If war comes, the United States may unleash a new weapon, seen here in a photo exclusive to NBC News. Nicknamed "the mother of all bombs," it's the U.S. military's biggest conventional weapon, weighing 21,000 pounds.
Posted on 03/06/2003 8:10:06 AM PST by finnman69
If war comes, the United States may unleash a new weapon, seen here in a photo exclusive to NBC News. Nicknamed "the mother of all bombs," it's the U.S. military's biggest conventional weapon, weighing 21,000 pounds.
U.S. triples ‘no fly’ sorties over Iraq
If war comes, the United States may unleash a new weapon, seen here in a photo exclusive to NBC News. Nicknamed "the mother of all bombs," it's the U.S. military's biggest conventional weapon, weighing 21,000 pounds.
March 5 — At the Pentagon on Wednesday, America’s top war planners openly warned Saddam Hussein of what’s coming his way if President Bush decides to pull the trigger. NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reports.
SOME 300,000 U.S. troops are now in or nearing the region, and NBC News has learned that U.S. forces now in northern Iraq are working with the Kurds to improve airstrips where troops of the storied 101st Airborne Division would land in the event of war.
The increased air missions, first reported Wednesday, are an unmistakable sign that, while President Bush has not yet announced an intention to go to war, the Pentagon is close to having set the stage for an invasion.
A senior defense officials said the Pentagon had ordered an irregular pattern of flights over invasion routes in the south, making it more difficult for Iraqi air defenders to foresee a shift from air patrols to actual combat.
Several hundred sorties a day are now being flown over southern Iraq, including F-16 and other attack planes as well as surveillance, refueling and other support aircraft, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official did not reveal specific numbers.
The United States and Britain have been flying patrols over northern and southern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War as a way to contain Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from cracking down on ethnic groups in those regions.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
Heck, we had pictures of th' thing here on FR a week ago. Which means that they're on the Web somewhere. Any network that doesn't have the photo just isn't interested in it.
Michael
MOAB for short. I like it!
Kind of looks more like the father of all bombs, though. If you get my drift.
ROFLMAO...Strategypage.com had pics of the MOAB SEVEN DAYS AGO.
LOL!
Translation: Turkey - we don't need ya - NOTTA!
Looks like one of those Bonneville Flats speed racers.
Did anyone catch that?
Yeah - almost a day-glo orange; gives that nice added touch of "letting them see it coming"
Cool tail assembly....Very James Bondish....
http://strategypage.com/gallery/default.asp?target=moab.htm
February 27, 2003: The U.S. Air Force is developing a new, 2nd generation, ten ton large, low air burst bomb. It will replace the older "Daisy Cutter" 7.5 ton bomb developed during the 1960s. This was a 7.5 ton bomb using a semi-liquid explosive for clearing landing zones in the Vietnam jungle. The terms "Daisy Cutter" actually comes from the four foot probe at the bottom of the bomb which triggered the explosion without creating a crater (helicopters don't like to land in craters.) The probe was later replaced with a radar altimeter fuze, but the nickname "Daisy Cutter" stuck. The official designation was BLU-82 (or "Big Blue"). Until the BLU-82 came along, the biggest non-nuclear explosion obtainable was with a FAE (Fuel Air Explosives). FAE works by dropping a bomb that is actually a large aerosol dispenser. When the FAE "explodes" it first dispenses a large cloud of flammable material (anything like gasoline or propane will work). The cloud is then ignited and huge explosion results. There's one drawback, the size and density of the aerosol cloud depends a lot on the wind, air temperature and humidity. So the power of the explosion will vary a lot. But it's difficult to get a FAE to work in a bomb larger than 2000 pounds. So the replacement for the BLU-82 bomb, called MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Burst) simply uses more of the slurry of ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminum. In dry, dusty conditions, the Daisy Cutter produces a mushroom cloud similar to that created by a nuclear explosion (and for the same reason, the sheer size of the explosion creates an upward pull that sends up a "mushroom" of smoke and dust on a column of smoke). In addition to a more powerful explosion, MOAB doesn’t need a parachute, like the Daisy Cutter, but uses a GPS (like JDAM) and an aerodynamic body to detonate the bomb at a precise area. Thus the MOAB can be dropped from a higher altitude (like outside the range of machine-guns and rifles). Like the Daisy Cutter, MOAB is shoved out the back of a cargo aircraft (usually a C-130, but since the MOAB uses GPS and higher altitude drops, the C-17 can probably be used as well.) MOAB is a highly destructive and terrifying weapon. If used in Iraq, it would demoralize any Iraqi troops in the vicinity who survived the explosion. The force of a MOAB explosion is sufficient to knock over tanks and kill any people within several hundred meters of the detonation. After the 1991 Gulf War, the United States started to get rid of it's various FAE weapons. But some were left in the inventory when the Afghanistan came along and the success of Daisy Cutters there, plus the new Russian research in FAE weapons, led to the new American research effort. There may be larger, or simply more powerful, FAE weapons in the works. But for the moment, MOAB, using pretty old fashioned technology, is the biggest non-nuclear bomb around.
We are also using a lot more troops that people thought before, suggesting there may be more conventional fighting than some people thought... Recall that some analysts said that along with an Iraqi insurrection, 200,000 U.S. troops might be able to do the job. Now it looks like we'll have more like 300,000-400,000 in theatre when things kick off, perhaps due to intel reports that many Iraqis would fail to support the regime but might also be too scared to actively fight against it until the U.S. troops are nearly upon them...
For those amongst you who like to diagram sentences and may have missed the operative phrase.
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