The US military says it will soon complete building a massive ‘bunker buster’ bomb that can penetrate deep underground facilities of so-called hostile states.

“It is under development right now and should be deployable in the coming months,” the Pentagon’s press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters on Wednesday.

According to Morrell, the apparently non-nuclear 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) is designed ‘to defeat hardened facilities used by hostile states to protect weapons of mass destruction’.

“I don’t think anybody can divine potential targets or anything of that nature. This is just a capability that we think is necessary given the world we live in these days,” he said.
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Following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the administration of former US president George W. Bush submitted a request to Congress for funding a project to build a ‘Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator’, or ‘RNEP’.

Although the new version of nuclear bunker busters was never built, the US Department of Energy was given funds to work on the project. Air Force Research Laboratory also conducted tests as part of the project.

While the RNEP project seemed to be canceled in October 2005, Jane’s Information Group speculates that work may have continued under another name.

In September 2008, US Congress approved a plan to sell Israel 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, of the GPS Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39).

Later in January 2009, the Times reported that the Israeli government had asked Bush to sell Tel Aviv new bunker-busters.

Around the same time, the Jerusalem Post also reported that a shipment of the weapons had arrived the previous month, adding that the bombs had been used in the three-week military onslaught in Gaza, which claimed the lives of over 1500 Palestinians.

Israel is believed to be currently housing at least 100 bunker-buster bombs.