We've made a lot of progress since World War II, and you'd think that the Air Force would be happy to continue with their modern strategy of using smaller bombs and just aiming better. But sometimes, you really need something called a "Massive Ordnance Penetrator," so it's a good thing that the Air Force has them now.
Repeat these words to yourself to get the giggles out of your system before we continue: "Penetrator." "Massive Penetrator." Okay, we good to go? Awesome. To be fair, at 20 feet long and weighing in at 30,000 pounds, this thing (let's call it the MOP) does have some serious massiveness going on:
If the size doesn't give you enough perspective, how about the fact that the 2.4 metric tons of high explosive that this weapon has is more massive than the entire weight of the next largest bunker-buster in the Air Force arsenal. Oh, did I mention that the MOP is intended to bust some bunkers? If you ran the math on those numbers I just threw at you (a 30,000 pound bomb with 5,300 pounds of explosive), you're probably wondering what those spare 25,000 pounds or so are for. The answer is that all that junk in the trunk enables this thing to penetrate up to 200 feet of reinforced concrete, or 130 feet of solid rock. And then, you know, kaBOOM.
B-2 stealth bombers can carry two of these at once, and despite the size of the bomb, they're still classified as "precision guided," which is great. But with something this big, I'm not sure how much it can possibly matter.
Via Gizmag
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