Boeing gets order for eight Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting super bombs in $28.3 million contract

EGLIN AFB, Fla., 10 April 2011. The U.S. Air Force is asking the Boeing Co. Space, Defense & Security segment in St. Louis to build eight Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting super bombs under terms of a $28.3 million contract announced late last week.The satellite-guided Massive Ordnance Penetrator, otherwise known as MOP, is a 30,000-pound bomb with a 6,000-pound high-explosive warhead that is designed to destroy hard and deeply buried targets such as reinforced-concrete bunkers and deeply buried tunnel facilities.Not only will Boeing [NYSE: BA] build eight Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, but the company also will 16 separation nuts, eight MOP loading adapters, and an aft closure redesign under terms of the contract, which was awarded by the Air Force Air Armament Center at Eglin Air Force base, Fla.

Boeing received a Massive Ordnance Penetrator contract last February to develop a modified fuse design, as well as for additional flight tests and test assets. Boeing is developing the Massive Ordnance Penetrator at its facilities in St. Charles, Mo., for the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is designed to be carried and dropped from the U.S. Air Force B-2 and B-52 bombers from high altitudes. Boeing completed a static tunnel lethality test of the MOP munition in March 2007 at DTRA's weapons tunnel complex at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator super bomb was developed amid heightening worldwide concern of the mounting capability to build and deploy nuclear weapons in countries such as Iran and North Korea that are openly hostile to the United States.

The conventional Massive Ordnance Penetrator is 20 feet long, weighs 30,000 pounds, and carries 6,000-pounds of high explosives. It is designed to penetrate targets more deeply on impact than any existing nuclear bunker-busting weapon, and then detonating its three-ton explosives payload.

An explosion from the gigantic air-dropped munition is expected to penetrate as deeply as 200 feet through reinforced concrete, which is able to withstand pressure of 5,000 pounds per square inch. The bomb will burrow more than 26 feet into the ground through reinforced concrete before detonating.

For more information contact Boeing Space, Defense & Security online at www.boeing.com/bds, or the Air Force Air Armament Center at www.eglin.af.mil.