Boeing bomb in Bush war-fund request

The Defense Department's new Iraq war funding request proposes upgrading the B-2 stealth bomber to carry the military's largest satellite-guided bomb capable of penetrating deeply buried bunkers.

The Pentagon's proposal is one sentence in the measure seeking $45.9 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that President Bush gave to Congress Monday. The extra money would be on top of $150.5 billion in previously requested war spending.

The new 30,000-pound bomb is six times bigger than the Air Force's current 5,000-pound bunker-buster. Chicago-based Boeing is developing the bomb for the Pentagon agency that researches technology to counter weapons of mass destruction. The bomb was first successfully detonated in March.

The B-2 is the only U.S. bomber capable of penetrating an adversary's most dangerous air defenses such as those believed in use by North Korea and Iran. The B-2 bombed targets in the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The new 20.5-foot-long Massive Ordnance Penetrator carries more than 5,300 pounds of explosives and is guided by Global Positioning Satellites, according to a description on the Web site of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity today at a briefing for reporters, said the weapon has potential uses in Afghanistan to attack caves and other underground facilities used by the Taliban. Iran has at least two suspected subterranean nuclear facilities and other command-and-control sites not connected to the nuclear program.

After initially budgeting $145 billion for war costs in February, administration officials have increased the amount they say is needed for military operations and included more money for State Department and other international operations, including United Nations peacekeeping operations in Darfur and aid to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

"The bill provides for basic needs, like bullets and body armor," as well as emergency funding for other "critical national security needs," Bush said at the White House after a meeting with military veterans and support organizations. "Members of Congress should consider the supplemental promptly."

It is the biggest such request by the administration since the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq began. If passed, it would put the total cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations at $807 billion, more than any single U.S. conflict since World War II. A study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments last month said that in today's dollars the Persian Gulf War of 1991 cost $88 billion, the Korean War cost $456 billion and Vietnam cost $518 billion.

A Congressional Research Service report in July estimated that the total cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and other operations over the next 10 years could reach $1.45 trillion, even assuming the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is cut in half by 2012.

The difference is that today's war represents a smaller burden on the U.S. economy, roughly 4.2 percent of gross domestic product this year compared with 9.4 percent at the peak of Vietnam and 14.2 percent at the peak of the Korean War, according to Steven Kosiak, the study's author.