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Oct 8, 2009
'Bunker buster' ready soon

WASHINGTON - THE Pentagon said on Wednesday a giant 'bunker buster' bomb will be ready within months, adding a powerful weapon to the US arsenal amid tensions over Iran's nuclear programme. The 30,000-pound (13,607kg) massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) is designed to knock out fortified sites buried deep underground, like those used by Iran and North Korea to protect its nuclear work. 'It is under development right now and should be deployable in the coming months,' press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters. The Defence Department had said in August it wanted to speed up production plans for the super bomb, asking Congress to shift funds to the project. Congress approved the request and the Pentagon announced on Friday it awarded McDonnell Douglas Corporation a US$51.9 million (S$73.7 million) contract to enable B-2 aircraft to carry the enormous MOP.

The bomb, which holds 5,300 pounds of explosives, is designed 'to defeat hardened facilities used by hostile states to protect weapons of mass destruction,' Mr Morrell said. But he declined to comment whether the weapon's development was in response to Iran's disputed nuclear programme. 'I don't think anybody can divine potential targets or anything of that nature. This is just a capability that we think is necessary given the world we live in these days,' he said. 'The reality is that the world we live in is one in which there are people who seek to build weapons of mass destruction and they seek to do so in a clandestine fashion.' -- AFP

[ZX3URrBH]

WTF USA up to this time !

[arriftell]

Lets see - what if I have my military facility 20 stories underground and above ground, I have a large mosque, a large orphanage and a children's hospital. Can you drop this bomb?

You drop that bomb and Al Jazeera will have pictures of dead baby girls, broken dolls. Arab countries will be up in arms not to mention US public.

[Taunteefrurge]

Lets see - what if I have my military facility 20 stories underground and above ground, I have a large mosque, a large orphanage and a children's hospital. Can you drop this bomb?

You drop that bomb and Al Jazeera will have pictures of dead baby girls, broken dolls. Arab countries will be up in arms not to mention US public.

point 1: What do you think the states has been doing for the past 50 years?
point 2: Do you really believe the states gives a shit about the rest of the world, leave alone the Arab world?

[arriftell]

Yes I think collateral damage is a BIG problem for the US.

US lost the Vietnam war precisely because of civilian deaths which:

1) polarized US public
2) strengthen resolve of Vietnamese

The "My Lai massacre", where a few hundred Vietnamese civilians were killed was credited as the turning point of the war for the US.

It is one think to take out 2 houses with a missile but a bomb of this size will flatten 2 city blocks. And if there are children there and US purposely bombs the site knowing that there are children there, the US media will have a field day.

50 years ago and today is very different. Media can be effectively censored 50 years ago. Today with camera phones, satellite phones it will be one propaganda war that the US will lose.

[ZX3URrBH]

A bomb so hot nothing will be left !