GBU-43/B MOAB

GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB)
Place of origin United States
Service history
In service 2003–present
Used by United States Air Force
Production history
Designer Air Force Research Laboratory
Designed 2002
Manufacturer McAlester Army Ammunition Plant
Produced 2003
No. built 15
Specifications
Weight 9,800 kg (21,600 lb)
Length 9.1885 m (30 ft 1.75 in)
Diameter 103 cm (40.5 in)
Filling H-6
Filling weight 8,500 kg (18,700 lb)
Blast yield 11 tons TNT (46 GJ)

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB pronounced /ˈmoʊ.æb/, commonly 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.[1] At the time of development, it was touted as 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 MOAB was first dropped in combat in the 13 April 2017 airstrike against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Afghanistan.[3]

Design and development

Al Weimorts (right), the creator[4] of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, and Joseph Fellenz, lead model maker,[4] look over the prototype before it was painted and tested.
Prototype MOAB an instant before impact on Eglin AFB's Range 70

The basic operational concept bears some similarity to 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[5] 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.[6]

GBU-43s are delivered from C-130 cargo planes, 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 bombs fall unretarded. 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 ordnance 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.[7] High altitude carpet-bombing with much smaller 230-to-910-kilogram (500 to 2,000 lb) bombs delivered via heavy bombers such as the B-52, B-2, or the B-1 is also highly effective at covering large areas.[8]

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 with an explosive force equivalent to 10 to 17 MOABs. [9][10][11]

GBU-43/B on display at the Air Force Armament Museum, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Note the grid fins.

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.[12][13]

The Air Force has said the MOAB has a unit price of $170,000, but this is a historical unit cost generated in the mid-2000s and various factors of the bomb's atypical development process have made cost estimation difficult to precisely calculate. The Air Force Research Lab generated the value based on already existing parts such as bomb casing and metals, and since the munition was built in-house by the service they didn't 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 an effort to meet an urgent need and was not a formal program. Should more bombs be ordered built, manufacturing would basically be started over with higher costs because of lack of old parts, price inflation, and new design and testing.[14]

Operational use

On 13 April 2017, a MOAB was dropped[15] on an ISIL-Khorasan cave complex in Achin District, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. It was the first operational use of the bomb.[3][16][17] Two days later, an Afghan army spokesman said that the strike killed 94 ISIS-K militants, including four commanders, with no signs of civilian casualties.[18] However, a parliamentarian from Nangarhar province, Esmatullah Shinwari, said the explosion killed a teacher and his young son.[19][20] 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.[21]

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 22,000 lbs total weight, these bombs were technically larger than the MOAB. However, half their weight was due to the cast iron casing necessary for penetrating hardened concrete roofs. The MOAB, in contrast, has a light 2,900 lb aluminum casing surrounding 18,700 lbs of explosive Composition H-6 material.[22]

The United States Air Force's T-12 Cloudmaker 44,000-pound demolition bomb, 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").[23] The weapon is claimed to be four times as powerful as the MOAB.[24][2]

The MOAB is the most powerful conventional bomb ever used in combat as measured by the weight of its explosive material.[25][26] 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. 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

References

  1. ↑ Times Wire Services (27 December 2005). "Albert L. Weimorts Jr. 67; Engineer Created 'Bunker Buster' Bombs". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "GBU-43/B "Mother Of All Bombs" / Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb". globalsecurity.org.
  3. 1 2 Helene Cooper & Mujib Mashal, U.S. Drops 'Mother of All Bombs' on ISIS Caves in Afghanistan, New York Times (April 13, 2017).
  4. 1 2 Shannon Collins (14 April 2017). "What to Know About the GBU-43/B, ‘Mother of All Bombs’". DoDlive. DoDlive. 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.
  5. ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard (6 November 2001). "Taliban hit by bombs used in Vietnam" – via The Guardian.
  6. ↑ Owens, Mackubin Thomas (2003). "Enter Moab". National Review Online. Retrieved 9 December 2011.
  7. ↑ Insinna, Valerie (2017). "What you need to know about the 'Mother of All Bombs'". Defense News. Retrieved 14 April 2017.
  8. ↑ "United States Military Weapons of War". about.com. 2007. Archived from the original on 17 September 2007. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
  9. ↑ "B-52 Mission, Totals By Year/Month". americanwarlibrary.com. 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2017.
  10. ↑ "The Story of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress". B-52 Stratofortress Association. 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2017.
  11. ↑ "General Statistics Vietnam War". 103fieldbatteryraa.net. 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2017.
  12. ↑ Michael Dekker, Made in Oklahoma: 'Mother of all bombs' dropped in Afghanistan could have come from McAlester, Tulsa World (April 14, 2017).
  13. ↑ Lord, Debbie (13 April 2017). "What is the ‘mother of all bombs,' and what does it do?". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
  14. ↑ After US Drops 'Frankenbomb' on Afghanistan, Questions Linger - Military.com, 22 April 2017
  15. ↑ USA TODAY (14 April 2017). "Drone footage shows MOAB drop in Afghanistan" – via YouTube.
  16. ↑ "U.S. drops "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan, marking weapon's first use". CBS News. 13 April 2017. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  17. ↑ Charlsy Panzino (13 April 2017). "CENTCOM: US drops 'mother of all bombs' on ISIS in Afghanistan". Air Force Times. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  18. ↑ "Afghan official: Death toll from massive US bomb rises to 94, including 4 ISIS commanders". Stars and Stripes. 15 April 2017.
  19. ↑ "U.S. Drops Its Biggest Non-Nuclear Bomb on Afghans, Already Traumatized by Decades of War".
  20. ↑ Kabul, Spencer Ackerman Sune Engel Rasmussen in (14 April 2017). "36 Isis militants killed in US 'mother of all bombs' attack, Afghan ministry says" – via The Guardian.
  21. ↑ Emmons, Alex (2017-04-13). "“Mother of All Bombs” Never Used Before Due to Civilian Casualty Concerns". The Intercept. Retrieved 2017-04-14.
  22. ↑ Schmitt, Michael; Barker, Peter. ""The Mother of All Bombs": Understanding the Massive Ordnance Air Blast Weapon". Just Security.org. Retrieved April 20, 2017.
  23. ↑ "Trump Dropped Mother of All Bombs. But he Wasn’t Expecting Russia to do This – Belair Daily". www.belairdaily.com. Retrieved 2017-04-16.
  24. ↑ Luke Harding (12 September 2007). "Russia unveils the 'father of all bombs'". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 September 2007.
  25. ↑ "U.S. Air Force Drops the Largest Conventional Bomb Ever Used in Combat". Popular Mechanics.
  26. ↑ "US drops largest non-nuclear bomb ever in Afghanistan". CNBC.
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