Posted on 10/08/2009 5:40:56 PM PDT by Kaslin
Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed?
At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years."
U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence.
Our knowledge of the facility built in a mountainous area may explain why back in 2007 there was tucked inside an Iraq/Afghanistan emergency war funding request some $88 million to rush the development of a 30,000-pound bunker buster called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).
As we reported in August, Defense Department Comptroller Robert Hale sent a formal request to four congressional committees asking permission to shift about $68 million in the Pentagon's slashed budget to accelerate our bunker buster bomb program by three years so that at least four 30,000-pound bombs could be mounted on B-2 stealth bombers by July 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Bump
Not bump...how about BOOM!
My guess is that even a "near miss" with a MOP would topple every separator centrifuge in a target site -- leaving the site so toxic and contaminated as to preclude rebuilding.
One would also surmise that all you have to do to make an underground installation like this unusable, is to make it into a tomb... for the occupants, and the above ground owners. So, just closing the entrance will make for a considerable amount of trouble for the Iranians. Then, as they try to dig out, much smaller and easier to deliver ordinance could be used to make a mess of things at inconvenient times, so that nothing of any use ever comes out of that once crucial installation.
I expect a MOP is basically a daisy-cutter loaded into a specially-hardened penetrator. The next step up the food chain is the "Davy Crockett" tactical nuclear weapon, for which MOP would also be a good delivery vehicler; transportation by Titan vice B-2 equals zero warning. Yield is about 250 tons, 1/4 kt. More bang in your thang. Detonate one of those beneath or near a hardened facility, and the shear-wave energy alone would wreck the facility and everything in it, even if it didn't destroy the reinforced bunker itself, as per our friend's suggestion.
Wanna play with nukes, guys? Ours work.
I don’t think most people understand what a shock wave can do. During battle stations everything had to be secured. A pen lying loose on a workbench could kill you if the ship got hit.
The pictures of the results from an improvised penetrator we dropped on one of Saddam’s buried bunkers was amazing. The picture of the bottom of the crater showed the reinforcing bars bent up toward the surface of the ground. No one in that bunker had a chance. No wonder Saddam went to mobile labs for some of his operations.
The personnel working in the Iranian bunkers will probably die a quick violent death. The scientists and techs are key to the program. After they’re dead, Iran’s nuclear program is histroy.
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...and by a nose...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2357991/posts
Killing two ducks with a shotgun!!!
Imagine the fallout if the nuke plants were to be bombed and the nuke wizards killed in the attacks.
Ahmadinenutcase would be horrified, then gone lunatic as he declares war, ordering the Iranian navy to fire upon the CBG in the Persian Gulf with Silkworms and Sunburns.
WWIII starts.
At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years."
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