US President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to sell 60,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound (907 kg) bombs to Israel in a multibillion-dollar package funded by US taxpayers.
US media reported that the Trump administration had approved the sale, which features some of the most destructive weapons in the Western arsenal, and informally notified Congress.
It is one of the largest U.S. military deliveries to Israel and comes after nearly three years of genocidal war in Gaza, ongoing pogroms by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and violent attacks on southern Lebanon that have killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions in the region.
It is also against the background that the crisis is worsening due to Russia’s war with Ukraine, and the United States’ own ammunition stockpiles are being depleted due to the war against Iran.
So what kind of bomb is the US sending to Israel, and what can Israel do with it?
What weapons will the US sell to Israel?
The Trump administration has not yet formally approved the sale. A senior government official told AFP that “all arms sales to foreign countries go through the proper process,” but declined to comment on pending deals.
“As a matter of policy, the State Department does not review or comment on proposed arms sales until Congress is formally notified,” a State Department spokesperson told AFP.
However, Washington is reportedly planning to deliver to Israel an ammunition package believed to contain 60,000 warheads, including 20,000 MK-84s, 20,000 BLU-117s, and 20,000 I-2000 penetrators.
The sale is valued at $2.8 billion, much of which will be paid for by the U.S. Foreign Military Loan Program, in which the U.S. government pays Israel out of its own taxpayer funds to buy U.S.-made weapons and military equipment.
There are three types of bombs:
MK-84: The largest of the Mark 80 series of bombs, this unguided 2,000 lb (907 kg) general purpose bomb is designed primarily for maximum detonation and fragmentation against buildings and moderately protected targets. Buildings can be destroyed and people may be killed or injured even hundreds of meters away from the explosion site. BLU-117: 2,000 lb (907 kg) general purpose bomb. It looks very similar to the MK-84, but has a different explosive charge and can also be equipped with a precision guidance kit. It also has a thermal protection coating specifically designed for safe storage by the U.S. Navy. I-2000 Penetrator: Also known as a “bunker buster,” this approximately 2,000-pound class hard-target penetrator is designed to penetrate hardened structures before detonating. Its casing is significantly thicker and stiffer than the MK-84.
In 2024, then-President Joe Biden’s administration suspended shipments of about 2,000 pounds of bombs to Israel amid mounting international criticism from rights groups over the attacks that killed a disproportionate number of civilians.
When Trump returned to office the following year, he ended the moratorium and bypassed the normal congressional review process by approving nearly $3 billion in arms sales to Israel, including more than 35,500 powerful bombs. In January, Washington approved a further arms sales package to Israel worth $6.67 billion.
When did Israel use a US-made 2,000 pound bomb?
Israel had been using 2,000-pound bombs, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon, for at least four decades prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led offensive in southern Israel that triggered Israel’s war in Gaza.
In 1981, Israel used the bomb during the Osirak bombing, known as Operation Opera, an airstrike that destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad. The following year, Israel dropped these bombs on Lebanon and Syria, and the attacks caused many civilian casualties.
According to the Defense Alternatives Project (PDA), a defense policy research and analysis organization, a 2,000-pound explosion would seriously damage, injure or kill anything or anyone within 35 meters (115 feet).
On average across different types of surfaces, a 2,000-pound bomb would carve a crater 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter and 16 feet (5 meters) deep.
Since Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began in October 2023, preliminary research shows that Israel has been using these powerful and destructive bombs more frequently.
For example, on October 31, 2023, Israel dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on Jabalia refugee camp in a densely populated area of Gaza City, leaving a huge crater inside the bombed building and killing dozens of civilians. The United Nations human rights office said the Israeli airstrike could constitute a war crime.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Washington derides the court’s jurisdiction.
How lethal are these bombs?
According to Al Jazeera’s investigation “The Rest of the Story,” civil defense teams in Gaza have recorded 2,842 Palestinians who witnesses say have been effectively “evaporated” by bomb explosions since the start of the war in October 2023, leaving behind no bodies other than blood splatters and small pieces of flesh.
Experts and witnesses attribute the phenomenon to Israel’s systematic use of internationally banned thermal and thermobaric weapons, often called vacuum bombs or aerosol bombs, which can generate temperatures in excess of 3,500 degrees Celsius (6,332 degrees Fahrenheit).
The investigation detailed how certain chemical components in Israeli ammunition can turn a human body to ash in seconds, and identified specific US-made munitions used in Gaza and linked to these disappearances, including the MK-84 and BLU series bunker busters.
Russian military expert Vasily Fatigalov explained that these weapons do more than just kill people. They obliterate matter. Unlike traditional explosives, these weapons disperse a cloud of fuel that ignites, creating a huge fireball and vacuum effect.
“To extend the combustion time, aluminum, magnesium and titanium powders are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigalov said. “This would increase the temperature of the explosion to 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celsius (4,532 to 5,432 degrees Fahrenheit).”
How important are 60,000 bombs?
very. 60,000 2,000-pound bombs would weigh 54,400 tons.
This is equivalent to the weight of the entire steel frame of the Empire State Building in New York. Or seven times the weight of the Eiffel Tower’s steel structure.
Its mass far exceeds the most notorious conventional single air raids of the 20th century. The Tokyo incendiary bombings of March 1945 killed more than 80,000 people in one night and used approximately 1,600 tons of bombs.
On a broader scale, 54,400 tons is roughly equivalent to the total weight of the bombs dropped on Berlin during World War II, and roughly one-third of the bombs dropped on mainland Japan.
Isn’t the US running out of ammunition reserves?
Indeed, a Pentagon monitoring report released Monday confirmed earlier media reports that the war against Iran is burning up U.S. munitions, particularly the expensive Patriot surface-to-air missile defense system, and creating “bottlenecks” in the supply chain.
“To alleviate these constraints,” the report says, the Pentagon is “working to streamline procurement processes and production lead times, and to stockpile critical materials, parts, and some munitions for rapid response to contingencies.”
President Trump wrote in Truth Social that the United States is “producing more sophisticated and elite weaponry than at any time in our nation’s history. They are delivered every day to our military forces in the Middle East and beyond.”
What was the reaction to this arms sale?
News of the sale was condemned by figures on both sides of the US political spectrum.
“By any definition, what the Netanyahu government committed in Gaza was genocide,” conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who has been harshly critical of U.S. support for Israel’s war against Palestine, wrote in X.
“The 40,000 new bombs the Trump administration is sending will be used for similar purposes in Lebanon and perhaps other countries in the region. If we want to extend the Iran war into the indefinite future, this is exactly what we will do.”
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said he would work to block the sale and accused the Trump administration of “shipping a bomb paid for by American taxpayers to a government led by a wanted war criminal.”
“We did not vote for this. America does not stand for this. Our tax dollars and weapons are being used to kill tens of thousands of innocent people,” wrote former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican during her time in the House.
The war between the United States and Israel against Iran, which began with the assassination of then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei at the end of February, is widely unpopular in the United States, with President Trump’s approval ratings declining.
A June Quinnipiac University poll found that 48% of voters and 66% of Democrats believe the United States supports Israel too much, up from 16% and 20% when the question was first asked in 2017.
