It weighs 30,000 pounds, can smash through 200ft of earth, concrete and steel, and packs enough punch to wipe out an enemy’s underground lair.
The GBU-57A/B ‘bunker buster’ bomb, as it is known, is arguably the top military reason that Israel wants the United States to join its air campaign against arch-foe Iran.
The US designed and built the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) and remains the only nation to possess the bomb, as well as being the only country with warplanes capable of dropping its formidable payload.
Crucially, it is also the only weapon widely believed to be capable of smashing through Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facility at Fordo, a hub of suspected clandestine enrichment activity.
The Trump administration on Tuesday looked increasingly likely to join Israel’s bombing campaign — and to bring its GBU-57A/B bombs to the theater of operations.
Even Democratic Senator John Fetterman, a rare pro-Israel hawk within his party, was pushing the White House to deploy the ‘tools’ in its arsenal that Israel needs for its air campaign.
Iran must ‘be held accountable for what they’ve done’, he told Fox News.
Fetterman added that he was the ‘only one constantly calling’ for Trump to deploy B-2 stealth bombers and ‘gigantic bunker busters’ to help Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear sites.
America is the only world power to possess the GBU-57 ‘bunker busters’, and the only one with the B-2 stealth bombers that can drop them
‘I’d just keep dropping them until you can actually confirm what exactly happened to them,’ he added.
The GBU-57A/B is the largest non-nuclear bomb in America’s arsenal.
Designed to penetrate hardened concrete bunkers and tunnel networks, the bomb could be crucial in targeting Iran’s fortified uranium enrichment sites buried beneath mountains and reinforced with meters of steel and rock.
The roughly 30,000 pound precision-guided bomb is specifically engineered to strike deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the US Air Force.
It is believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet below the surface before exploding.
The bombs can be dropped in succession, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each blast.
Such force would likely be necessary to significantly damage the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, built deeply into a mountainside.
Fordo is Iran’s second nuclear enrichment facility after Natanz, its primary site, which already has been targeted by Israeli airstrikes.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday that it believes the strikes have had ‘direct impacts’ on the Natanz’s underground centrifuge halls.
Fordo is smaller than Natanz and located inside a mountain near the city of Qom, about 60 miles southwest of Tehran.
A 30,000lb bunker-buster bomb, loaded with 6,000lbs of deadly explosives
The terrifying blast from a B-2 stealth bomber dropping a pair of GBU-57 ordnance penetrators
As well as being some 260 feet under rock and soil, the site is reportedly protected by Iranian and Russian surface-to-air missile systems.
Those air defenses, however, are believed to have been weakened by recent Israeli attacks.
Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the goal of attacking Iran was to eliminate its missile and nuclear programs, which he described as existential threats to Israel.
Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US, told Fox News on Friday: ‘This entire operation… really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordo.’
Military analysts say that standard Israeli munitions are unlikely to be sufficient to obliterate such fortified facilities.
Only the US-developed MOP, dropped from a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, has the raw kinetic power to penetrate the earth reinforced terrain before unleashing its payload with devastating effect.
The weapon was developed after intelligence in the mid-2000s revealed that Iran and North Korea were burying key nuclear infrastructure out of reach of conventional bombs – making traditional weapons ineffective.
It was conceived as a last-resort solution to a complex strategic problem: how to destroy what cannot easily been seen or reached.
At 20 feet long and equipped with GPS-guidance, it burrows deep underground before detonating, sending shockwaves through bunker systems and collapsing internal structures.
Only a handful of these terrifying devices exist, each costing millions of dollars.
Crucially, the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, flown exclusively by the Air Force and produced by Northrop Grumman, is capable of carrying them.
Israel wants US backup in its air strike campaign on arch-foe Iran. Pictured: An Israeli strike on an oil refinery in Tehran
The Spirit of Pennsylvania B-2 Spirit assigned to the 419th Flight Test Squadron flies over Edwards Air Force Base, California
The strategic heavy bomber has a flight range of about 7,000 miles without refueling and 11,500 miles with one aerial refueling, according to Northrop Grumman, and can reach any target in the world within hours.
Israel’s F-15s and F-35s simply cannot handle the MOP’s massive bulk, meaning any strike would need either direct US involvement or significant logistical support.
As well as being powerful, the weapon puts President Donald Trump – who has long warned against entangling the US in overseas conflicts – in a politically precarious position.
Any deepening of US involvement, whether through providing the Israelis with bunker-busters or offering other direct US military support, carries significant political and diplomatic risks for the president.
It could jeopardize any chance of Trump’s desired talks with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
Tehran maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful. But Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One on Tuesday after unexpectedly cutting short his trip to the G7 summit in Canada due to the Middle East crisis, expressed exasperation at Iranian leaders for missing earlier opportunities to come to an agreement.
The President said he was now looking for ‘a real end’ to the conflict and a ‘complete give-up’ of Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran still insists is purely for peaceful purposes.
‘They should have done the deal. I told them: ‘Do the deal,” Trump said to reporters.
‘So I don’t know. I’m not too much in the mood to negotiate.’
