When the GBU-43, formally known as Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB) was dubbed “the mother of all bomb” nobody knew the impact will be the mother of all impact
The MOAB or GBU-43 was so large that no U.S. war plane was big enough to drop it. It had to be offloaded from the rear of a cargo plane with the help of a parachute and was designed as a bunker buster, to allow U.S. forces penetrate underground facilities. It was first tested in 2003 and fourteen years later it made its debut appearance in a combat on Thursday at 7:32pm against ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, along the border with Pakistan.
The GBU-43 has an explosive yield of more than 11 tons of TNT. The massive bomb is dropped from air force plane and detonates before reaching the ground, resulting in an enormous blast radius. The breath of its impact prevents it from been used in some places. The cave used by the ISIS was in a remote and rugged area of mountains and gorge. This made it the ideal location to use the MOAB.
“As ISIS’s loses mounted they used IEDs, bunkers and tunnel to thicken their defense, and the MOAB was the right form of defense against their menace” said army general john w Nicholson, the commander of us force in Afghanistan
When asked whether he ordered the mission, Trump said “what I do is authorize my military, we have the best military in the world and they have done their job as usual, so we have given them total authorization and they have obviously been more successful lately”. Former afghan president Hamid Karzai criticized and condemned the mission. ”this is not the war on terror, but the inhumane and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground” he twitted.
The US statement also said “US forces took every precaution to avoid civilian causalities with this strike”. The US military is reportedly currently assessing the damage from the bomb.
