Following last week's announcement from the U.S. Air Force that its 30,000 pound bunker-buster bomb, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), was ready for action, Iran's state-owned media outlet PressTV has published an angry reply.
From PressTV:
This week, a threat against Iran by the United States was published by the UK Telegraph. Peter Foster, of their Washington Bureau met with Mike Donnelly, US Air Force Secretary to question him about deployment of experimental “bunker buster” bombs...He has no combat experience and cannot fly an airplane. He is a perfect choice to run an Air force.
The dogging of Donnelly's lack of combat aviation experience kind of sums up the tone for the rest of the very long post.
From there it calls the MOP's cost, effectiveness, and delivery into question:
[The Massive Ordnance Penetrator] has never been successfully tested. Essentially, it is an 8” cannon barrel filled with high explosives hoped to be dropped from the B2 Stealth Bomber. Each B2 costs $2.1 billion dollars not to mention the $300 billion in design costs.
It then goes on to to say there are concerns that dropping a "defective bomb on non-existent targets without rationale or legal authority" raises concerns.
From there PressTV mentions it's also hoped, presumably by the U.S., that Iran has not modified its air defense like Serbia did in the '90s — a move that allowed it to shoot down "several" American stealth planes. The reference must be to the F-177A taken down down over Serbia in 1999.
The post then changes the MOP to MOb and says every member of Congress involved in the MOP project "have accepted large campaign contributions from Israeli sources in the past few months and are expecting more."
The response is fascinating, and confusing in equal measure, but well worth checking out.
The MOP was sent back to Boeing at the beginning of the year for modifications that would allow it to penetrate what was believed to be Iran's deep nuclear facilities.
Though still undergoing enhancements and modifications the Air Force says the bomb is ready to take out whatever targets it has in mind.
It appears Iran is convinced those targets may be Tehran's alleged nuclear facilities.
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