Pentagon delays ‘bunker buster’ bomb project
Web posted at: 12/20/2009 1:21:46
Source ::: REUTERS
WASHINGTON: A “bunker buster” bomb with more than 10 times the explosive power of its predecessor will be put into service by the United States next December, six months later than previously scheduled, the US Defense Department said yesterday.
The deployment’s timing may help shape calculations of the United States and others in long-running standoffs with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programmes.
The precision-guided, 13,636 kg Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, is designed to destroy potential targets such as deeply buried nuclear facilities that are beyond the reach of existing bombs.
“Funding delays and enhancements to the planned test schedule have pushed the capability availability date to December 2010,” Tara Rigler, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in an email.
Congress agreed to a Pentagon request, made public in August, to shift fiscal 2009 budget funds to speed the bomb’s tie-in to the radar-evading B-2 bomber, the most advanced in the US arsenal.
At the time, Andy Bourland, an Air Force spokesman, had said the Northrop Grumman Corp.-built B-2 would be capable of carrying the bomb, built by Boeing Co, by July 2010.
In disclosing the new deployment target, the Defense Department specified it did not plan to use older B-52 Stratofortress bombers as an “operational delivery platform” for the MOP, which will be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal.
MOP testing is being carried out by the Air Force and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is responsible for safeguarding the United States and its allies from weapons of mass destruction.
The bomb’s fourth flight test was successfully completed on Tuesday at White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico, using a B-52 and an “inert” MOP, Rigler said.
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