Request to fit B-2 bombers with bunker busting bombs raises questions on Iran John Byrne

Published: Thursday October 25, 2007



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Print This Email This It's just what the White House would need to bomb Iran -- money to modify stealth B-2 bombers to carry a bunker-busting bomb. Buried in the White House's $196 billion emergency funding request for Iraq and Afghanistan is a line that has some analysts watching the prospect of an Iran strike concerned: $88 million to modify US jets so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator. According to ABC News' Jonathan Karl, the one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to "an urgent operational need from theater commanders." Karl called CENTCOM to ask what the "urgent" need was for an article published Wednesday. CENTCOM said they'd look into it but never called back. Last month, a national security source told The London Times that the Pentagon has "drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians military capability in three days." According to the paper, a Washington source said the "temperature was rising" to launch an Iranian attack inside the Bush administration. This information comes on the heels of reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency last week that cited "significant cooperation" with Iran over its nuclear program, including the slowing of uranium enrichment. The most recent report by the nuclear watchdog agency, however, said that Iran was three to eight years away from building a bomb. Northrop Grumman, which developed the bomb in concert with Boeing starting in 2002, announced earlier this year that they'd begun integrating the bomb with B-2s in July. "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 AFB, Ohio," the company wrote in a July 19 release. "The new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), which is being developed by The Boeing Company, is a GPS-guided weapon containing more than 5,300 pounds of conventional explosives inside a 20.5-foot long enclosure of hardened steel," the release added. "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." ABC notes that there appear to be few targets such a weapon would be useful for in Iraq. It could be used on Taliban or Qaeda targets in Pakistan caves, though there'd be scant need for a stealth bomber. "You'd use it on Natanz," John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org told ABC, referring to a site inside Iran. "And you'd use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly." "It's kind of strange," Pike said. "It sends a signal that you are preparing to bomb Iran, and if you were actually going to bomb Iran I wouldn't think you would want to announce it like that." Assuming Northrop's seven-month contract began in July, the project would be complete in January.

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