GBU-43 B MOAB
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The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB , colloquially known as the "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. 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. The bomb is designed to be delivered by a
C-130 Hercules The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin). Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 ...
, primarily the MC-130E Combat Talon I or MC-130H Combat Talon II variants. The MOAB was first deployed in combat in the 13 April 2017 airstrike against an Islamic State – Khorasan Province tunnel complex in
Achin District Achin ( ps, اچين ولسوالۍ) is a district in southern Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, on the border with Pakistan. Its population is 100% Pashtun. Achin is home to the Shinwari tribe, one of the largest Pashtun tribes. It was a stro ...
, Afghanistan.


Design and development

The basic principle resembles that of the
BLU-82 The BLU-82B/C-130 weapon system, known under program "Commando Vault" and nicknamed " Daisy Cutter" in Vietnam for its ability to flatten a section of forest into a helicopter landing zone, is an American conventional bomb, delivered from eith ...
''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 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 Shock and awe (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight. Though ...
" strategy integral to the
2003 invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...
. 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 The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...
satellite-guidance is used to guide bombs to their targets. The MOAB is not a penetrator weapon and is primarily an
air burst An air burst or airburst is the detonation of an explosive device such as an anti-personnel artillery shell or a nuclear weapon in the air instead of on contact with the ground or target. The principal military advantage of an air burst over ...
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. High altitude carpet-bombing with much smaller bombs delivered via heavy bombers such as the B-52,
B-2 The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses. A subsonic flying w ...
, or the B-1 is also highly effective at covering large areas. 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 with an explosive force equivalent to 10 to 17 MOABs. MOAB was first tested with the explosive tritonal on 11 March 2003, on Range 70 located at
Eglin Air Force Base Eglin Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) base in the western Florida Panhandle, located about southwest of Valparaiso in Okaloosa County. The host unit at Eglin is the 96th Test Wing (formerly the 96th Air Base Wing). The ...
in Florida. It was tested again on 21 November 2003. Since 2003, 15 MOABs have been manufactured at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in McAlester, Oklahoma. 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.


Operational use

On 13 April 2017, a MOAB was dropped on an Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP) cave complex in
Achin District Achin ( ps, اچين ولسوالۍ) is a district in southern Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, on the border with Pakistan. Its population is 100% Pashtun. Achin is home to the Shinwari tribe, one of the largest Pashtun tribes. It was a stro ...
, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. It was the first operational use of the bomb. Two days later, an Afghan army spokesman said that the strike killed 94 ISKP militants, including four commanders, with no signs of civilian casualties. However, an Afghan parliamentarian from Nangarhar province, Esmatullah Shinwari, said locals told him the explosion killed a teacher and his young son. Former US military official Marc Garlasco, who served in the
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
administration, said that the US had not previously used the MOAB because of worries that it would inadvertently hurt or kill civilians.


Similar weapons

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 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 – before exploding. The MOAB, in contrast, has a light aluminum casing surrounding of explosive
Composition H-6 __NOTOC__ Composition H-6 is a melt-cast military aluminized high explosive. H-6 was developed in the US The chemical composition of H-6 is specified as follows: * 45.1 ± 0.3% RDX * 29.2 ± 3.0% TNT * 21.0 ± 3.0% powdered aluminium * 4.7 ...
material. The United States Air Force's T-12 Cloudmaker 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"). The weapon is claimed to be four times as powerful as the MOAB, but its specifications are widely disputed. The MOAB is the most powerful conventional bomb ever used in combat as measured by the weight of its explosive material. The explosive yield is comparable to that of the smallest tactical nuclear weapons, such as the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
-era American M-388 projectile fired by the portable
Davy Crockett David Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was an American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. He is often referred to in popular culture as the "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Re ...
recoilless gun. The M-388, a
W54 The W54 (also known as the Mark 54 or B54) was a tactical nuclear warhead developed by the United States in the late 1950s. The weapon is notable for being the smallest nuclear weapon in both weight and yield to have entered US service. It was ...
nuclear warhead variant, weighed less than . 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 The W49 was an American thermonuclear warhead, used on the Thor, Atlas, Jupiter, and Titan I ballistic missile systems. W49 warheads were manufactured starting in 1958 and were in service until 1965, with a few warheads being retained until 1975 ...
warhead, a nuclear weapon commonly found on American
ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...
s from the early 1960s.


See also

* Massive Ordnance Penetrator


References


External links


AFRL GBU-43/B MOAB
Designation Systems

GlobalSecurity.org
Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb Test Video

Five years later, it's still known as 'Mother of all bombs'
af.mil {{DEFAULTSORT:GBU-43 B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb Articles containing video clips Guided bombs of the United States Strategic bombing War on terror Afghanistan conflict (1978–present) Weapons and ammunition introduced in 2003