{"id":269707,"date":"2017-04-14T19:44:32","date_gmt":"2017-04-14T23:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=269707"},"modified":"2020-11-13T15:31:12","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T20:31:12","slug":"mother-of-all-bombs-how-powerful-is-us-mega-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/mother-of-all-bombs-how-powerful-is-us-mega-weapon\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother of all bombs: How powerful is US mega-weapon?"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
So\u2026 no need for nuclear weapons!<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

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The US military has just dropped its largest conventional (that is non-nuclear) bomb for the first time in combat, on Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar.<\/p>\n

The GBU-43\/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) – or, in military speak, Mother of All Bombs – was launched on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The target was said to be a network of tunnels operated by the so-called Islamic State in Achin district.<\/p>\n

As a non-nuclear weapon, use of the MOAB does not necessarily require approval by the US president.<\/p>\n

It is a huge weapon – a 30ft (9m), 21,600lb (9,800kg), GPS-guided munition that is dropped from the cargo doors of an MC-130 transport plane and detonates shortly before it hits the ground.<\/p>\n

The MOAB falls from the aircraft on a pallet, which is then tugged aside by a parachute allowing the weapon to glide down, stabilised and directed by four grid-like fins.<\/p>\n

Its principal effect is a massive blast wave – said to stretch for a mile in every direction – created by 18,000lb of TNT.<\/p>\n

The bomb’s thin aluminium casing was designed specifically to maximise the blast radius.<\/p>\n

The bomb is designed to damage underground facilities and tunnels.<\/p>\n

The weapon was developed for use in the Iraq war – at a reported cost of $16m (\u00a313m) each – and was first tested in 2003, but never used in action – until now.<\/p>\n

And yet, the MOAB is not the US military’s heaviest non-nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n

That distinction belongs to the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, a bunker-buster which weighs a colossal 30,000lb.<\/p>\n

Russia has developed its own massive conventional bomb, nicknamed the Father Of All Bombs. The FOAB is a kind of fuel-air bomb, technically known as a thermobaric weapon.<\/p>\n

Thermobaric bombs generally detonate in two stages: a small blast creates a cloud of explosive material which is then ignited, generating a devastating pressure wave.<\/p>\n

A significant part of the effect of weapons like the MOAB is said to be psychological – to instil terror by the massive force of the blast.<\/p>\n

Its development followed the use of similar weapons including the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, a 15,000lb bomb designed in part to flatten a section of forest to carve out a helicopter landing pad.<\/p>\n

The MOAB was developed by the Alabama-based aeronautics company Dynetics.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-39596333<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: So\u2026 no need for nuclear weapons!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":282681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}