Militaries employ ‘The mother of all bombs’ or MOABs for wiping out fortified ground targets and creating ‘shock and awe’

The US’s  GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) is a precision-guided munition weighing 21,500 pounds and was dropped from a C-130 Hercules aircraft. The MOAB isn’t the heaviest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal (that’s the 30,000-pound Massive Ordinance Penetrator ), but with a length of 30 feet and an estimated cost of  $15.7 million , it’s a very powerful military equipment. The GPS-guided bomb, known as the “mother of all bombs” is capable of destroying an area equivalent to nine city blocks.

 

On 13th April 2017, the United States Military dropped the MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat, on a network of fortified underground tunnels that ISIS had been using to stage attacks on government forces. In free-fall, the MOAB quickly detached from its pallet and deployed course-adjusting grid fins.  Guided by GPS system and computer, those fins bent the MOAB’s Earthward course toward a pre-selected target. In this case, that target was an underground ISIS tunnel complex, according to the Department of Defense. On the 15th April, Afghanistan’s defence ministry reported the death of 94 militants including 4 major commanders and that no civilians had been killed in the strike.

 

US and Afghan forces had been unable to advance because ISIS — which has expanded into Afghanistan in recent years — had mined the area with explosives. The rocky landscape is dotted with caves and defensive tunnels, making it easy to hold and hard to attack, according to Nic Robertson, CNN’s international diplomatic editor, who has reported from the Afghan mountains.

 

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he approved of the strike and that it was designed to support Afghan and US forces conducting clearance operations in the region. But former President Hamid Karzai accused the United States of using Afghanistan as “a testing ground for new and dangerous weapons.”

 

The decision to use the MOAB at this time was probably as much political as it was strategic. “More than anything, anytime you drop one of these you want to make an audacious statement, in this case to reinforce our resolve to fight in Afghanistan,” says Edward Priest, a former Air Force Special Operations combat controller who retired from the military in 2015, adding they produce a large mushroom cloud that can be seen for miles.

 

China’s arms industry giant NORINCO for the first time in Jan 2018 showcased a new type of massive aerial bomb, which it dubbed the Chinese version of the “Mother of All Bombs” due to its huge destruction potential that is claimed to be only second to nuclear weapons.

 

“These types of bombs were developed as much for their psychological impact as anything else,” A. J. Clark, a former military intelligence analyst says. The military uses “bunker buster” bombs to penetrate the ground in certain situations, but the caves they were targeting are likely too deep for something like that to have any effect, Clark adds.