Global Security Newswire

The Defense Department officials has reached out to lawmakers regarding a potential funding increase for efforts to place an experimental bunker-buster bomb on the nation's B-2 stealth bombers, Bloomberg reported Friday (see GSN, Sept. 15, 2008).

The disputed nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea might have fueled proposals to speed up deployment of the conventional Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound weapon intended to target hardened facilities that could house WMD assembly or storage areas.

In a July request to four congressional defense committees, Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale asked for authorization to move roughly $68 million in existing defense funds for aircraft deployment by July 2010 of the initial four new bunker busters.

There is “an urgent operational need for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high-threat environments,” and U.S. military leaders the Middle East and Asia “recently identified the need to expedite” the bunker buster's deployment, Hale wrote in the request.

Existing bunker busters weigh in at 5,000 pounds.

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator would include 5,300 pounds of explosives. It is designed to be dropped from a B-2 or B-52 bomber and detonate roughly 200 feet below the earth's surface. Tehran and Pyongyang are both thought to conduct nuclear work underground in order to avoid surveillance and increase the likelihood of sustaining operations following an attack.

The United States “must have a non-nuclear capability to kill such targets if the U.S. is to have a convincing military option against Iran’s proliferation and hardened or underground facilities in other potentially hostile states,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense expert with the Center For Strategic and International Studies.

Although the United States wants “this capability, especially for weapons of mass destruction targets, as soon as possible, that doesn’t mean we’ll use them -- but the planners are supposed to create capability and also send messages to potential adversaries,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution (Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg, July 31).

The U.S. Pacific and Central commands seem to welcome the proposed funding increase, Kenneth Katzman, an Iran analyst for the Congressional Research Service, told Reuters.

"It's very possible that the Pentagon wants to send a signal to various countries, particularly Iran and North Korea, that the United States is developing a viable military option against their nuclear programs," Katzman said.

Katzman indicated, though, that it could be too early to determine that the new bunker buster was being developed for use against a particular target.

Under former President George W. Bush, the United States considered producing nuclear bunker-buster weapons (see GSN, March 31, 2006; Jim Wolf, Reuters, Aug. 2).