USAF eyes world's largest bomb for B-2A Spirit

By Stephen Trimble JDW Americas Bureau Chief
Washington, DC

The US Air Force (USAF) may prepare the world's largest bomb - the Boeing Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) - for action aboard the Northrop Grumman B-2A Spirit by the end of 2007.

The Air Armament Center said on 17 January that it is "contemplating a quick-reaction capability" to integrate the 20 ft (6 m)-long, 30,000 lb-class (13,600 kg) weapon on the B-2A in a nine-month period starting after contract award.

In July 2006, the Air Force Research Laboratory announced a plan to have Boeing demonstrate the bomb's ability to destroy hard and deeply buried targets before August 2007 and to use the data to inform a decision on whether to launch an acquisition programme in Fiscal Year 2008. Boeing is also developing a special carriage release system for the weapon.

i think that since the us is unable to test n-weapons it is trying to make do with conventional weapons which cause massive amounts of destruction and even experimenting with tactical nukes.

Anyone else thinking that this is part of the "get tough on Iran" - PR campaing?

Past year we heard some wild rumours about plans to use small tactical nukes on deeply-buried targets and it caused so much uproar that it had to be dropped, at least publicly. Well these conventional "super-bombs" could do somewhat the same without all the bad taste of radiation and political fallout.

Seriously talking, any modern army needs effective bunker busting-weapons, as everyone is digging deep with growing expertise to keep their assets safe.

Still, without precise location of these deeply-buried complexes you can't do much even with nukes. Extrapolating (yeah, I know that might give misleading results) from previous conflicts, atleast the US intelligence hasn't always been up to the task.