No, it’s not a new muscle-building supplement!
MOAB — an acronym for “Massive Ordnance Air Burst” — has been given another name by military watchers who followed this weapon’s rapid development — the Mother of All Bombs.
Code-numbered GBU-43/B, this amazing new superweapon is the U.S.’s largest non-nuclear munition, originally developed for use in the 2003 Iraq War. Designed to be delivered by a C-130 Hercules aircraft, the 21,600-pound explosive was developed by the U.S.’s unified Air Force Research Laboratory.
Originally, in the war in Iraq, the U.S. used a smaller weapon, the BLU-82, also known as the “daisy cutter.” This 15,000-pound conventional bomb was first created to flatten sections of terrain to form helicopter landing zones in Vietnam.
But it also proved to have a fearsome psychological effect on enemy soldiers. The U.S. completely used up its supply of BLU-82s in Iraq, and so, development of the MOAB was begun to improve upon the specs of the older munition. Whereas the BLU-82 had to be guided by highly accurate manual drop-positioning, the MOAB employs GPS guidance to find its way to targets.
Some progressive social media outlets have incorrectly reported the unit cost of the MOAB to be either $16 million or $314 million, but this is a vast overstatement — the actual cost is roughly $170,000 per bomb. Watch as this clip shows the overwhelming power of a MOAB field detonation.
