The U.S. military has dropped a Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB) for the first time in history on an ISIS tunnel in Afghanistan. The military needs to use an Air Force C-130 cargo plane to drop the bomb. Fox News reported:
President Trump told media Thursday afternoon that “this was another successful mission” and he gave the military total authorization.Trump was also asked whether dropping the bomb sends a warning to North Korea.”North Korea is a problem, the problem will be taken care of,” said Trump.
A MOAB weighs 21,000lbs, which gave it the nickname Mother of All Bombs. From the Washington Free Beacon:
The bomb is designed to explode in midair and has a blast radius that can stretch out a mile. It is designed in a way that allows the concussion of the blast to penetrate tunnels with enough force to kill the people inside.The bomb was dropped on an ISIS-Khorasan tunnel complex located in Nagarhar Province.General John Nicholson, who commands US forces in Afghanistan, described the MOAB as the right bomb for the job.”As ISIS-K’s losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers, and tunnels to thicken their defense,” Gen. Nicholson said in a statement. “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K.”
But Bob Owens on Twitter reminds us that we have a much larger bomb:
The Department of Defense developed the bomb in 2003 before the U.S. invaded Iraq:
It was intended to be used in the “Shock and Awe” phase of the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said the MOAB was meant to send a message to the Iraqi military.”The goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight against the coalition,” Rumsfeld said after a test of the MOAB on March 11, 2003.The speed of the invasion and lack of substantial resistance prevented the MOAB from seeing battle during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Does it surprise you that the media has freaked out over the bombing? Yeah, me either. Weirdly enough, they remained relatively silent when former President Barack Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs in 2016. But I digress.
But is MOAB really the Mother of All Bombs? Nope:
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