Why Not Drop Two?

Jan 29, 2012 by James

The men over at the Pentagon who are paid by the American tax payer to think up battle strategies has concluded that the largest non nuclear bomb in our arsenal isn’t big enough. According to officials who were briefed on the details the largest bomb isn’t quite capable of destroying Iran’s heavily fortified nuclear mountain retreat nor the rest of Iran’s hardened underground structures. The solution? The Pentagon put in a not so top secret request for an even larger bomb.

GBU-57A/B better known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) is a huge precision guided 30,000 bomb. It is officially classified as a bunker buster but this is more of a bunker destroyer compared to the tiny 5,000 pound bunker buster that previously was the biggest. This bomb was designed from the ground up to level Iran and North Korea’s hardened nuclear and military facilities (sometimes the same thing) without using nuclear weapons to do so. The Air Force currently has roughly 20 of the 15 ton weapons and a 2007 upgrade to the B2 stealth bomber fleet ensured that they could carry a payload of two of the mega-bombs. The current cost estimates have the project at a cool $330 million.

The bomb however isn’t even remotely secret and both Iran and North Korean leaders have access to Wikipedia which tells them the bomb was made to blow holes in their most secure locations. Analysts however have deduced that the bomb can likely no longer penetrate those hardened facilities it was originally designed to take out because of the depth of the location and increased fortifications. These doubts led to the Pentagon submitting a request to Congress outside the normal budget for more funding. In the request they state that the money would be used to increase the bombs ability to penetrate soil, rock and steel before exploding. The upgrades would cost an additional $82 million which brings me to the question I posed in the title.

Why Not Drop Two?

If the Air Force already spent an incredible amount of money updating the B2 bomber fleet specifically so that it could house two of these giant bombs then why aren’t Pentagon war planners suggesting we just drop another one down the same hole the first one went through? This is the plague that wears down our military and ensures that we spend about a trillion dollars on defense every year. We buy twenty of the things but when we see that one bomb won’t destroy the whole facility we just request, and eventually buy, a bigger bomb. If something doesn’t do it right the first time the Pentagon just throws more money at it.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal Thursday, acknowledged the bomb’s shortcomings against some of Iran’s deepest bunkers. He said more development work would be done and that he expected the bomb to be ready to take on the deepest bunkers soon. “We’re still trying to develop them,” Mr. Panetta said.

Why are we trying to develop a bigger bomb when two of the current bombs with a combined explosive amount of 10,600 pounds would cause twice the damage and likely achieve the original goal of destroying any facility?

Should a decision be made to use the MOP as currently configured, it could cause “a lot of damage” to Iran’s underground nuclear facilities but wouldn’t necessarily destroy them outright, Mr. Panetta said.

The American solution is always to be as simple as possible and that means only dropping one bomb so that our precious B2 isn’t hanging in Iranian airspace forever but then what was the point of that upgrade to allow them to carry two? It boggles my mind that instead of saving millions on enhancements and repairs in a time when the government, including the Pentagon, say they want to tighten their belts they decide to purchase an expensive upgrade that might not even work.

The official said some Pentagon war planners believe conventional bombs won’t be effective against Fordow and that a tactical nuclear weapon may be the only military option if the goal is to destroy the facility. “Once things go into the mountain, then really you have to have something that takes the mountain off,” the official said.

As if we weren’t already the bad guy of the world I am pretty sure that dropping a nuclear bomb onto a nuclear facility would seal our fate even if it was to prevent Iran from getting the very bomb we just dropped on them. I don’t even think the nuclear option is on the table as a plausible idea and I assume that is why we keep opting for these massive bunker busters. I’m sure that in their minds once we stop developing conventional bombs to handle the target the only option we will have left is a nuclear one. I guess when you’re paid to think up big solutions to big problems you forget that you can forget that you have more than one giant bunker buster.