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ANNE GEARAN
October 13, 2009 - 4:49PM AP The Pentagon is speeding up delivery of a colossal bomb designed to
destroy hidden weapons bunkers buried underground and shielded by
4,500kg of reinforced concrete.
Call it Plan B for dealing with Iran, which recently revealed a
long-suspected nuclear site deep inside a mountain near the holy city of
Qom. The 15-tonne behemoth - called the "massive ordnance penetrator," or MOP
- will be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal and carry
2,400kg of explosives. The bomb is about 10 times more powerful than the weapon it is designed
to replace. The Pentagon has awarded a nearly $US52 million ($A57.34 million)
contract to speed up placement of the bomb aboard the B-2 Stealth
bomber. Officials say it could be in place next year. Pentagon officials acknowledge that the new bomb is intended to blow up
fortified sites like those used by Iran and North Korea for their
nuclear programs but deny there is a specific target in mind. "I don't think anybody can divine potential targets," Pentagon press
secretary Geoff Morrell said. "This is just a capability that we think is necessary, given the world
we live in." The Obama administration has struggled to counter suspicions lingering
from George W Bush's presidency that the United States is either
planning to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities itself or would look the
other way if Israel did the same. The administration has been careful not to take military action off the
table even as it reached out to Iran with historic talks earlier this month. Tougher sanctions are the immediate backup if diplomacy fails to stop
what the West fears is a drive for a nuclear weapon. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently said a strike against Iran's
nuclear facilities would probably only buy time. Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has called a strike an option he doesn't
want to use. The new US bomb would be the culmination of planning that began in the
Bush years. The Obama administration's plans to bring the bomb on line
more quickly indicate that the weapon is still part of the long-range
backup plan. "Without going into any intelligence, there are countries that have used
technology to go further underground and to take those facilities and
make them hardened," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. "This is not a new phenomenon but it is a growing one." After testing began in 2007, development of the bomb was slowed by about
two years because of budgetary issues, Whitman said, and the
administration moved last northern summer to return to the previous
schedule. North Korea, led by Kim Jong Il, is a known nuclear weapons state and
has exploded working devices underground. The United States and other countries have offered to buy out that
country's weapons program. The Obama administration is trying to lure
Pyongyang back to the bargaining table after a walkout last year. Iran is a more complex case, for both diplomatic and technical reasons. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claims its nuclear program is
peaceful and meant only to produce energy but the West suspects a covert
bomb program that may be only a year or so away from fruition. The MOP could, in theory, take out bunkers such as those Saddam Hussein
had begun to construct for weapons programs in Iraq, or flatten the kind
of cave and tunnel networks that allowed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
to escape US assault in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, shortly after the US
invasion in 2001. The precision-guided bomb is designed to drill through earth and almost
any underground encasement to reach weapons depots, labs or hideouts.
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