The Boeing Co. has been tapped to design and test the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a large bomb designed to penetrate and destroy hardened and deeply buried targets.

The Defense Department announced late Nov. 1 that the Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded a $20 million, multi-year contract to Boeing for the MOP program, which is funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The initial increment of $500,000 is for work that is to be completed by February 2005.

The Air Force has said that MOP would be guided, weigh up to 30,000 pounds and be carried internally on the B-2 and B-52 bombers. The weapon would be used to destroy multi-story buildings with hardened bunkers and tunnels, targets believed to be proliferating in rogue states.

The Air Force had issued a broad agency announcement seeking proposals for MOP. The new effort is supposed to build on an earlier phase that aimed to perform such activities for MOP as defining the guidance kit packaging and assessing the potential to integrate the bomb onto the B-2 and B-52.

The MOP would be the largest guided bomb in the Defense Department's inventory, surpassing the 21,000-pound Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB) bomb, which was designed to create massive damage. The C-130-delivered MOAB was developed for the Iraq war but not used.

An Air Force engineering official has said that the service hopes to "create a family of weapons of very large size that are uniquely available to go after certain targets" (DAILY, March 7, 2003).