Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator:

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator or MOP for short, and thus will be called for the rest of this topic. A lot of people seemed confused that Shin Godzilla was hurt by seemingly "normal" bombs their first time viewing the film, doesn't that make this Godzilla a wimp.

MOPs are, and I can't stress this enough, not conventional or normal weapons. Just cause it's a real weapon in real life and not a fancy experimental one like the Navy's railgun or a made up one in a sci-fi movie like the Absolute Zero Cannon or a black hole gun, does not mean it's not a super weapon. If you can accept Varan was killed by super bombs or that MOGUERA's Spiral Grenade Missiles are super weapons, then this hurting some incarnations of Godzilla shouldn't be a stretch.

MOPs are bunker busters designed to dig into deep, reinforced underground fortresses to destroy stockpiles of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). A MOP weighs a massive 30,000 pounds. It is 6.2 meters in length, and 0.8 meters in diameter. Because of their immense size and weight only two could be carried by the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, more commonly known as Stealth Bombers. When dropped down from high altitude flight it will reach a terminal velocity that breaks the sound barrier, reaching mach speed thus allowing it to dig into the ground. It's body is made out hardened ferro-cobalt ally ensuring it punches through the ground instead of detonating on impact.

This allows it to reach depths of around 60 meters in in 5,000 PSI reinforced concert before the warhead explodes. For reference the previous bunker busters, the GBU-28, could only reach 6 meters in similar concert and the model before that, the BLU-109 could only reach depths of 1.8 meters. Further more it's a smart bomb guided by GPS to ensure it hits it's target. It is for this reason, as well as maybe his back being less armored than the rest of his body, that the MOPs were able to punch into Shin Godzilla's body when all the JSDF's missiles & rockets bounced off his body before detonating.

To put this in context, imagine a 9mm bullet weighing as much as a person and someone standing on a balcony above you dropped it onto you. It'll punch through your body, furthermore imagine said bullet had an explosive equivalent to a truck full of TNT going off in your body. Now scale that up to Godzilla size. The MOPs are like the bastard offspring of the Full Metal Missiles from Godzilla 2000 (which did manage to penetrate & hurt that Godzilla but not kill him) and a thermobaric bomb such as the MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast, lovingly nicknamed "Mother Of All Bombs) which was at the time of it's creation the most powerful non-nuclear bomb being almost as powerful as the smallest nuclear warheads.

So when the U.S. Air Force was called in to kill Shin Godzilla, they were not fucking around. They pretty much dropped the most powerful thing that wasn't a nuke and could still get through Shin Godzilla's thick armored skin. And when they lost several Stealth Bombers which would cost over 2 billion U.S. dollars which inflated to today's cost and they the MOPS failed to kill it, they were understandably at their wits end and willing to use a Nuclear Bomb after that which may not have even worked as Shin Godzilla was constantly adapting and may have hardened his armored skin even more after the MOP attack.

The MOPs punching through Godzilla's skin and detonating was not only an impressive feat for the bombs but for Godzilla as well, the creature showed his durability, pain resistance and regeneration was impressive on the inside of his body as well and not just the outside. Having survived and healed from massive internal injuries, even growing on of his spikes back after it'd been blown off and able to fight after having suffered massive blood loss and having most of his organs scrambled into jam before needing to rest and recover from both his injuries and overheating from his massive energy usage.

These weapons would give most monsters incarnations serious injury and would have punched through GMK Godzilla's skin making the D-03 Missiles look like a joke. For those disappointed that we never got a proper battle between Godzilla and U.S. forces in Godzilla2014 to see how he would fare against firepower made for winning wars and not just self defense, Shin Godzilla delivered.
Last edited by BlankAccount on Mon Jan 13, 2020 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Spydrmanjr
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by Spydrmanjr »

Take your damn upvote.

What’s really impressive is a stealth bomber can hold two of them.
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by GodzillavsRayquaza »

An excellent write up, however, MOPs actually weigh 30,000 pounds, or 15 tons.
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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GodzillavsRayquaza wrote:An excellent write up, however, MOPs actually weigh 30,000 pounds, or 15 tons.
Fixed, don't know why some sources said 30,000 tons. Seems like a pretty big goof up. Thank you.

Added in 5 minutes 52 seconds:
Spydrmanjr wrote:Take your damn upvote.

