New Video Of B-2 Bomber Dropping Mother Of All Bunker Busters Sends Ominous Message [1/2] - B-2 Bomber Dropping Mother Of All Bunker Busters.jpg (1/1)

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...minous-message

The B-2 Spirit is still America's silver bullet over 20 years after it entered
operational service and 30 years since it began its flight test program. Its
nuclear capability remains a key component of America's Nuclear Triad, but its
ever-evolving, long-range, deep-penetrating, conventional strike abilities are
what has made the Spirit the plane that often goes to work first when America's
armed forces get a 911 call. One of the most important weapons in the B-2's
repertoire is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)—the most powerful
non-nuclear bunker buster on the planet weighing in at a whopping 33,000 pounds.

The B-2 can carry a pair of them.

This weapon, paired with the B-2's ability to sneak deep into enemy territory,
give the United States the ability to destroy the most fortified and high-value
bunkers on earth. This is the weapon that will be put to work on the very first
moments of a U.S. air campaign in North Korea or Iran. It is a highly unique
capability that no other air arm of on earth possesses.

In the past, we have seen some lower quality video of a B-2 dropping a MOP for
testing, but now the USAF has posted a very high-quality video of a recent test
showing two of the giant weapons being employed near-simultaneously. And it is
something to behold:

One has to be suspicious of the timing of the release of this video,—which came
with no detailed description—as tensions are ratcheting up between the U.S. and
both Iran and North Korea.

The MOP is precision guided primarily using GPS, similar to the Joint Direct
Attack Munition (JDAM). Yet even the bunker buster variants in that series of
weapons are incomparable to the mighty MOP. This precision guidance is thought
to allow the MOP to not only hit deeply-buried installations at their weakest
points, but it offers the potential to 'layer-in' multiple MOPs on a single
pinpoint location—in effect 'digging' down to where the soil, rock, and concrete
end and the vital infrastructure begins.

The Air Force is fully aware of how important this weapon is, even against a
peer state like China that has gone as far as constructing a massive submarine
base inside a mountain, and the service is ordering new and improved versions of
the MOP that you can and should read all about in this past highly-detailed
article of ours.

The crystal-clear video of not one, but two MOPs being employed against a ground
target certainly sends the clear message to America's potential foes that it has
the ability to reach out and touch even the most hardened, well defended, and
far-flung of facilities without going nuclear. If the video got our attention,
it surely got the adversary's as well.

Think of it as a friendly reminder of just what's at stake when it comes to
going to war with the United States military. Above all else, it pretty much
underlines the fact that a decapitation strike is possible even if the top
regime members being targeted are hiding out in places meant to be immune from
enemy bombardment.

It's a sobering reality, to say the least.





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