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Massive US Bunker Buster Bomb 'Ready to Go'

'The world's largest conventional bomb'

by
Common Dreams staff

A B-52 releases a test version of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) during a test of the weapon over White Sands Missile Range, N.M. in 2009. (DoD photo)

The U.S. mammoth bunker-buster bomb known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) is ready to go today, the Air Force says.

“If it needed to go today, we would be ready to do that,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said Wednesday, according to the Air Force Times. “We continue to do testing on the bomb to refine its capabilities, and that is ongoing. We also have the capability to go with existing configuration today.”

The Pentagon has spent over $300 million on the 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" that can hold 5000 pounds of explosives.

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The Boeing-made bomb, described by the Telegraph as "the world's largest conventional bomb" and Spencer Ackerman as a "mega-weapon for blowing up hidden factories of death," is "a weapon system designed to accomplish a difficult, complicated mission of reaching and destroying our adversaries’ weapons of mass destruction located in well protected facilities," according to the government's Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

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