seven-month, $2.5 million contract, awarded June 1, by the Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Northrop Grumman is the Air Force's prime contractor on the B-2, the flagship of the nation's long-range strike arsenal. The new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), which is being developed by the Boeing Co., is a Global Positioning System (GPS)-guided weapon containing more than 5,300 pounds of conventional explosives inside a 20.5-foot-long enclosure of hardened steel. It is designed to penetrate dirt, rock and reinforced concrete to reach enemy bunker or tunnel installations. The B-2 is capable of carrying two MOPs, one in each weapons bay. the Air Force is expected to make a decision later this year on whether to develop a limited operational capability for the MOP, or to proceed with a more comprehensive development program.

Also, on July 14, 2006, physorg.com reported that Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Dallas was developing a similar super-bomb for the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The Design would build on the Navy's work on high-speed torpedoes that reduces friction by creating a gas bubble called a super cavity. The design goal of the Lockheed Martin supercavitating bomb is that will break through 25 feet of concrete or nearly 100 feet of earth, ten times the penetration of the 4,000 pound GBU-28, the bunker buster currently in the USAF inventory. Lockheed Martin reported, at that time, that it expected four prototype weapons to be ready by for treating by late 2006.

Comment: It appears that these two weapons projects were initiated last Spring to develop a conventional bomb that would achieve the same result as a nuclear weapon. If the reported contract refitting time is accurate, the MOP would become operational around 1 February, 2008. In the July 10, 2006 issue of The New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh reported that "In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges."

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/25804

Just wondering.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Without much doubt, such a posture would be how it begins.