|
Meet the Boeing "MOP": Massive Ordnance Penetrator
Edited for brevity.As U.S. concern about the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran have grown, weapons designers have been working on bombs capable of destroying those countries' underground nuclear sites. Some nuclear facilities in both countries are believed to be buried deep, so U.S. designers including some from Boeing are developing a new class of bombs for plowing through hundreds of feet of earth and concrete before detonating. The latest of these weapons is the MOP short for Massive Ordnance Penetrator built by Boeing's Advanced Systems unit in St. Louis. The 20-foot-long bomb that weighs 30,000 pounds much heavier than the 21,000-pound MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Burst bomb, unveiled in the prelude to the Iraq war. The MOP is an unusual bomb in that more than 80 percent of its 15 tons is in its casing, while it carries only 5,300 pounds of explosive payload. The MOP was successfully tested earlier this month at White Sands, N.M. A Boeing handout last week made clear the weapon's likely targets: "The weapon's effectiveness against hard and deeply buried targets allows the warfighter to hold adversaries' most highly valued military facilities at risk, especially those protecting weapons of mass destruction," said Bob McClurg, Boeing Advanced Systems MOP program manager. At Wired magazine's defense blog, Danger Room, David Hambling says that the MOP has much more penetrating power than military's best current non-nuclear option, the 5,000-pound BLU-113, which can penetrate 22 feet of concrete: MOP will go a lot deeper 200 feet of 5,000 psi concrete. MOP pulls it off by not being all that explosive less than 20% by weight, compared to almost 90% for the MOAB. That's because bunker-busting bombs need very thick casings to survive the effects of impact. Posted by: Dar 2007-04-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=185042 |