U.S. DROPS LARGEST NON-NUCLEAR BOMB
ON ISIS IN AFGANISTAN
Obama dropped warning leaflets; Trump dropped biggest bomb
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
US forces dropped their largest non-nuclear bomb on ISIS targets in Afghanistan
Thursday.
The Pentagon confirmed dropping a 21,600 pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance
Air Blast (MOAB), described as the Mother of All Bombs, on ISIS tunnels
and personnel in the Nangarhar province.
Military officials are still working to assess the damage from the bomb, which has a 300 meter blast radius.Here’s a video on the bomb in particular:
More info from Wikipedia:
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB pronounced /ˈmoʊ.æb/, commonly known as the Mother of All Bombs) is a large-yield conventional (non-nuclear) bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the time of development, it was touted as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever designed. The bomb was designed to be delivered by a C-130 Hercules, primarily the MC-130E Combat Talon I or MC-130H Combat Talon II variants.
Since then, Russia has tested its “Father of All Bombs”, which is claimed to be four times as powerful as the MOAB.
Operational history
MOAB was first tested with the explosive tritonal on 11 March 2003, on Range 70 located at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. It was again tested on 21 November 2003.
Aside from two test articles, the only known production is of 15 units at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in 2003 in support of the Iraq War. As of early 2007, none of those were known to have been used, although a single MOAB was moved to the Persian Gulf area in April 2003.
On April 13, 2017, a MOAB was dropped on a target in the Nangarhar Province inside Afghanistan. It was the first non-testing use of the bomb.
Evaluations
The basic operational concept bears some similarity to the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, which was used to clear heavily wooded areas in the Vietnam War and in Iraq to clear mines and later as a psychological weapon against the Iraqi military. After the psychological impact of the BLU-82 on enemy soldiers was witnessed, and no BLU-82 weapons remained, the MOAB was developed partly to continue the ability to intimidate Iraqi soldiers. Pentagon officials had suggested their intention to use MOAB as an anti-personnel weapon, as part of the “shock and awe” strategy integral to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The MOAB is not a penetrator weapon and is primarily intended for soft to medium surface targets covering extended areas and targets in a contained environment such as a deep canyon or within a cave system. However, multiple strikes with lower yield ordnance may be more effective and can be delivered by fighter/bombers such as the F-16 with greater stand-off capability than the C-130 and C-17. High altitude carpet-bombing with much smaller 230-to-910-kilogram (500 to 2,000 lb) bombs delivered via heavy bombers such as the B-52, B-2, or the B-1 is also highly effective at covering large areas.
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MOAB used for the first time in combat
US hits ISIS compound using bomb with
one-mile blast radius
President Trump Statement on Dropping MOAB
on ISIS 4/13/17
