Eitan Riddoch

2016-03-03 03:18:54 -0500

From reddit’s /r/israel user tayaravininkin



“This source is wrong.

The BLU -109 is a penetration bomb, but it’s not the bomb that was denied to Israel. Israel uses the BLU -109, as noted here. They claim it was “identical or similar”, but they’re not similar. The BLU -109 is a 2,000 pound bomb. The real bomb that they denied to Israel is a 30,000 pound bomb, 15x as heavy.

The BLU -109 can penetrate “4-6 feet of reinforced concrete”. The real bomb that they denied to Israel can penetrate “60 feet of reinforced concrete”. It can penetrate 10x deeper.

They’d know they were wrong if they actually followed the links they put in their own story.

The bomb that was denied to Israel is called the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator”, as they mention here in their own link. It’s also known as the GBU -57A/B. It was not given to Israel but was considered for giving to Israel after the Iran deal.

This was decided against for two reasons:

1) Israel doesn’t even really want it, as noted here. The reason it doesn’t want it is because it doesn’t have the planes to actually carry the bomb, which is too heavy for Israel’s planes.

2) For Israel to be able to carry it requires a transfer of B-52s, but Israel doesn’t have the infrastructure to use it. Even if it did, it would violate the New START treaty that the US made with Russia, since the US is not allowed to transfer heavy bomber planes to third parties, and B-52s qualify. Otherwise, the US would have to convert the planes to only be good for conventional weaponry, which is annoying and costly. So basically, the US would have to convert planes, transfer them, transfer the bomb, and Israel would need the infrastructure for them.

So not only is this source wrong, it completely misstates why Israel didn’t get the MOP , which isn’t the bomb that was sold to Turkey.

I suggest you delete this embarrassing article."

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