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Aerospace giant Boeing Co. has delivered the first batch of 30,000-pound bombs, each nearly five tons heavier than anything else in the military's arsenal, to the U.S. Air Force to pulverize underground enemy hide-outs.
At a total cost of about $314 million, the military has developed and ordered 20 of the GPS-guided bombs, called Massive Ordnance Penetrators. They are designed to be dropped on targets by the Boeing-made B-52 Stratofortress long-range bomber or Northrop Grumman Corp.'s B-2 stealth bomber.
My guess is that they did not want to send the stealth bombers over there - because it would get reported. C-130s are available in the area and can be used without much notice.
It was originally called "Massive Ordnance, Air Blast", or M.O.A.B.
After Saddam Hussein made enough threats against U.S. forces chasing him across various middle Eastern countries, he finally announced that once they got into Iraq, he would give them the "Mother of all Battles".
Lots of jokes were made about that. And this bomb, which was developed around that time, was promptly re-christened the "Mother of all bombs". It was a joke, but a good one. Its original name, "Massive Ordnance Air Blast", might have been invented just so they could use the acronym for the joke.
It's a "Fuel-air explosive" bomb. It's dropped over the target, falls with a retarding parachute, and is triggered in midair. Then it splits open and sprays explosive vapor (a lot of vapor) over a large area to mix with the air. Then a mechanism generates a spark, and boom. FAEs come in different sizes, the MOAB is the largest.
Dynamite bombs usually do their damage with concussion, flying shards of sharp steel, and flame. The MOAB does it pretty much only with concussion. It can knock buildings flat for half a mile around, kill large concentrations of troops, cave in tunnels deep underground, etc.
It's actually not the heaviest bomb ever used. England had one called the "Tall Boy" in WWII, that weighed 10,000kg (22,000 pounds). It was a conventional dynamite (or some similar explosive) bomb. They dropped a few of them on the German battleship "Tirpitz" at its dock in Norway.
Fuel-air explosive bombs have more effect than a similar weight of dynamite or other such conventional explosive. Dynamite (and the other such explosives) are a combination of explosive compounds and oxidizer, all of which make up the weight of the device core. FAE bombs contain only the explosive compounds. The rest of the chemical combination comes from oxygen in the air. So a dynamite etc. bomb would have to weigh more than the FAE, to provide the equivalent explosive power, since it must carry its own oxidizer in the bomb case.
Aerospace giant Boeing Co. has delivered the first batch of 30,000-pound bombs, each nearly five tons heavier than anything else in the military's arsenal, to the U.S. Air Force to pulverize underground enemy hide-outs.
At a total cost of about $314 million, the military has developed and ordered 20 of the GPS-guided bombs, called Massive Ordnance Penetrators. They are designed to be dropped on targets by the Boeing-made B-52 Stratofortress long-range bomber or Northrop Grumman Corp.'s B-2 stealth bomber.
My guess is that they did not want to send the stealth bombers over there - because it would get reported. C-130s are available in the area and can be used without much notice.
LOL abbreviated its MOP! M.O.P. UP ISIS!!! DROP THOSE BOMBS!!!
Who says we can't bomb an ideology...
We did it in WW2 to the Nazis and kamikazes.
Time to start doing it now.
Ask any active duty combat servicemembers, you will get very interesting answers.
I don't want to be attacked here, so I won't express my opinion.
I'll say this though, things like this happen in every war.
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US just dropped a mega bomb on Afghanistan.
