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The bunker-busters are small-diameter GBU-39 bombs developed by the Integrated Defense System unit of Boeing Company. The bombs are equipped with Global Positioning and inertial navigation systems and can penetrate underground and hardened targets.
According to a news release by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) last week, "It is vital to the US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives."
A DSCA spokesman told The Daily Star Wednesday that "The US is deeply committed to Israel's security." But he added that it could take up to six months, pending Congressional approval, for a contract to be hammered out with Israel. Implementation of the sale could take an additional three years.
Starting from September 9, Congress has 30 days to reject the proposed sale of 1,000 GBU-39s, worth an estimated $77 million.
According to an e-mail received Wednesday from Boeing's IDS Weapons Programs Communications, the GBU-39 is a 130-kilogram, 1.8 meter by 19 centimeter "multipurpose, penetrating, blast-fragmentation warhead for stationary targets." The weapon has a penetration of more than 1 meter of reinforced concrete and can travel over 100 kilometers thanks to deployable wings.
Shlomo Brom, the Israeli military's former chief of strategic planning spoke of the weapon in relation to the 2006 summer war. "One of our problems," he told the Associated Press, "had been that they put many of the rocket launchers in bunkers and fortifications underground. And for use there, [the GBU-39] is an ideal weapon."
It was widely reported that Israel received shipments of older bunker-buster bombs during the conflict.
"This bomb is going to be the general purpose bomb of the next generation," Yitzak Shapir, a military analyst at the Institute of national Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told AP. He added that the bombs could take out Katyusha launchers in Lebanon and Qassam launchers in Gaza.
When contacted on Wednesday, a Hizbullah spokesman had no comment.
Regarding the potential use of GBU-39s in an aerial attack on nuclear sites in Iran, Shapir and Brom seemed unconvinced. Iranian development sites are thought to be protected by meters of reinforced concrete.
"You would need something a lot heavier," Shapir said. "1.8 meters is not enough."
There has been speculation that US sales of aerially delivered penetrating bombs might be seen as a tacit endorsement of an Israeli strike against Iran; but the US has allegedly vetoed that option. The weapons could nonetheless be used against Israel's neighbors in Lebanon and Gaza.
According to Boeing, the GBU-39 "has been in combat use on the F-15E since October 2006." Israel has, since 1997, been equipped with specially designed F-15Is.
--With agencies
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