United States President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to sell 60,000 highly destructive, 2,000-pound (907kg) bombs to Israel in a multibillion-dollar package which will be funded by American taxpayers. US media has reported that the Trump administration has approved the sale, which features some of the most destructive munitions in Western arsenals, and has informally notified Congress. This is one of the biggest US munition packages to Israel and comes after nearly three years of genocidal war on Gaza, ongoing pogroms by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and a mighty assault on southern Lebanon – which together have killed tens of thousands and displaced millions in the region.
It also comes as the US’s own munitions stockpile has been depleted due to its war on Iran, with the crisis worsened by Russia’s war on Ukraine. So, what bombs are the US sending to Israel, and what can Israel do with them? The Trump administration has not officially confirmed this sale yet.
A senior administration official told news agency that “all foreign arms sales are moving through the appropriate process”, but refused to comment on pending transactions. Meanwhile, a State Department spokesperson told that “as a matter of policy, the Department does not confirm or comment on proposed arms sales until they have been formally notified to Congress”. However, Washington is reported to be on track to deliver a munitions package to Israel that is believed to include 60,000 warheads, including 20,000 MK-84s, 20,000 BLU-117s and 20,000 I-2000 Penetrator.
The sale is worth $2.8bn, the majority of which will be paid for by the US’s Foreign Military Financing scheme, wherein Washington pays Israel from its own taxpayers’ funds to buy American-made weapons and military equipment. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden’s administration paused the delivery of some 2,000-pound-class bombs to Israel amid growing international criticism by rights groups about the disproportionate number of civilians being killed in attacks. Trump ended the pause when he returned to the presidency the following year – and bypassed a usual congressional review process to approve a nearly $3bn arms sale to Israel that included more than 35,500 of these powerful bombs.
In January this year, Washington approved a further package of arms sales to Israel worth $6.67bn. Israel had been using 2,000-pound-class bombs, especially in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Lebanon, for at least four decades prior to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered Israel’s war on Gaza. In 1981, Israel used this bomb during the Osirak bombing, known as Operation Opera, in an air strike which destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad.
The next year, Israel dropped these bombs in Lebanon and Syria, accounting for a high civilian toll during attacks. According to the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA), which conducts defence policy research and analysis, a 2,000-pound blast will severely damage, injure or kill everything or anyone within 35 metres (115 feet). Averaged across different types of surfaces, a 2000-pound bomb will carve out a crater 50 feet (15 metres) across and 16 feet (5 metres) deep.
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