There is literally only one bomber and one bomb to make the big badda-boom that could destroy Iran's last remaining nuclear enrichment plant from the air.
Earlier today, when I wrote that the destruction of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) is the only "path to peace" with the Islamic Republic, I honestly had no idea how limited the options were. There was also some confusion expressed in the comments.
If you’ll give me five more minutes, I’ve done the research to clear it all up.
Several VIP commenters expressed enthusiasm for dropping a MOAB on Fordow. Surely, at 30 feet long, more than three feet in diameter, and with 18,700 pounds of H-6 — a high-explosive mixture more powerful than TNT — a couple of MOABs ought to take Fordow off the map, right?
Not so fast. Officially known as the GBU-43, MOAB doesn't make the right kind of boom.
It's all in the name.
While everybody knows it as the Mother of All Bombs, MOAB officially stands for Massive Ordnance Air Burst.
But "air burst" is important. MOAB is so big that it gets pushed out of the back of a cargo plane, instead of a bomber, is slowed by parachute before impact, and then its special fuse causes all that H-6 to go BOOM a few feet above the ground, obliterating pretty much anything within a massive — but horizontal — mile-wide blast radius.
In other words, MOAB is good for when you want to make a whole bunch of doods on the ground go away very quickly. But when you need to reach out and touch someone deep underground, you need what the U.S. military calls a Massive Ordnance Penetrator. Yes, that's a MOP they use to clean up those deep stains.
So I understand the confusion, I really do — there's no way "MOP" could ever sound nearly as cool as "Mother of All Bombs."
And Another Thing: It's still my impression that Israel would rather destroy Fordow on its own and has other means of getting it done. This column is just about the Air Force options.
Still, the GBU-57 MOP is an impressive beast in its own right. While MOP is about 50% bigger than MOAB (!!!) at 30,000 pounds, it actually uses less than one-third as much explosive material. The GBU uses a combination of sheer mass, hardened steel, Mach 1 speed, and GPS pinpoint accuracy to penetrate up to 200 feet underground before its tiny computer brain tells the 5,300 pounds of high explosive to go BOOM.
To borrow a line from "Armageddon," the difference between MOAB and MOP is like setting off a larger firecracker on the open palm of your hand or setting off a smaller one inside your clenched fist. The first one is going to sting, but that second one might rip your hand apart.
And as far as we know, no other country — not the Russians, not the Chinese — has an air-dropped penetrator anything like the GBU-57. Not even close.
So that's MOAB versus MOP. But still, you've got to put that bad boy on target.
What I didn't know until today is that only the B-2 Spirit heavy stealth bomber can carry the GBU-57. I had thought that our other two big bombers — the venerable B-52 Stratofortress and the dead-sexy B-1 Lancer — could, just by virtue of their size and payload capabiliy,eld it.
Not so.
The GBU-57 is just too large for the internal bays of our older bombers. Even our small fleet of Spirits had to be redesigned for it. The bomber's rotary launcher required modification, new software to integrate the bomber with the bomb, additional avionics to handle the big MOP's unique characteristics during flight and release... I had no idea until today that thiI presume the B-21 Raider — currently in testing and low-rate initial production (LRIP) — ws designed from the ground up with the big MOP in mind.
Since the GBU-57 is reserved for the highest-priority, hardest-to-reach targets, it makes sense that the Air Force limited its use to our stealthiest, hardest-to-hit bomber. The bomb's designers had no way to foresee that an allied nation might do us the favor of wiping out a potential enemy's entire air defense network in 48 hours — and it certainly isn't the kind of favor you'd ever count on.
Still... nifty, eh?
So there you have it. The only bomb (and it might take more than one) that can reach Fordow is the GBU-57. And the only plane that can deliver it is the B-2.
Say, anybody know a guy who might cut an artful deal on a short-term lease for two or three of each?
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