28.09.2024 - 11:50 [ Wired ]

Bump: Mother Of All Bunker Busters Detonated

(Mar 27, 2007)

The U.S. just detonated an absolutely enormous bomb, in an underground test: a king-sized bunker-buster, six times larger than what‘s currently in the American arsenal.

No, it‘s not the famed Divine Strake, but something else entirely…
You may remember the GBU-43 MOAB – Massive Ordnance Air Burst (or ‘Mother Of All Bombs’) the 21,000-pound megabomb that was wheeled out before Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now MOAB is to get an even bigger sibling, the MOP, or Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

It‘s a 30,000-pound weapon, designed to strike targets too deep or too hard for the biggest bunker-buster America‘s got, the 5,000-pound BLU-113. It can go through some 22 feet of concrete or over 100 feet of earth. MOP will go a lot deeper – 200 feet of 5,000 psi concrete.