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GBU-43/B MOAB

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"MOAB" redirects here. For other uses, see MOAB (disambiguation).

GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB)
GBU-43/B on display at the Air Force Armament Museum, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Note the grid fins.
Place of originUnited States
Service history
In service2003–present
Used byUnited States Air Force
WarsWar in Afghanistan
Production history
DesignerAir Force Research Laboratory
Designed2002
ManufacturerMcAlester Army Ammunition Plant
Produced2003
No. built15
Specifications
Mass21,715 lb (9,850 kg)
Length30 ft 1.75 in (9.1885 m)
Diameter40.5 in (103 cm)
FillingH-6
Filling weight18,739 lb (8,500 kg)
Blast yield11 tons TNT (46 GJ)

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB, /ˈmoʊæb/, 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-130E 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

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Al Weimorts (right), the creator[5] of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, and Joseph Fellenz, lead model maker,[5] look over the prototype before it was painted and tested.

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

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Main article: 2017 Nangarhar airstrike
Video showing the bomb in use in April 2017

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

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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

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References

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  1. ^ "Albert L. Weimorts Jr. 67; Engineer Created 'Bunker Buster' Bombs". Los Angeles Times. Times Wire Services. 27 December 2005. Archived from the original on 18 June 2012. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
  2. ^ a b c d "GBU-43/B "Mother Of All Bloons" / Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb". Globalsecurity.org. 2017. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 26 March 2018.
  3. ^ "'Mother of All Bombs' Is Successfully Tested". Los Angeles Times. 12 March 2003. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  4. ^ a b Cooper, Helene; Mashal, Mujib (13 April 2017). "U.S. Drops 'Mother of All Bombs' on ISIS Caves in Afghanistan". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 April 2017. Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  5. ^ a b Collins, Shannon (14 April 2017). "What to Know About the GBU-43/B, 'Mother of All Bombs'". DoD live. Archived from the original on 23 April 2017. 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.
  6. ^ Norton-Taylor, Richard (6 November 2001). "Taliban hit by bombs used in Vietnam". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2017.
  7. ^ Owens, Mackubin Thomas (2003). "Enter Moab". National Review Online. Archived from the original on 21 August 2016. Retrieved 9 December 2011.
  8. ^ Insinna, Valerie (2017). "What you need to know about the 'Mother of All Bombs'". Defense News. Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  9. ^ "United States Military Weapons of War". About.com. 2007. Archived from the original on 17 September 2007. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
  10. ^ "B-52 Mission, Totals By Year/Month". American War Library.com. 2017. Archived from the original on 10 November 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2017.
  11. ^ "The Story of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress". B-52 Stratofortress Association. 2017. Archived from the original on 6 May 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2017.
  12. ^ "General Statistics Vietnam War". 103 Field Battery RAA.net. 2017. Archived from the original on 20 March 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2017.
  13. ^ Dekker, Michael (14 April 2017). "Made in Oklahoma: 'Mother of all bombs' dropped in Afghanistan could have come from McAlester". Tulsa World. Archived from the original on 29 November 2018. Retrieved 29 November 2018.
  14. ^ Lord, Debbie (13 April 2017). "What is the 'mother of all bombs', and what does it do?". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Archived from the original on 15 April 2017. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
  15. ^ Pawlyk, Oriana (22 April 2017). "After US Drops 'Frankenbomb' on Afghanistan, Questions Linger". Military.com. Archived from the original on 25 April 2017. Retrieved 24 April 2017.
  16. ^ "Drone footage shows MOAB drop in Afghanistan". USA Today. 14 April 2017. Archived from the original on 14 April 2017. Retrieved 14 April 2017 – via YouTube.
  17. ^ "U.S. drops "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan, marking weapon's first use". CBS News. 13 April 2017. Archived from the original on 13 April 2017. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  18. ^ Panzino, Charlsy (13 April 2017). "CENTCOM: US drops 'mother of all bombs' on ISIS in Afghanistan". Air Force Times. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  19. ^ "Afghan official: Death toll from massive US bomb rises to 94, including 4 ISIS commanders". Stars & Stripes. 15 April 2017. Archived from the original on 16 April 2017. Retrieved 15 April 2017.
  20. ^ "U.S. Drops Its Biggest Non-Nuclear Bomb on Afghans, Already Traumatized by Decades of War". Democracy Now. 14 April 2017. Archived from the original on 18 April 2017. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
  21. ^ Ackerman, Spencer; Rasmussen, Sune Engel (14 April 2017). "36 Isis militants killed in US 'mother of all bombs' attack, Afghan ministry says". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 18 April 2017. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
  22. ^ Emmons, Alex (13 April 2017). "'Mother of All Bombs' Never Used Before Due to Civilian Casualty Concerns". The Intercept. Archived from the original on 13 April 2017. Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  23. ^ Schmitt, Michael; Barker, Peter (15 April 2017). "'The Mother of All Bombs': Understanding the Massive Ordnance Air Blast Weapon". Just Security.org. Archived from the original on 20 April 2017. Retrieved 20 April 2017.
  24. ^ "Trump Dropped Mother of All Bombs. But He Wasn't Expecting Russia to do This". Bel Air Daily. Archived from the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
  25. ^ Harding, Luke (12 September 2007). "Russia unveils the 'father of all bombs'". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 September 2007.
  26. ^ "Russian Bomb Claims Questionable, Expert Says". Deutsche Welle. 14 September 2007. Archived from the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  27. ^ "Russian "Father of All Bombs" = Fake?". Wired. 10 April 2007. Archived from the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  28. ^ "U.S. Air Force Drops the Largest Conventional Bomb Ever Used in Combat". Popular Mechanics. Archived from the original on 14 April 2017. Retrieved 15 April 2017.
  29. ^ "US drops largest non-nuclear bomb ever in Afghanistan". CNBC. 13 April 2017. Archived from the original on 16 October 2017. Retrieved 9 September 2017.
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