Who Needs a "Moppe Dreng"?

This is very very strange.

Tucked away in the recent 190 billion dollar appropriation for the monetary black hole known as "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" or, for short, "support our troops, there is an item of 88 million dollars that makes alarm bells ring so loud a deaf stone could hear them.

This money is to be used to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a 30,000 lb. bomb called a MOP, or Massive Ordinance Penetrator. Now that is what they call in Danish as real "moppe dreng" or "big boy".

The question is: why? Why would a 2 billion dollar machine like the B-2 need to do be able to carry such a thing?

First of all, the MOP is decided to penetrate and destroy hardened and/or deeply buried targets -- it is supposed to be able to go down 200 feet before detonating.

Secondly, we have fleets of other bombers, like the B-52, which could deliver such a pay load almost anywhere in the world, in particular caves in Afghanistan, for example.

One place where the B-52 couldn't deliver is to Iran, in particular the Naatanz nuclear installation a bit more than a 100 miles south of Teheran. A bunker buster of some sort would be needed to take out this harden facility and only a stealth bomber could have a reasonable chance of delivering it.

So, why? And why now?

Indeed, I must be an excitable person to be suspicious -- just because this request came from the military as an urgent need.

By the way you don't need to revive Slim Pickins, the MOP would be too big for him to straddle.

(By the way, I gleaned this from Tristero at Hullabaloo.)