U.S. Air Force signs $149M deal to keep its bunker busters in production

The U.S. Air Force has awarded four manufacturers a combined $149 million to build metal cases for large bunker-busting bombs, splitting the work across small forging and machining shops rather than a single prime contractor.

Superior Forge and Steel of Lima, Ohio; Ellwood National Forge of Irvine, Pennsylvania; Faxon Machining LLC of Cincinnati, Ohio; and Grand Valley Manufacturing of Titusville, Pennsylvania each received a firm-fixed-price, cost-type indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for what the Air Force calls large penetrator warhead case assembly production. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Attack Weapons Branch at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, ran the competition and received four offers before making the awards.

The contracts cover manufacturing of the warhead cases and their components, including both full-scale and subscale versions used for testing. Work at all four companies is expected to wrap up by September 7, 2033, if the Air Force exercises an option to extend the deal. The Air Force obligated just $10,000 in fiscal 2026 research and development funding at the time of the award, a placeholder amount typical for IDIQ contracts where the government orders and pays for specific quantities of work over time rather than committing the full ceiling value upfront.

A large penetrator warhead case is the hardened metal shell built to survive the impact of slamming into a hardened target, like a bunker or tunnel complex, before the explosive charge inside detonates.

The Air Force’s existing weapon in this category is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 13,600 kg (30,000-pound) bomb built by Boeing that carries a roughly 2,700 kg (6,000-pound) warhead and is dropped from B-2 and B-52 bombers. The Pentagon used GBU-57 bombs against Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility in June 2025.

The Air Force is also developing a successor weapon, the Next Generation Penetrator, after awarding Applied Research Associates a two-year design and prototyping contract in September 2025. Boeing is partnered with ARA on that program, building the new weapon’s tail kit. The Air Force notice announcing this week’s case-assembly awards did not specify which penetrator program, or programs, the contracts will supply.