By Marina Malenic
The Defense Department could field an air-dropped massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) by July 2010, the Air Force said last week.
The 30,000-pound MOP is designed to strike deeply buried, concrete-encased bunkers like those Iran is suspected to have.
In order to speed the effort, the administration last month asked for a $68 million funding shift to the program. The congressional defense committees are considering the request.
Since 2004, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), in combination with the Air Force Research Labs (AFRL), has been developing the weapon and has thus far conducted flight test demonstrations on the B-52, according to the Air Force. The MOP program originally was a two-year effort, but funding decisions resulted in the schedule being stretched to four years in the Fiscal Year 2010 President’s Budget, with development beginning in FY ’10.
“The current reprogramming request reflects the Department’s belief that the MOP tech demo is ready to transition to the development phase of the acquisition process,” Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Karen Platt said via e-mail. “With this funding, the concept developed by DTRA and AFRL could be available by July 10.”
Traditional general-purpose weapons in the Air Force arsenal range in the 250- to 5,000-pound class. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB) is larger than MOP in dimension; however, the MOP outweighs the GBU-43/B by about 6,000 pounds.
DTRA has built and expended three test weapons, according to Platt. She said that DTRA has spent approximately $60 million on the MOP technology demonstrator program since 2004 and, starting in 2007, the Air Force has funded approximately $24 million for the integration of MOP onto the B-2 aircraft through congressional adds and internal reprogramming.
The 20-foot-long MOP is built to be dropped from either the B-52 Stratofortress or the stealthy B-2 bomber. No other platforms are being considered for integration, according to the Air Force.