Posted on 04/15/2017 12:34:04 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The estimate yesterday was 36 killed. Today it’s nearly tripled. Why? Probably because Afghan authorities not only have a much larger blast radius than usual to comb for bodies, but because the target was an ISIS tunnel complex. Who knows how many dead jihadis they’re still discovering underground.
“Our team is in the area and they are doing clearance, so the figure might change as they find more bodies,” said Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense…
Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States, said the colossal MOAB was dropped after fighting had intensified over the last week. US and Afghan forces had been unable to advance because ISIS — which has expanded into Afghanistan in recent years — had mined the area with explosives.
As was widely reported Thursday, the MOAB dates to the beginning of the Iraq war but was never used in combat until this week. You can understand why. The bigger the boom, the greater the chance of civilian deaths as collateral damage. Ideally you’d want to use it against a sizable concentration of enemy fighters located far away from population centers, a rare scenario during the war on terror given jihadi guerrilla tactics. But that’s the opportunity that presented itself this week; per CNN, 3,000 Afghan families had fled the area over the past year, leaving ISIS all alone. The fact that tunnels were being targeted made the opportunity more attractive still. The pressure wave created by the MOAB is enormous, capable of penetrating the tunnels and creating cave-ins, and the giant fireball it creates burns up the oxygen, suffocating enemies inside. “It’s a way to get into areas where conventional bombs can’t reach,” said one expert. (For more strongly fortified underground facilities, the U.S. has the MOP.) If not for the MOAB, infantry would have had to fight their way past those tunnels.
And of course, as the Air Force acknowledges, the sheer magnitude of the explosion has “psychological effects.” The commander who ordered it had that in mind, according to a source who spoke to NBC: “[Gen.] Nicholson wanted to demonstrate to leaders of the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan the seriousness of his determination to eliminate the group as a military threat.” It may end up having “psychological effects” in Syria and North Korea too, although since it wasn’t Trump who ordered the bomb’s use, any deterrent effect on other American enemies in the White House’s crosshairs right now is a happy coincidence. Unfortunately, with a blast this size, there are also “psychological effects” on local Afghans. There were no civilians close enough to be injured by the explosion, but they were plenty close enough to have heard — and felt — it:
After his evening prayers, Mohammad Shahzadah closed the house gates and sat down for dinner. Then the blast came, engulfing the sky in flames and sending tremors through the ground.
“The earth felt like a boat in a storm,” Shahzadah said. “I thought my house was being bombed. Last year a drone strike targeted a house next to mine, but this time it felt like the heavens were falling. The children and women were very scared.”…
“My ears were deaf for a while. My windows and doors are broken. There are cracks in the walls,” he said.
His home is a mile and a half away from where the bomb detonated.
Naturally, with the U.S. showing off the size of its arsenal this week, Russia and its apologists are reminding the world via social media that they have a conventional bomb much bigger than even the MOAB. Meet … the Father of All Bombs. Don’t be surprised if we get to see that in Syria or Ukraine soon.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
LMAO!!!!
If true, it was worth it.
It is a type of fuel air bomb.
Technically, you are correct on the fuel-air explosion, and I was right on the explosive proportions (but not on the details for the aluminum reaction, which I should have recognized - thank you for the correction).
The MOAB has 13,700 pounds of RDX and TNT as explosives (78% of the explosive mass and 63% of the blast energy). It also has 3,900 pounds of powdered aluminum (22% of the explosive mass and 37% of the blast energy). The aluminum reacts with oxygen in the air in a fuel-air explosion (I don’t like that name when it’s a metal powder rather than aerosol hydrocarbon droplets, but it satisfies the fuel-air explosion definition), giving a boost to blast wave velocity and energy. However, most of the energy comes from the more traditional RDX/TNT explosives.
The point is..it needs a tiny bit of a specific fuel to give it kick. Strange but true. Its actually the oxygen in the air that gives it the power, as I have read. Much like a cutting torch. The oxygen gives it the power.
Here is a thought. These types have to detonate a certain height above ground-air burst. But so does a Nuke. So what would they call a nuke? A reaction bomb? Not that it matters.
My best friend was in Iraq in the last fight. He claims they used something like this there. The Brits got to see something very large go off and they were yelling over the radio saying the crazy yanks used a tactical nuke. Which wasnt true of course, but whatever they dropped blowed up real good.
Whelp...Someone claimed that those in the blast area, whatever that is, would not be recognizable as human beings, or anything for that matter...They would obliterate...So that puts the number at 100+ how many who no longer exist as matter upon the earth...
From what I’ve been hearing the MOAB detonates at around 100 ft. The Hiroshima bomb was nearly 2,000 ft, Nagasaki 1,600 for comparison.
Thats up there..2000 feet. I suppose if it went off at ground level it wouldnt do half what it is supposed to do. Put a hell of a hole in the ground though.
yeah, but it prolly takes their Antonov An-225 Mriya to carry it... of which i think they have ONE
The MILOAB (Mother-law-of-all-bombs)definitely belongs in our arsenal. You’d have a mother-in-law ride the thing down.
The MILOAB (Mother-law-of-all-bombs)definitely belongs in our arsenal. You’d have a mother-in-law ride the thing down.
Actually, it was built, according to the wiki, to be delivered by a TU-160, of which they have many.
However, if you read the wiki or remember the story at the time there was great doubt as to the actual plane and the type of explosive used; it may have been a staged show.
Whatever type of explosive used, it is supposed to be thermobaric, not fuel-air or something like Composition H6, a TNT substitute.
If so, then all bombs are to some extent in that they contain an oxidizer and fuel (explosives). The MOAB uses large amount of conventional explosives to create its effects like the BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter'. A 'fuel air bomb' more correctly called FAE (fuel air explosive) actually produces a cloud of aerosolized liquid fuel which settles prior to the trailing igniters entering the cloud and triggering the blast using the oxygen in the air which is affected by temperature and elevation. A completely different animal despite what Scientific American might say.
If it weren't so, the BLU-96 would have sufficed.
imagine the kick in the arse a Tu crew would get on release of that thing?
both up and forward airspeed
“Some defense analysts question both the yield of the bomb and whether it could be deployed by a Tupolev Tu-160 bomber.
A report by Wired[3] says photos and the video of the event suggest that it is designed to be deployed from the rear of a slow moving cargo plane, and they note that the bomb-test video released by the Russians never shows both the bomb and the bomber in the same camera shot.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs
Now, that is a DOOMSDAY weapon!!!
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