Egozi – Mother of All Bombs – on Threshold of World War 3?

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

By Arie Egozi

The tension with North Korea may ease temporarily but this country will still be a problem for the world.

Using nuclear bombs against this secluded country is an option but as a “last resort”. The US has developed a weapon system that has been in safe storage for a long time and recently was taken out ready for use.

On April 13, the US dropped one of its largest non-nuclear bombs on an underground complex used by Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan. It was the first time such a weapon had been used in battle.

The 9,800kg Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) destroyed structures and killed at least 90 people.

The GBU-43/B MOAB is the biggest conventional bomb the US has ever dropped in combat – by far. The MOAB was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory as a replacement for the BLU-82B/C-130 “Daisy Cutter,” a non-guided air-blast munition first used in the Vietnam War. A single MOAB was moved to the Persian Gulf area on April 1, 2003, just after the invasion of Iraq, but was never used.

Despite its powerful blast, the MOAB may not be the most powerful conventional bomb in the world. Russia’s “Father of All Bombs,” or FOAB—officially called the Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power—is according to intelligence sources four times as powerful as the MOAB, yielding the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT by using a new type of high explosive. However, US defense analysts have questioned the veracity of Russia’s claims concerning the weapon’s size and power.

In terms of weight, MOAB is not the largest non-nuclear bomb in US inventory. That title goes to Boeing’s GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) 13-ton ton “bunker buster” that has never been used in combat. Unlike the MOAB, which detonates above the ground and is designed to destroy a lot of targets on or just below the surface, the MOP is designed to penetrate beneath the surface and destroy hardened tunnels and bunkers.

The MOAB is ideal for wiping out clusters of “soft” targets such as a tunnel complex or a large group of troops or vehicles. But in the ongoing Middle East conflict, the US military typically uses greater numbers of much smaller munitions—primarily 226 kg .,453 kg . and 907 kg. guided bombs—dropped from fighters or bombers to achieve similar effects.

So why did the US Central Command choose to deploy the MOAB now?

Israeli experts say that the use of the MOAB was meant to show the determination of the US to use its arsenal when needed.

The question is whether the US has more such weapons in its secret arsenal. All signs show that the answer is positive and that, while in small numbers, the US air force can use some very “exotic” weapons to make a point. This – without opening the gates of its nuclear arsenal.