The likely purpose of the new weapon is to strike Iran's underground nuclear facilities, experts said.

"It raises a red flag," said Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia who called for hearings on the request. "My immediate assumption is that it is a target in Iran, rather than Iraq or Afghanistan."

The air force has asked Congress for nearly 88 million dollars to complete development of the so-called Massive Ordnance Penetrator and modify B-2 bombers so that they can deliver it, an air force spokeswoman said.

"This program is an effort to satisfy an urgent operational need for the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000 pound (13,608 kilogram) GPS guided penetrator weapon on B-2 for hard and deeply buried" targets, the air force's request budget said.

The item was buried in a 42.3 billion dollar request for "war on terror" funding submitted by the administration last week, raising suspicions about the rush to field what would be the largest satellite guided conventional bomb in the US arsenal.

"It's a capability that has some relation to the capabilities in the Centcom AOR," a senior defense official said, referring to the US Central Command's area of responsibility.

"You have buried targets, particularly in Afghanistan, that you are concerned about," the official told reporters last week, referring to cave systems that insurgents have used in Afghanistan.

But some experts believe the bomb, also known as "Big Blue," was developed with Iran's deeply buried nuclear facilities in mind.

"I do know they got interested in this around the time the Iranians began backfilling the large uranium enrichment facility at Natanz," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.Org, which follows military issues.

The bomb is currently under development by Boeing under a "technology demonstrator" contract with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency that concludes this fiscal year.

A first test was conducted in March at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico using a "statically emplaced conventional weapon within a DTRA tunnel," according to the agency.

Tests from a B-52 bomber are planned for next month and in July 2008, the agency said in a fact sheet on the bomb.

Pike described the bomb as "a big dart. It's basically just a long skinny pointy chunk of steel."

Its massive weight would drive the weapon through rock and reinforced concrete, he said. Fuzes could be used to detonate the explosives as it breaks through a ceiling into a void.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency said the MOP is approximately 20.5 feet (6.25 meters) long, with a 31.5-inch (80 centimeter) diameter and a total weight of slightly less than 30,000 pounds.

"The weapon will carry over 5,300 pounds (2,404 kilograms) of explosive material and will deliver more than 10 times the explosive power of its predecessor, the BLU-109," it said.

It has been designed to be carried inside B-52 and B-2 Stealth bombers.

The funding request includes 83.5 million dollars to continue development of the weapon and 4.2 million dollars to modify the B-2s so that they can carry it, an air force spokeswoman said.

The biggest US bunker busting bomb now in the US arsenal is the 5,000 pound (2,3 tonne) GBU-28.

The biggest US conventional bomb is the 21,000 pound (9.5 tonne) Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, also known as the Mother of All Bombs. MOAB is a demolition bomb that explodes on the surface.

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