Aerospace giant Boeing Co. has delivered the first batch of 30,000-pound bombs, each nearly five tons heavier than anything else in the military's arsenal, to the U.S. Air Force to pulverize underground enemy hide-outs.
At a total cost of about $314 million, the military has developed and ordered 20 of the GPS-guided bombs, called Massive Ordnance Penetrators. They are designed to be dropped on targets by the Boeing-made B-52 Stratofortress long-range bomber or Northrop Grumman Corp.'s B-2 stealth bomber.
They are designed to destroy deeply buried targets. Like in--oh, I don't know--Iran, for instance.
Twenty years ago, we'd have needed nukes to get at a lot of targets that we can hit with precision conventional weapons that have really spread in our military since Desert Storm.
