Mother of all bombs

Times of Oman ^ | 11 March '03 | Reuters

[11th_VA]

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE (Florida) — The US Air Force said it dropped a 9,450kg MOAB bomb on a range in northwest Florida yesterday in a successful first live test of a powerful new weapon nicknamed the “mother of all bombs.”

Defence officials suggested the test was a message to Iraq ahead of a possible war about the might of the US military.

“Obviously, anything we have in the arsenal, anything that’s in almost any stage of development, could be used” against Iraq, said General Richard Myers, chairman of the US military’s joint chiefs of staff.

A C-131 “Samaritan” aircraft dropped the bomb on a test range at Eglin Air Force Base a minute or two after 2pm EST, a base spokeswoman, Senior Airman Nicholasa Brown, said.

The explosion sounded “just like thunder,” Brown said from an office on the east side of the 724-square-mile base, adding that “We barely even heard it.” The test took place on a range of the west side of the base.

The bomb packs 40 per cent more power than America’s current most powerful non-nuclear bomb, the 6,750kg “Daisy Cutter,” which was used to pound the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001, Eglin officials said. Base officials warned residents in neighboring communities to expect a loud noise when the bomb was dropped.

“We’ve done some that were inert. This is the first one with munitions,” Hansen said.

The MOAB is guided by global positioning satellites, an Eglin spokeswoman said. It spreads a flammable mist over the target then ignites it, producing a highly destructive blast.

The acronym stands for “Massive Ordnance Air Burst” but military officials have nicknamed it the “Mother Of All Bombs.”

[CarryaBigStick]

MOAB uses Tritonol; a more powerful and stable explosive than the ammonium nitrate slurry in BLU-82, requiring little pre-prep before being used. It's not a fuel-air munition.

[CarryaBigStick]

I think that 2 versions of the MOAB are being produced: one for an airburst over troops/assets, and a penetrator version. Maybe the penetrator will be called MOAP for Massive Ordnance Attack Penetrator

The Mother of All Penetrators?

[Husker8877]

I hereby nickname this great weapon "MOABY DICK!"

Now GWB (Captain Ahab to the idiot liberals) has a special harpoon to stick up Saddam's ass.

THAR SHE BLOWS!!!!!!!!

[capitan_refugio]

I remember reading about captured Viet Cong who got a little too close to a daisycutter. They bled from the ears and had bruised eyeballs from the concussion. I don't know how close "too close" is, but evidently they lived to talk about it.

[cynwoody]

This is a bomb!

[BushMeister]

Acoording to an article I found online, 704 lbs. of Tritonal is equivalent to 830 lbs. of TNT, as far as blasting power goes:

The first test used 704 pounds of Tritonal, which is equivalent to 830 pounds of TNT, or roughly 2,200 pounds of a properly prepared ammonium nitrate/fuel oil (ANFO) mixture.

The test was conducted in relation to the investigation into the OKC bombing:

OKC