War Spawned Mighty Bomb Meant to Kill Iraqi Leaders : Defense: Developed in a crash program, the Air Force’s 4,700-pound weapon was first put to use just days before the Gulf conflict ended.

In the closing days of the Persian Gulf War, the Air Force used powerful new penetration bombs to destroy hardened Iraqi command bunkers in an effort to kill the nation’s senior leaders, U.S. defense officials said Friday.

The bombs were developed and tested at Air Force laboratories in a crash program, arriving in Saudi Arabia only days before the cease-fire was declared Feb. 28.

Two of the 4,700-pound bombs, fashioned from lengths of heavy, eight-inch artillery gun tubes, were dropped by F-111 bombers on a command bunker complex north of Baghdad in the final week of the war. Officials said the bombs penetrated the buried, heavily reinforced bunkers and killed a number of senior Iraqi military officers.

A senior Pentagon official denied that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was the target of the attacks, but he acknowledged that U.S. air strikes “went after command and control”--including the nation’s top leadership--from the first moments of the war.

The policy sparked controversy during the war after U.S. warplanes destroyed a reputed command bunker in a residential neighborhood in Baghdad on Feb. 13, killing more than 200 people. Iraqi officials said that structure was a civilian bomb shelter, but U.S. authorities insisted that it was a command facility for the Iraqi military and a shelter for the leadership elite.

Existence of the new penetration bomb, designated the GBU-28, was disclosed by the industry magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology. The account of the development and use of the weapon, to be published in Monday’s editions, was independently verified by sources at the Pentagon.

The weapon is one of a number of innovations and improvisations spawned by the war. Air Force officials said they plan to continue work on the bomb and make it part of the permanent U.S. inventory.

The Air Force Systems Command created the bomb after urgent appeals from Desert Storm commanders, who sought a weapon that would penetrate deeper and explode with more force than bombs already in the inventory. Because of the design of the buried Iraqi bunkers, they wanted a weapon that could penetrate 100 feet of earth and 20 feet of reinforced concrete.

Theater commanders also requested that the new bomb be fitted with the laser guidance system that had proved successful in the bombing of bridges, aircraft shelters and other targets in Baghdad.

According to the magazine, Air Force technicians at the Watervliet Arsenal in New York bored out old Army eight-inch artillery gun barrels and used them as casings for the new bombs.

The 12 1/2-foot-long casings were then flown to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., propped upright and filled with molten explosives. Before they cooled, they were put aboard transport aircraft for testing at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Air Force officials said the test bomb penetrated the desert floor so deeply that researchers still have not recovered it.

The bombs were then fitted with laser-guidance systems, and at least two were shipped immediately to Saudi Arabia aboard a C-141 transport. Five hours after arriving there, they were loaded onto F-111s and used against Iraq, Air Force officials said.