As part of its budget for the upcoming fiscal year, Pentagon research agency Darpa is launching the “Transparent Earth” project which will create real-time, 3-D maps that display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth” by 2015. The new maps would help explain and predict volcanic eruptions and earthquakes but would have military utility in detecting, targeting, and destroying hard and buried underground facility (UGF) target.

The Pentagon said a giant "bunker buster" bomb will be ready within months, adding a powerful weapon to the US arsenal amid tensions over Iran's nuclear program.

The Pentagon is seeking to speed deployment of an ultra-large "bunker-buster" bomb on the most advanced U.S. bomber as soon as July 2010, the Air Force said on Sunday, amid concerns over perceived nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran.

"It's very possible that the Pentagon wants to send a signal to various countries, particularly Iran and North Korea, that the United States is developing a viable military option against their nuclear programs," said Kenneth Katzman, an expert on Iran at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress.

The United States has agreed to sell GBU-28 "bunker-buster" bombs to South Korea that are capable of destroying underground facilities in North Korea.

The Pentagon has been developing new sensors -- one that uses a laser radar to measure vibrations and another to record minute changes in gravity -- that could be small and light enough to be carried by unmanned aircraft and small ground vehicles and could locate and identify underground tunnels, facilities and activity.

The Pentagon has a new secret weapon to neutralize sites containing chemical or biological weapons: rocket balls. These are hollow spheres, made of rubberized rocket fuel; when ignited, they propel themselves around at random at high speed, bouncing off the walls and breaking through doors, turning the entire building into an inferno.

Silicon Graphics Inc. is teaming up with the U.S. military to help pinpoint enemy underground structures, including al Qaeda's hideouts, with the help of technology that U.S. companies use to look for oil and gas deposits.

To counter what the Pentagon considers a growing threat from such "hard and deeply buried targets," the Bush administration today is accelerating steps to develop more effective, earth-penetrating nuclear bombs.