American large-yield bomb
The
GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast
(
MOAB
,
, colloquially explained as "
mother of all bombs
") is a large-yield bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the
Air Force Research Laboratory
.
[1]
It was first tested in 2003. At the time of development, it was said to be the most powerful non-
nuclear weapon
in the American arsenal.
[2]
The bomb is designed to be delivered by a
C-130 Hercules
, primarily the
MC-130
E Combat Talon I or MC-130H Combat Talon II variants. The bomb's name and nickname were inspired by Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein
's invocation of the "mother of all battles" (
Umm al-Ma'arik
) during the 1991
Gulf War
.
[3]
The MOAB was first deployed in combat in the
13 April 2017 airstrike
against an
Islamic State ? Khorasan Province
tunnel complex in
Achin District
,
Afghanistan
.
[4]
Design and development
[
edit
]
The basic principle resembles that of the
BLU-82
Daisy Cutter
, which was used to clear heavily wooded areas in the
Vietnam War
. Decades later, the BLU-82 was used in Afghanistan in November 2001
[6]
against the Taliban. Its success as a weapon of intimidation led to the decision to develop the MOAB. Pentagon officials suggested MOAB might be used as an
anti-personnel weapon
, as part of the "
shock and awe
" strategy integral to the
2003 invasion of Iraq
.
[7]
GBU-43s are delivered from
C-130
cargo aircraft, inside which they are carried on cradles resting on airdrop platforms. The bombs are dropped by deploying
drogue parachutes
, which also extract the cradle and platform from the aircraft. Shortly after launch the drogues are released and the bomb falls without the use of a retarding parachute.
GPS
satellite-guidance is used to guide bombs to their targets.
[2]
The MOAB is not a
penetrator weapon
and is primarily an
air burst
bomb 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
.
[8]
High altitude
carpet-bombing
with much smaller 500-to-2,000-pound (230 to 910 kg) bombs delivered via heavy bombers such as the
B-52
,
B-2
, or the
B-1
is also highly effective at covering large areas.
[9]
The MOAB is designed to be used against a specific target, and cannot by itself replicate the effects of a typical heavy bomber mission. During the
Vietnam War
's
Operation Arc Light
program, for example, the
United States Air Force
sent
B-52s
on well over 10,000 bombing raids, each usually carried out by two groups of three aircraft. A typical mission dropped 168 tons of ordnance, pounding an area 1.5 by 0.5 miles (2.41 by 0.80 km) with an explosive force equivalent to 10 to 17 MOABs.
[10]
[11]
[12]
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 tested again on 21 November 2003.
[2]
Since 2003, 15 MOABs have been manufactured at the
McAlester Army Ammunition Plant
in
McAlester, Oklahoma
.
[13]
[14]
The Air Force has said the MOAB has a unit price of $170,000, but this is a historical unit cost made in the mid-2000s and various factors of the bomb's atypical development process have made exact cost estimation difficult. The
Air Force Research Lab
generated the value based on already existing parts such as bomb casing and metals, and since the bomb was built in-house, they did not pay for outside research or have standard procurement costs associated with it. MOAB was a "crash project" developed for use against an adversary with uncertain tactics on unfamiliar terrain, and so was an effort to meet an urgent need rather than a formal program. Should more bombs be ordered to be built, manufacturing would likely be started over with higher costs due to a lack of old parts, price inflation, and new design and testing.
[15]
Operational use
[
edit
]
On 13 April 2017, a MOAB was dropped
[16]
on an
Islamic State ? Khorasan Province
(ISKP) cave complex in
Achin District
,
Nangarhar Province
,
Afghanistan
. It was the first operational use of the bomb.
[4]
[17]
[18]
Two days later, an Afghan army spokesman said that the strike killed 94 ISKP militants, including four commanders, with no signs of civilian casualties.
[19]
However, an Afghan parliamentarian from Nangarhar province, Esmatullah Shinwari, said locals told him the explosion killed a teacher and his young son.
[20]
[21]
Former US military official
Marc Garlasco
, who served in the
George W. Bush
administration, said that the US had not previously used the MOAB because of worries that it would inadvertently hurt or kill civilians.
[22]
Similar weapons
[
edit
]
During
World War II
,
Royal Air Force Bomber Command
used the
Grand Slam
, officially known as the "Bomb, Medium Capacity, 22,000 lb" 42 times. At 22,000 lb (10,000 kg) total weight, these
earthquake bombs
were larger and heavier than the MOAB. However, half their weight was due to the cast high tensile steel casing necessary for penetrating the ground ? up to 130 ft (40 m) ? before exploding. The MOAB, in contrast, has a light 2,900 lb (1,300 kg) aluminum casing surrounding 18,700 lb (8,500 kg) of explosive
Composition H-6
material.
[23]
The
United States Air Force
's
T-12 Cloudmaker
44,000-pound (20,000 kg) demolition bomb (similar in design to the Grand Slam), developed after
World War II
, carried a heavier explosive charge than the MOAB, but was never used in combat.
In 2007, the Russian military announced that they had tested a
thermobaric weapon
nicknamed the "
Father of All Bombs
" ("FOAB").
[24]
The weapon is claimed to be four times as powerful as the MOAB,
[25]
[2]
but its specifications are disputed.
[26]
[27]
The MOAB is the most powerful conventional bomb ever used in combat as measured by the weight of its explosive material.
[28]
[29]
The explosive yield is comparable to that of the smallest
tactical nuclear weapons
, such as the
Cold War
-era American M-388 projectile fired by the portable
Davy Crockett
recoilless gun. The M-388, a
W54
nuclear warhead variant, weighed less than 60 pounds (27 kg). At the projectile's lowest yield setting of 10 tons, roughly equivalent to a single MOAB, its explosive force was only 1/144,000th (0.0007%) that of the Air Force's 1.44-megaton
W49
warhead, a nuclear weapon commonly found on American
ICBMs
from the early 1960s.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Albert L. Weimorts Jr. 67; Engineer Created 'Bunker Buster' Bombs"
.
Los Angeles Times
. Times Wire Services. 27 December 2005.
Archived
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. Retrieved
8 July
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
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.
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Archived
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2018
.
- ^
"
'Mother of All Bombs' Is Successfully Tested"
.
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. Retrieved
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2023
.
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a
b
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.
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.
- ^
a
b
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"
.
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.
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. Retrieved
22 April
2017
.
Al Weimorts, the creator of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (pictured left), and Joseph Fellenz, lead model maker, look over the prototype before it was painted and tested.
- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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- ^
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"
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- ^
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.
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- ^
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- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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.
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.
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.
- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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.
- ^
Panzino, Charlsy (13 April 2017).
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.
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.
- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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"
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.
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- ^
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.
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.
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.
- ^
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.
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.
- ^
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"
.
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- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
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.
External links
[
edit
]