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Pentagon's 30,000-pound bunker-buster 'superbomb' ready for use
A mock up of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator sits in bomb bay of the B-2 weapons load trainer at Whitman Air Force Base, Missouri
The biggest conventional bomb ever developed is ready to wreak destruction upon the enemies of the US. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said its record-breaking bunker-buster has become operational after years of testing.
¬"If it needed to go today, we would be ready to do that," told Donley Air Force Times. "We continue to do testing on the bomb to refine its capabilities, and that is ongoing. We also have the capability to go with existing configuration today."
The Pentagon has spent $330 million to develop and deliver more than 20 of the precision-guided Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker-busters, which are designed to blast through up to 200 feet of concrete.
Although there has previously been a bigger nuclear device, the new conventional rocket is six times the weight of the previous bunker-buster used by the US Air Force, and carries an explosive payload of 5,300 pounds.
US military chiefs openly admitted the weapon was built to attack the fortified nuclear facilities of "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea. Although the Pentagon insists that it is not aimed at a specific threat, unnamed officials within the ministry have repeatedly claimed the bomb is being tailor-made to disable Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo, or at least to intimidate Tehran.
Iran is working at breakneck speed to expand its Fordo uranium enrichment facility, which is built inside a mountain in the heart of the country, and has previously been declared "impregnable" by senior officials in Tehran. Iran has often paraded its fast-advancing nuclear program, while denying that it intends to build a nuclear bomb.
