The Air Force’s new bunker-busting behemoth, the aptly named Massive Ordnance Penetrator, is now available for combat on the B-2 stealth bomber, according to service officials. Whiteman AFB, Mo., home of the B-2 fleet, received its first batch of MOPs in September, and the bombs are “ready for operational use,” an Air Force acquisition official told the Daily Report in a written response to a query. The 30,000-pound-class conventional weapon, when coupled with the stealthy, penetrating B-2, gives US planners a potent means of attacking the most challenging types of hardened and underground targets. Previously, these targets were difficult, if not impossible, to reach with other bunker busters due to the targets’ depth beneath the surface and the type of protective layers covering them. There is “no other weapon that can get after those hard and deeply buried targets like MOP can,” said Brig. Gen. Scott Vander Hamm, who oversees the B-2 fleet, in an interview earlier this month. Continue
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.