Weighing in at 30,000 pounds, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator of the US Air Force will become the largest air-dropped non-nuclear bomb ever built:
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-08/pentagon-wants-deploy-largest-non-nuclear-bomb-next-year
The MOP is 20 feet long and can penetrate bunkers up to 200 feet before exploding. At 15 tons, the MOP is a third heavier than the previous "mother of all bombs", the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, which was only 10.5 tons. The MOP also packs a whopping 5,300 lbs of explosives, which is 10 times the amount its predecessor bunker-buster, the BLU-109, carried. Basically, it's massive.
The push for accelerated deployment is due to the increased perceived nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea. It's believed that many of their nuclear programs could be in development underground, below levels of current bunker-busting bombs' range. The Pentagon intends the rapid deployment to send a message that the United States is tweaking strategies to address new threats. And nothing is more American than advertising the sheer size and tonnage of the bombs hanging below our jets.
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-08/pentagon-wants-deploy-largest-non-nuclear-bomb-next-year
And once you understand that to carry 1 of them is ALL most aircraft could do...That 1-2-3 planes carrying these would only MAYBE kill 1-2-3 bases?
We would have to be SNEAKY AS HELL to get them NEAR a country IF' that had more then 4-5 launchers.
I would love to see the plane carrying this TRY to get into a nation, undetected to drop it.
THIS IS NOT a weapon that can be dropped FAST/QUICK unless you have AIR CONTROL over a nation.
IF' you have AIR control OVer a nation...you could just shoot Missiles as they LAUNCHED..wouldnt need a bunker buster.
Google "B2 bomber"
This weapon weights 30,000 the B2 will carry 40,000 and you can't "see" a B2 I'm also sure the bomb will have the latest GPS guidance system so it will be a " fire and forget" weapon if like the other bomb's I worked with in the AF the bomber will probably be able to release the bomb 10 to 15 miles away then go home.
I looked up this bomb and it has no Power, its Dropped and has tail fins to guide it..thats ALL.
So you MUST have air control and superiority...
which MEANS you can probably shoot ANYTHING down that takes off ANYWAY.
If you are in a war senerio, THOSe would be the first things OFF the ground, IF the person were smart..
Also, if 1 bomb went off, there would be instant war. AND the only country that would do it, or has these planes?? FIRST TARGET..
You are also considering that there is 1-5 of these targets...hmmm.. If I was SMART and had ONLY 4-5, I would put down a FEW FAKE BUNKER TOPS for YOUR' target practice.. And its cheap.
It is my guess that that radar-technology is on the very top of the wishlist of about any other country than the US and its friends...
About that bomb-
The use of such specialised devices up until now mostly has been that first the user announces broadly and very loud that they have it and that they can use it with great effectiveness. That has a deterrent effect and it generally makes life harder for defending forces- They have to put far more effort and finances in finding ways to counter such threat and they have to evaluate if it is possible at all to do such effort. And if they conclude that they can't defend themselves against such threat, they perhaps will cease to resist.
Next step is that actual use always is done in combination with an already grown out of hand conflict- Diplomacy has failed- has come at it's end of it's rope and now violence will be used to force a point of action.
So both the user and the attacked know that either the use of this bomb is the start of an all out (locally confined or global) war or it is used shortly after a first conventional exchange of hostilities with the regular inventory of weapons.
In both cases such a bomb can still be delivered quite easily if multiple targets are "swamped" so the defending force has to shoot down literally everything to know for sure it also takes out the carriers of the MOB's. And that just is just impossible in any situation- the defence will always be breached, even if tyhere is no complete air-superiority. And as seen in the last Gulf-region conflicts- The US and and its allies are very well capable of swamping-tactics by use of UAV's, missiles, decoys, radar-jamming and actual warplanes.
So apart from using CAPITALS, this weapon does make sence.
This isn't being designed to take on countries like China or Russia; it's being designed to hit a country with very limited nuclear resources where you're taking out a few labs or weapons caches buried deep in a mountain or an isolated missile silo.
Shooting an ICBM as it takes off is a hell of a lot easier than it sounds. It's a LOT better to kill it on the ground.
ECA, you do not need air superiority to drop bombs, just the ability to get to your intended target, though the US does have superior air capabilities.
Also when you are dropping something from several thousand feet those little tail fins can make a lot of difference. You are also overestimating the ability to destroy a object in flight "which MEANS you can probably shoot ANYTHING down that takes off ANYWAY", it's really not that easy.
Finally from the story it looks like we would try to target where they make the nuclear material and not missile silos.
Never mind- I try again.
For those who think the B2 and its stealthy brethren can get through unseen at any time: The Dutch company Thales produces a radar-system that can see these stealths without effort. Several Western armies have this system in use or wil use it in the next coming years. I bet that this radar or the way it works is very high on the wishlist of countires that are not allied with the US...
Ordenance like the Mob has it's place and function in any army.
If you have such a working weapon, the way you use it is by announcing very loudly that you have it and you show what you believe it can do. Preferably you exaggerate the effects a bit for theatrical drama.
This puts your adversary in a difficult position, because he or she will have to think hard about how to react:
Comply or ignore and step up defence.
Any defence will cost a Bundle, so any way this new piece of harware will cause extra spending with the other team if it seriously wants to counter any threat. It can tighten it's airdefence at great cost, or it can try to harden it's shelters and dig even deeper under ground, all it great cost and without any assurance that the beefed up defence will at all work.
If you actually would use such weapon, you would do so because you were convinced that diplomacy has failed and more confvincing arguments are needed. But that effectively means that you will have declared war on some level.
If you use this weapon, you can use it in the opening-blows of the conflict. But then most likely you will have to defend yourself when the attacked party retalliates. More likely you will use this weapon during the first stages of an all out attack, by swamping the other party with drones, decoys, missiles, lots of airplanes- just to confuse the airdefence of the other party. There still is no airdefence that can cope with swamping- Even the US-airdefence gets overrun on a regular bases in excercises- Sure most attackers will be caught in the end, but always some slip through and reach their designated targets if the wave of attackers is big enough and comes from as many directions as possible.
So to have such bombs is useful and no way can some defender stop effective use if the user of that big bomb has enough stuff to launch at the same time.
This has been shown every war from WW1 on and most graphically in the last Gulf-wars.
Foreigner1 is right - it's part of a spread of available tools and would be chosen to play a particular role. It's not the be-all and end-all of everything - just as no other weapon has been over the years. Vastly powerful fusion weapons once appeared to be the end of weapons development. For a while no one could see beyond them. As it turns out they were probably something of a dead end.
What would be really nice would be to spend some of the money doing something rather more useful. Like being nice to people.
Thanks, America!