Natasha Bertrand / Business Insider & CNN & Daniel Brown / Business Insider – 2017-04-14 13:11:20
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/heres-21-000-pound-bomb-183103642.html
Here’s How a 21,000-pound Bomb Would Affect Your City
Natasha Bertrand / Business Insider
(April 13, 2017) — The US has deployed the largest nonnuclear bomb in its inventory on an ISIS target in a remote part of far northeast Afghanistan, the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, whose acronym has inspired the nickname “Mother of All Bombs” or “MOAB,” weighs over 21,000 pounds.
It was developed during the Iraq War. It had not been used in combat until now.
It was dropped on an ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, camp in the Achin district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, which borders northwest Pakistan, US officials with direct knowledge of the mission told CNN.
An online simulator called HYDESim, which stands for High-Yield Detonation Effects Simulator, “maps overpressure radii generated by a ground-level detonation.”
“These radii are an indicator of structural damage to buildings,” the simulator says.
Here’s how the MOAB would affect New York City, based on the HYDESim’s estimate of its explosive yield. (The exact yield is classified.)
(Screenshot/HYDESim)
Based on the simulator’s calculations, the effects of the bomb would be felt wide, and “most glass surfaces, such as windows, will shatter . . . some with enough force to cause injury,” according to the simulator.
By contrast, the US’s most powerful nuclear bomb — the B83, with a 1.2 megaton maximum yield — would have a blast radius of nearly 20 miles.
Here’s how the MOAB would affect Los Angeles:
And London:
(Screenshots/HYDESim)
“The strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and US forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities,” US Central Command said in a statement on Thursday.
“As ISIS-K’s losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers, and tunnels to thicken their defense,” Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said in the statement. “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K.”
Watch footage of the MOAB being tested:
Notable Comments:
WikiLeaks (@wikileaks)
Media hype Trump’s bomb theatre. But the Pentagon dropped 26,172 bombs during 2016. More than a MOAB every day.
Bill Kristol (@BillKristol)
They said if I didn’t vote for Trump we’d have a warmongering, trying-to-prove-she’s-tough @POTUS who’d drop a GBU-43 bomb in Afghanistan.
B. K. Reimers (@ReimersBK)
The Mother Of All Narcissists dropped the Mother Of All Bombs to create the Mother Of All Distractions? #moab #TrumpRussia
Trump Denies He Authorized the Bombing
Trump won’t say if he greenlit use of ‘mother of all bombs’ — CNN.com
2 minutes ago — The United States on Thursday dropped the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in its military arsenal for the first time in history. But President Donald Trump declined to say whether he personally signed off on the use of the GBU-43/B MOAB, also known as the “mother of all bombs,” in a strike on ISIS militants in Afghanistan.
One Minute Earlier, Trump Says He Was ‘Very Proud’ He Authorized the Bombing
Donald Trump ‘very proud’ after dropping ‘Mother of All Bombs’
3 minutes ago — Donald Trump has said he was “very proud of” dropping the “mother of all bombs ” on Afghanistan.
Here’s the Father of All Bombs:
Russia’s Answer to the MOAB
Daniel Brown / Business Insider
(April 13, 2017) — The US just dropped a 21,600-pound conventional bomb in Afghanistan. The bomb, the Massive Ordinance Air Blast, nicknamed the “Mother of All Bombs” because of its acronym, is the largest nonnuclear bomb in the US’s arsenal. But Russia has an even bigger one.
The so-called “father of all bombs” is thought to be about four times as big as the MOAB. It’s a thermobaric bomb with a destruction radius of nearly 1,000 feet and a blast yield of nearly 44 tons of TNT.
Thermobaric weapons differ from conventional bombs in that they combine with atmospheric oxygen to greatly extend the blast radius.
Developed in 2007, the FOAB explodes in midair, igniting a fuel-air mixture. It is designed to vaporize targets and collapse structures, producing powerful blasts and aftershocks but without the radioactive fallout of a nuclear weapon.
Watch the FOAB explode here:
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