What’s really impressive is a stealth bomber can hold two of them.
They have made smaller ones since and are still working on making even smaller ones than that.
Last edited by BlankAccount on Mon Jan 13, 2020 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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I hate to break it to you, but as stuff like this becomes more commonplace these MOPs WILL be considered "conventional" weapons. I am not comfortable with using standards from 1954 as to what weapons Godzilla should be immune to. Godzilla always evolved with the times and Godzilla laughing at more and more powerful weapons is the perfect way to reflect this. I was never a fan of this weapon visibly injuring Godzilla, but with that said, it looked like the bomb didn't do any real damage and seemed to irritate Godzilla more than actually cause a serious injury. It was neat to see something different for the military to use in a Godzilla film rather than the generic missile and tank bombardments. This was my favorite military weapon the JSDF employed against Godzilla in Shin Godzilla, followed by the cruise missiles.

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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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Omegazilla wrote:I hate to break it to you, but as stuff like this becomes more commonplace these MOPs WILL be considered "conventional" weapons.
Nukes are common, I wouldn't call them conventional. Bunker Busters are pretty situational, the U.S. is really only gonna use them on bunkers or a large navel vessel cause they're expensive to make, it'd have to be a pretty extreme circumstances for them to use them on something else. If they really need to blast a large area they'll use a MOAB.
I am not comfortable with using standards from 1954 as to what weapons Godzilla should be immune to. Godzilla always evolved with the times and Godzilla laughing at more and more powerful weapons is the perfect way to reflect this. I was never a fan of this weapon visibly injuring Godzilla, but with that said, it looked like the bomb didn't do any real damage and seemed to irritate Godzilla more than actually cause a serious injury. It was neat to see something different for the military to use in a Godzilla film rather than the generic missile and tank bombardments. This was my favorite military weapon the JSDF employed against Godzilla in Shin Godzilla, followed by the cruise missiles.
He'll probably evolve or mutate to be invulnerable to them anyways. Anytime they said he shouldn't be able to do something, he mutated to do exactly that. It was a recurring theme in the movie, and when they said no creature could survive the heat of a nuclear bomb I'm sitting here thinking "wow have you learned nothing about jinxing yourselves?" so odds are likely that was the movie subtly saying even if they had nuked him it would fail.

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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by Inferno Rodan »

It's good to see someone else actually understands how freakishly powerful MOPs are. Getting hit by a single one of them would legit just outright kill like 90% of kaiju.
Omegazilla wrote:but with that said, it looked like the bomb didn't do any real damage and seemed to irritate Godzilla more than actually cause a serious injury.
Did you miss the part where it tore off one of his dorsal plates and caused a huge eruption of blood from his back?
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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Nukes are common, I wouldn't call them conventional. Bunker Busters are pretty situational, the U.S. is really only gonna use them on bunkers or a large navel vessel cause they're expensive to make, it'd have to be a pretty extreme circumstances for them to use them on something else. If they really need to blast a large area they'll use a MOAB.

I see your point. Conventional is a fairly subjective term. To me, unconventional would be something along the lines of a new weapon that hasn't been perfected enough to be used often, like a railgun.
He'll probably evolve or mutate to be invulnerable to them anyways. Anytime they said he shouldn't be able to do something, he mutated to do exactly that. It was a recurring theme in the movie, and when they said no creature could survive the heat of a nuclear bomb I'm sitting here thinking "wow have you learned nothing about jinxing yourselves?" so odds are likely that was the movie subtly saying even if they had nuked him it would fail.

I agree 100% with this. What made Shin so unique was how it would evolve against whatever was used against it. I imagine the Yashiori Plan wouldn't work a second time around either.
Did you miss the part where it tore off one of his dorsal plates and caused a huge eruption of blood from his back?

To which I would ask you if you missed the part where Godzilla was spewing blood from it's gills all over the streets without being attacked while it was still evolving? Another thing I liked about Shin is that it looked like a complete monstrosity that was damaged and possibly in pain from radiation. I don't think those MOPs did any actual harm to the creature. My point being that the creature was already bleeding and possibly suffering from being a radiation damaged mutant and I just don't see any evidence that would seem to point to the MOPs actually causing serious harm with this in mind.

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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by Dracosaurian »

The bombs clearly hurt him. He wouldn't have responded as violently as he did if they hadn't.

