The U.S. Air Force has delayed by at least three years the fielding date of a smart fuze for the Boeing [BA] GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)–a 20-foot, 30,000-pound munition to destroy hard and deeply buried targets (HDBTs) such as bunkers and tunnels.
In fiscal 2022, “the Air Force conducted three full-scale performance tests of the Large Penetrator Smart Fuze (LPSF) integrated into the MOP and began subscale lethality testing,” per the DoD Directorate of Operational Testing and Evaluation (DOT&E) fiscal 2022 report. “The Air Force has postponed fielding of the LPSF-enabled MOP from FY22 to at least FY25 due to delays in constructing the required target surrogates.”
The Northrop Grumman [NOC] B-2A Spirit stealth bomber is the only Air Force aircraft “programmed” to carry the MOP, DOT&E said.
Boeing received a $70 million contract for MOP procurement in September 2021, another $70 million contract in September 2019, and a nearly $21 million contract for a MOP buy in February 2018. In addition, in October 2019, the Air Force awarded Superior Forge & Steel Corp. in Lima, Ohio and Ellwood National Forge in Irvine, Pa., up to $90 million contracts to build MOP BLU-J 27C/B Penetrator warhead case assemblies and associated components.
First tested a decade and a half ago, MOP is a successor to the 5,000-pound Raytheon Technologies’ [RTX] GBU-28 “bunker buster,” initially used in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The Air Force used the GBU-28, carried by the B-2 and the Boeing F-15E, during the Kosovo air war in 1999 and more recently during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Another planned follow-on to the GBU-28 is the GPS-guided GBU-72 Advanced 5,000-pound Penetrator, test fired for the first time by an Air Force 96th Test Wing F-15E in October 2021 (Defense Daily, Oct. 14, 2021). Albuquerque-based Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) was the prime contractor for the GBU-72’s BLU-138 test warhead, and Superior Forge & Steel and Cincinnati-based Faxon Machining were subcontractors,
The BLU-138/GBU-72 is the result of a 2014 Hard Target Munitions Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) and has been in development by the Air Force since 2017.
The GBU-57 became a major defense acquisition ACAT 1C program in August 2017. The Air Force created the LPSF Quick Reaction Capability (QRC) effort the following August in response to an Urgent Operational Need validated in July 2018.
“The LPSF integrates advanced smart fuze capability into the MOP warhead, providing increased probability of kill against HDBTs by mitigating the risk of target intelligence uncertainty,” DOT&E said in its fiscal 2022 report.
L3Harris‘ [LHX] L3 Fuzing and Ordnance Systems in Cincinnati has been a subcontractor to Boeing on LPSF.
In fiscal 2021, “the Air Force Program Executive Officer for Weapons pulled funds from the full-scale LPSF MOP testing due to contract award delays and significant Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) target construction overruns,” the report said. “In FY22, target construction was further delayed by pandemic-induced supply and labor shortages, and the loss of scheduling priority status at the test range. Based on current funding options, the LPSF MOP fielding will begin in FY25 or later.”
DOT&E said that the Air Force dropped MOPs from the B-2 for the second and third times during live fire tests in November 2021 and last May.
DOT&E, in its fiscal 2022 report, advised the Air Force to “revalidate the Urgent Operational Need requirement for the LPSF QRC against legacy and pacing threats” and to finish the LPSF testing “to validate the ability of MOP to meet Combatant Command requirements.”
In addition, DOT&E said that DTRA should “evaluate and expedite the contracting and test plan review processes to minimize delays to target construction and test execution.”