Trump’s Got a Mega-Bomb Designed to Hit North Korea

The Daily Beast ^ | April 19, 2017 | David Axe

[kevcol]

In 2004, the Pentagon began development of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 15-ton conventional bomb specifically designed to collapse all but the deepest buried facilities in Iran and North Korea.

MOP was ready for combat in 2011. Each of the Air Force's 20 B-2 stealth bombers based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri can carry two of the 21-foot-long munitions.

[kevcol]

[glorgau]

It’s YUGE!

[HarleyLady27]

IF North Korea is dumb enough to try and hit America, then let the ‘dogs of hell’ loose ... meantime, let China, Japan and South Korea handle this... just MHO...

[Jimmy Valentine]

Drop it on the 4th of July. “Hey Fatso, catch!”.

[RayChuang88]

The GBU-57A/B weighs 31,000 lbs., the heaviest conventional bomb ever built (about 9,000 more than the British Grand Slam bomb built by Vickers). When MOP hits the target with JDAM-level accuracy and explodes a couple of hundred feet below the ground, most bunkers are no longer safe.

[Reno89519]

Save one for Mecca.

[DungeonMaster]

These things make those Army issued Entrenching Tools seem a little weak.

[bassmaner]

Save Ivy Mike for Mecca.

[bigbob]

Drop that sucker right in the middle of Fatboi’s rice bowl!

[nhbob1]

I seem to recall reading that they were making some of these deep penetrator bombs using old artillery barrels for the casing. Not sure if those were one off proof-of-concept tests or if those were production.

[CARTOUCHE]

April 26/27

[Yosemitest]

Bill Clinton's appeasement is coming home to roost.

At 30,000 pounds, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator packs brute force and advanced features meant to enable it to destroy Iran's most fortified nuclear site.
The bomb is nearly a third bigger than the MOAB, or so-called "Mother of all Bombs," the 22,000-pound previous generation of bunker busters first built in 2003 ... .
Officials are confident the newest bunker-buster can dismantle even the deepest and most fortified nuclear facility.

... The new and improved MOP, has adjusted fuses to maximize its burrowing power, upgraded guidance systems to improve its precision and high-tech equipment intended to allow it to evade ... air defenses in order to reach and destroy the ... nuclear enrichment complex ...

According to the website of defense contractor and maker Boeing, the MOP includes a GPS navigation system and more than 5,300 pounds of explosives. It measures 20 feet long and is “designed specifically to attack hardened concrete bunkers and tunnel facilities.”

... "It gives us a far greater capability to reach and destroy an enemy's weapons of mass destruction that are located in well protected underground facilities... to a magnitude far greater than we have now," Pentagon Spokesman Capt. John Kirby said.

... "The system is not aimed at any one country, it's to develop a capability we believe we need," Kirby said. ...

[stylin19a]

I’d let the NORKS know how stealthy we can be...take out the USS Pueblo surgically...nothing else gets harmed.

[maddog55]

I prefer one and done..

[Axenolith]

Iowa class battleship gun tubes. I think the used them in GWI

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Kiss your pampered American lifestyle good-bye if that thing ever gets dropped.

[xone]

I seem to recall reading that they were making some of these deep penetrator bombs using old artillery barrels for the casing. Not sure if those were one off proof-of-concept tests or if those were production.

Initially used the old barrels but new production has purpose built cases, GBU-28

[nonsporting]

Iowa class battleship gun tubes. I think the[y] used them in GWI

WWII.

USS Iowa

[maddog55]

I’m not the pampered type...