© GRAPHIC NEWS
© GRAPHIC NEWS
MILITARY
Mother of all bombs
April 14, 2017 - The U.S. military has dropped America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb on so-called Islamic State targets in Afghanistan. It is the first time this type of weapoen has been used in battle.
A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the “mother of all bombs,” was dropped at 19:32 local time (15:32GMT) Thursday, according to U.S. military officials with direct knowledge of the mission.
President Donald Trump called it “another successful job” later Thursday.
The 9,800kg (21,000lb) Massive Ordnance Air Blast combines a KMU-593/B guidance section and BLU-120/B warhead with an 8,425kg (18,633lb) Tritonal explosive fill, according to IHS Jane’s 360.
The MOAB has a blast yield of 11 tonnes (TNT) and, at 9.45m long, is too large to be dropped from a conventional bomber so is deployed from Lockheed Martin MC-130H special mission aircraft.
Link to IHS Jane’s 360
The bomb detonated above a 300m-long network of caves in the Achin district of Nangarhar province, a remote area in the country’s east which borders Pakistan.
On Saturday, Nangarhar provincial spokesman Attaullah Khogiani reported that 94 IS fighters, including four commanders, were killed in the attack.