The Air Force’s bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) is ready to go today, if necessary, Secretary Michael Donley said yesterday.
Donley told a Capitol Hill breakfast that in addition to being ready to deploy the air-dropped MOP today, the Air Force continues to improve it.
“If it needed to go today, we would be ready to do that,” Donley said. “We’ve continued to do testing on the MOP to refine its capabilities and that is ongoing. We also have the capability to go with the existing configuration today.”
Donley’s address was part of Peter Huessy’s 2012 Air Force Association, National Defense Industrial Association and Reserve Officers of America Congressional Breakfast Seminar Series.
The 30,000-pound, 20-foot long MOP is designed to strike deeply buried, concrete-encased bunkers with over two tons of explosives. The MOP is built to be dropped at high altitudes and, according to Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Mary Danner-Jones, is only on the B-2 bomber.
The MOP is developed by Boeing [BA] while the B-2 was built by Northrop Grumman [NOC].