The Air Force has needs, baby. Operational needs. That’s what Lieutenant Colonel Jack Miller is saying, and among the things that the military is just begging for are eight 30,000-pound bombs.
And, God bless America, those needs are getting fulfilled.Miller says that the creation of the first 15-ton, GPS-guided “bunker buster” bomb was finished back in September and now the Air Force has the first of the warheads in its possession while a $32 million contract inked this summer with Boeing will soon give the Military an arsenal of eight in all. The “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” or MOP, is designed to penetrate and obliterate subterranean targets and can topple underground bunkers where insurgents and foreign enemies plan clandestine strikes against America and its allies. Speaking to Bloomberg News, Lt. Miller says that the procurement of the eight bombs will satisfy the “operational needs” of the Air Force. The Air Force first began development of the bomb back in 2004 after inking a deal with Boeing and three years later Northrop Grumman began finding ways to integrate the weapon with B-2 bombers. A single B-2 can carry two MOP warheads, which combines accounts for over 10,600 pounds of explosive material. The B-2 itself is designed to elude foreign intelligence and can evade radar. In a 2009 report from the Pentagon, Comptroller Robert Hale wrote that there was "an urgent operational need for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high- threat environments," to which top-brass in the US Military added that insurgencies in Asia and the Middle East “identified the need to expedite" the bomb program.Military spokespeople have yet to confirm how many of the eight bombs have been delivered to Air Force personnel — or the intended targets — though RT reported earlier in the week that Obama administration insiders have leaked that the White House is trying to finalize a deal with the United Aram Emirates to deliver 500 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles and 4,900 “smart bombs” to Abu Dhabi in order to combat Iran should their nuclear program intensify to a point where American intervention is deemed necessary. Last week White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the administration was “looking at additional ways to apply pressure on Iran,” and with the procurement of eight bombs capable of creating a crater in the Earth, the delivery of some MOPs overseas could be likely. According to an official description posted on the website of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and US Strategic Command, a single 20-foot-long MOP “will defeat our adversaries’ WMD before they leave the ground.”In a 2007 article published on the website of the US Air Force, details of the destructive weapon reveal that it can penetrate around 200 feet below the surface of the Earth before exploding."This awesome weapon reeks of strategic deterrence," Col. Bob Dulong of the 509th MXG commander says in the article. "America's enemies will know the destructive power of this weapon in our arsenal and they should modify their behavior, lest they learn of this weapon from firsthand experience." The MOP is ten times more powerful than its predecessor, the BLU-190, and twice as heavy as the “daisy cutter” bombs that were used in Vietnam and Tora Bora.