Reply #8: Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) [View All]

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/dshtw.htm

Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)
Direct Strike Hard Target Weapon / Big BLU
Boeing's Phantom Works is leading the effort to demonstrate the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The three-phase technology demonstration builds on design studies that Boeing had conducted for the laboratory. Flight testing is envisaged around 2006. The 6 m <20 feet> long MOP features short-span wings and trellis-type tails. The 13,600 kg <30,000 lb> weapon contains a 2,700 kg <6,000 lb> explosive charge. MOP is designed to go deeper than any nuclear bunker buster and take out 25 percent of the underground and deeply buried targets. It is expected to penetrate as much as 60 meters <200 feet> through 5,000 psi reinforced concrete. It will burrow 8 meters into the ground through 10,000 psi reinforced concrete. Northrop Grumman is working on with Boeing to develop this conventional bunker buster. They are under contract to Air Force Research Laboratory's Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

While complete physical destruction may be desired, for some hard and deeply buried targets this effect isn't practicable with current weapons and employment techniques. It may be possible, however, to deny or disrupt the mission or function of a facility. Functional defeat is facilitated through better data collection and intelligence preparation against the potential targets. The defeat process includes finding and identifying a facility, characterizing its function and physical layout, determining its vulnerabilities to available weapons, planning an attack, applying force, assessing damage, and, if necessary, suppressing reconstitution efforts and re-striking the facility. New more lethal defeat options for Hard and Deeply Buried Targets (HDBTs) like the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, that can overwhelm target characterization uncertainties, are being developed and demonstrated to provide a 10x increase in weapon lethality and improved penetration capability compared to inventory weapons.

The Direct Strike Hard Target Weapon was described in 1997 as a 20,000 lb. class precision guided, adverse weather, direct attack bomb employed on the B-52 and B-2 aircraft. It will make use of the GCU developed by the JDAM program which uses GPS aided INS for adverse weather guidance. Precision accuracy will be attained by using differential GPS (DGPS) technology demonstrated on programs such as Enhanced Differential GPS for Guidance Enhancement (EDGE) and Miniature Munition Technology Demonstration (MMTD). The weapon will make use of the JDAM interface under development for the B-52 and B-2 aircraft and would be carried internally using new suspension hardware within the bay. The warhead will be a 20,000 lb. penetrator with dense metal ballast. This concept uses the Hard Target Smart Fuze (HTSF), an accelerometer based electronic fuze which allows control of the detonation point by layer counting, distance or time. The accelerometer senses G loads on the bomb due to deceleration as it penetrates through to the target. The fuze can distinguish between earth, concrete, rock and air.

The Air Force also investigated whether a similar size weapon could be used in a blast-only configuration, to replace the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter blast weapon dropped from the MC-130. This was eventually realized as the GBU-43/B "Mother Of All Bombs" MOAB - Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb