DoD to rush deployment of 30,000 lb. bomb
Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
In what could be seen as a message to Iran and North Korea, the U.S. Department of Defense is looking to speed the development of the largest bomb ever used by the United States, in hopes of having the massive device ready for deployment in July, 2010.
The device, weighing in at a stunning 30,000 lbs., is designed to penetrate through hardened surfaces and destroy underground structures.
“The department has asked for reprogramming of about 68 million dollars to start production for some of these in 2009,” Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman said. “This will help it accelerate some if it’s approved.”
That $68 million will have to be approved by Congress first.
At 20-feet long, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” weighs in at 30,000 pounds and carries 5,300 pounds of explosives. It is designed to be delivered by Northrup Grumman’s B-2 aircraft and can theoretically penetrate over 200 feet of dry earth before detonating.
The “MOP” is seen as a potential weapon against nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea that are mostly buried underground. The Obama administration, carrying almost exactly the same stance as the prior government, has demanded that both countries abandon their nuclear programs and refused to rule out possible military action.
Whitman declined to say whether the move was designed to prepare for a possible strike against Iran, saying the Pentagon since 2004 had been looking at developing weapons “that would allow us to go after more hardened, more deeply buried targets.”
Obama’s ‘Divine Strake’?
To apt news consumers, the “MOP” program should sound vaguely familiar.
In February, 2007, after nearly a year of civilian pushback in the media and frequent protest by Nevada residents, the George W. Bush administration canceled plans to detonate the largest conventional bomb known to man.
They called it “Divine Strake” — a device carrying 700 tons of heavy ammonium nitrate fuel oil emulsion, which would have been detonated some 11 miles underground by a 300 lb. charge of C4 explosive.
The purpose of such a massive bomb would have been to determine the minimum explosive yield required to destroy an underground, hardened facility; exactly what the “MOP” can allegedly accomplish. The decision to use conventional explosives came after congress blocked the Bush administration’s desire to develop new bunker-busting, miniature nuclear weapons.
Though the “Divine Strake” was supposed to be non-nuclear, it was scheduled to be tested at the U.S. government’s Nevada Test Site where hundreds of above-ground nuclear experiments have been conducted before. Nevada citizens who live down-wind from the site filed a lawsuit to delay the test, claiming the detonation would launch radioactive debris into the air, posing a threat to their health.
“The Defense Threat Reduction Agency had considered moving the test to China Lake, Calif.; a gravel quarry in Mitchell, Indiana; then to the White Sands Missile Range, N.M.; and then to Dugway Proving Ground in western Utah, yet because of questionable geological activity in those areas, the site could come back to the NTS north of Las Vegas, Nev.,” reported The Lone Star Iconoclast.
The Crawford, Texas paper added: “The Divine Strake blast would be 280 times more powerful than the explosion that decimated the Oklahoma City federal building in the early 1990s and about 50 times stronger than the most powerful known conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal.”
Though the “MOP” will be the largest bomb ever used by the United States, it comes in 14,000 lbs. smaller than the “T12,” the so-called “earthquake bomb,” which was never used. By contrast, it is designed to be 10 times more powerful than its predecessor, which checks in at just under 6,000 lbs.
On Feb. 22, 2007, activist group “Stop Divine Strake” closed its online campaign against the government’s planned test following an announcement that the detonation would not go forward.
Just over one month later, on March 27, 2007, the Department of Defense tested the “MOP” in New Mexico, according to UPI.
Military officials have been asking for the weapon since at least 2004.
“Northrop Grumman started integrating the MOP to the B-2 in July 2007,” the Air Force said in Dec., 2007. “The B-2 will be able to carry two MOPs, one in each bay, which will be mounted to the existing forward and aft mounting hardware currently in the B-2.”
“Both the U.S. Pacific Command, which takes the lead in U.S. military planning for North Korea, and the Central Command, which prepares for contingencies with Iran, appeared to be backing the acceleration request, said Kenneth Katzman, an expert on Iran at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress,” noted European publication Adelaide Daily.
“It’s very possible that the Pentagon wants to send a signal to various countries, particularly Iran and North Korea, that the United States is developing a viable military option against their nuclear programs,” Katzman told the Daily.
Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
In what could be seen as a message to Iran and North Korea, the U.S. Department of Defense is looking to speed the development of the largest bomb ever used by the United States, in hopes of having the massive device ready for deployment in July, 2010.
The device, weighing in at a stunning 30,000 lbs., is designed to penetrate through hardened surfaces and destroy underground structures.
“The department has asked for reprogramming of about 68 million dollars to start production for some of these in 2009,” Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman said. “This will help it accelerate some if it’s approved.”
That $68 million will have to be approved by Congress first.
At 20-feet long, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” weighs in at 30,000 pounds and carries 5,300 pounds of explosives. It is designed to be delivered by Northrup Grumman’s B-2 aircraft and can theoretically penetrate over 200 feet of dry earth before detonating.
The “MOP” is seen as a potential weapon against nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea that are mostly buried underground. The Obama administration, carrying almost exactly the same stance as the prior government, has demanded that both countries abandon their nuclear programs and refused to rule out possible military action.
Whitman declined to say whether the move was designed to prepare for a possible strike against Iran, saying the Pentagon since 2004 had been looking at developing weapons “that would allow us to go after more hardened, more deeply buried targets.”
Obama’s ‘Divine Strake’?
To apt news consumers, the “MOP” program should sound vaguely familiar.
In February, 2007, after nearly a year of civilian pushback in the media and frequent protest by Nevada residents, the George W. Bush administration canceled plans to detonate the largest conventional bomb known to man.
They called it “Divine Strake” — a device carrying 700 tons of heavy ammonium nitrate fuel oil emulsion, which would have been detonated some 11 miles underground by a 300 lb. charge of C4 explosive.
The purpose of such a massive bomb would have been to determine the minimum explosive yield required to destroy an underground, hardened facility; exactly what the “MOP” can allegedly accomplish. The decision to use conventional explosives came after congress blocked the Bush administration’s desire to develop new bunker-busting, miniature nuclear weapons.
Though the “Divine Strake” was supposed to be non-nuclear, it was scheduled to be tested at the U.S. government’s Nevada Test Site where hundreds of above-ground nuclear experiments have been conducted before. Nevada citizens who live down-wind from the site filed a lawsuit to delay the test, claiming the detonation would launch radioactive debris into the air, posing a threat to their health.
“The Defense Threat Reduction Agency had considered moving the test to China Lake, Calif.; a gravel quarry in Mitchell, Indiana; then to the White Sands Missile Range, N.M.; and then to Dugway Proving Ground in western Utah, yet because of questionable geological activity in those areas, the site could come back to the NTS north of Las Vegas, Nev.,” reported The Lone Star Iconoclast.
The Crawford, Texas paper added: “The Divine Strake blast would be 280 times more powerful than the explosion that decimated the Oklahoma City federal building in the early 1990s and about 50 times stronger than the most powerful known conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal.”
Though the “MOP” will be the largest bomb ever used by the United States, it comes in 14,000 lbs. smaller than the “T12,” the so-called “earthquake bomb,” which was never used. By contrast, it is designed to be 10 times more powerful than its predecessor, which checks in at just under 6,000 lbs.
On Feb. 22, 2007, activist group “Stop Divine Strake” closed its online campaign against the government’s planned test following an announcement that the detonation would not go forward.
Just over one month later, on March 27, 2007, the Department of Defense tested the “MOP” in New Mexico, according to UPI.
Military officials have been asking for the weapon since at least 2004.
“Northrop Grumman started integrating the MOP to the B-2 in July 2007,” the Air Force said in Dec., 2007. “The B-2 will be able to carry two MOPs, one in each bay, which will be mounted to the existing forward and aft mounting hardware currently in the B-2.”
“Both the U.S. Pacific Command, which takes the lead in U.S. military planning for North Korea, and the Central Command, which prepares for contingencies with Iran, appeared to be backing the acceleration request, said Kenneth Katzman, an expert on Iran at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress,” noted European publication Adelaide Daily.
“It’s very possible that the Pentagon wants to send a signal to various countries, particularly Iran and North Korea, that the United States is developing a viable military option against their nuclear programs,” Katzman told the Daily.