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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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Omegazilla wrote:To which I would ask you if you missed the part where Godzilla was spewing blood from it's gills all over the streets without being attacked while it was still evolving? Another thing I liked about Shin is that it looked like a complete monstrosity that was damaged and possibly in pain from radiation. I don't think those MOPs did any actual harm to the creature. My point being that the creature was already bleeding and possibly suffering from being a radiation damaged mutant and I just don't see any evidence that would seem to point to the MOPs actually causing serious harm with this in mind.
>initial impact of bombs send blood spraying as they pierce his back
>bombs explode inside of him, causing eruptions of fire and blood from his back
>torrents of blood cascade from his back after the explosions
>Godzilla proceeds to completely freak out and raze the city despite being basically indifferent to every other attack made on him before that
"They didn't hurt him"

Yeah ok dude.
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by Omegazilla »

You both completely misunderstood me. I didn't say the MOPs "didn't hurt him." They obviously did. I said I don't think they SERIOUSLY INJURED him. Since my choice of words didn't resonate before, I will clarify what I meant. By "serious injury" I meant something that had a realistic possibility of KILLING (or at least incapacitate) Godzilla. Although there isn't necessarily hard proof to disprove this idea, the fact Godzilla already was bleeding and looked like a radiation burn victim was why I think in the long run they couldn't, because already being injured from radiation and bleeding was already happening even before being bombed.

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Post by Gailah 1966 »

Was just a fan service because americans like thier weapons...
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

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Gailah 1966 wrote:Was just a fan service because americans like thier weapons...
More likely because Anno likes his weapons. The previous assault over the river was basically military porn, even more blatant than the MOPs.
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by G2000 »

Kaiju-King42 wrote:
Gailah 1966 wrote:Was just a fan service because americans like thier weapons...
More likely because Anno likes his weapons. The previous assault over the river was basically military porn, even more blatant than the MOPs.
There is another reason to consider. I’ve talked about this before, but I’m almost certain the inclusion of MOPs in Shin Godzilla is Anno’s response to articles such as this one that popped up around the release of G2014 (and later were recycled around the time KoTM came out) alleging the US military could "easily" take down Godzilla or any other kaiju. Here’s a breakdown I wrote while back of how the Godzilla-military confrontations in Shin read like Anno having gone through the article and refuting it’s argument point by point:
G2000 wrote:The article alleges Godzilla's eyes are his most vunerable spot and could be easily damaged, so Anno gives him nigh-impenetrable nictating membranes.

The article alleges that Godzilla can "only lash out in one direction at once," so Anno gives him the ability to strike in multiple directions with his tail and his back beams.

Finally and most notably), the article alleges that Godzilla could be easily killed with four B-2 Spirit bombers dropping Massive Ordnance Penetrators from 10,000 feet (the linked article mentions Godzilla's chest as the likely target, but at least one article I remember explicitly mentioned "the fleshy area beneath his back spines" as a probable targeting point/"weak spot") so Anno has them do exactly that to the letter; while they do manage to hurt Godzilla, he promptly counters their next attacks and shoots down both the bombers and their ordnance when they come around for a second run.

Even the dismissive comments about there all being left of Godzilla "a local HAZMAT disaster to clean up afterwards" seems to be addressed, as the indivudual blown-off pieces of Godzilla are shown to be perfectly capable of regenerating into another monster, forcing the JSDF and US military to abandon their plans to kill Godzilla using conventional weaponry.

It's to the point where I'm fairly certain Anno and/or Higuchi actually read those articles and made it a point to incorporate his refutations into the movie.
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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by LSD Jellyfish »

G2000's response and insight into that is as good as ever. I think it also fits into the theme though that people (with good intentions) feel that there is always a way they can respond and win, right up until something unexpected happens, which is exactly what happens with Shin.

I like to think it is just everything though. Anno does like his weapons, but the inclusion also keeps the escalation factor. In the helicopter scene we go from machine guns, to heavier machine guns, then tank fire, and then heavy artillery. We then go into the MOPS and when that fails well nukes are considered. It's an escalation. It also is just visually interesting. We haven't seen anything like the MOPS in Godzilla, and I thought they were awesome in film.
Spirit Ghidorah 2010 wrote: Sun Dec 03, 2023 4:54 pm Anno-san pleasures me more than Yamasaki-san.

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Re: Weapons Talkback: Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Post by Deathginger »

Whatever else, I respect Shin Godzilla for choosing bombs the B-2 Spirit can carry, as opposed to Rampage, which loaded a MOAB into a too-small bay.

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