Diego Garcia Secretly Readied for Bunker Busters
By Leslie on October 30, 2007 at 12:29 PM in Current Affairs
Via Cliff Schecter, from the Herald UK:
The US is secretly upgrading special stealth bomber hangars on the British island protectorate of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to military sources.
The improvement of the B1 Spirit jet infrastructure coincides with an “urgent operational need” request for £44m to fit racks to the long-range aircraft.
That would allow them to carry experimental 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs designed to smash underground bunkers buried as much as 200ft beneath the surface through reinforced concrete.
The £44m, or over $88 million, the Herald refers to was included in Bush’s recent $196.4 billion supplemental war funding request sent to Congress. The $88 million would be used to modify B2 stealth bombers to carry 30,000-pound bunker busters.
Perhaps bunker busters such as this one:

Engineers examine a test penetrator, Stars and Stripes
Ward at DefenseTech writes: Saturday “Stars and Stripes ran an article about the Pentagon’s request for $88 million to fund the development of a ‘deep-earth-bunker-buster.’ ”
According to the article . . .
At 30,000 pounds and 20 feet long, the mass of the bomb makes it three and a half times more powerful than the most powerful weapon in the Air Force’s inventory. The bomb carries 6,000 pounds of high explosives….
The MOP’s job is to destroy deeply buried and what the military calls “hardened” targets, or those specifically reinforced to survive strikes with high explosives.
The bomb is capable of burrowing 60 meters through 5,000 pounds per square inch (psi) of reinforced concrete, or 8 meters through 10,000 psi reinforced concrete….
The budget request is part of an amendment to the fiscal 2008 defense budget supplemental request that the White House submitted Monday to Congress.
The money is in two parts: $83.5 million for continuing the development of the MOP weapon itself, including a “technology demonstration” sponsored by DTRA that would conclude at some point in fiscal 2008; and another $4.2 million to modify the B-52 bomber as a launching platform, Air Force spokeswoman Vicki Stein told Stars and Stripes on Wednesday.
According to the Pentagon, the MOP is an “urgently needed, critical global strike capability to fight the war on terrorism.”
Air Force leaders say the system is not being developed specifically for a pre-emptive strike against Iran.
“It’s not specifically geared at an individual country,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley told reporters Sept. 24. “It’s a capability discussion.”
An $88 million capability discussion?…
And heaven forbid that we actually threaten . . . Iran. (Oh, no. I said that which shall not be said when hitting Congress up for large sums of money that will be used to justify the service’s existence in the nearer term. My bust, general. Or should I say, my bunker bust, general?)






















