U.S. Drops ‘Mother Of All Bombs’ On ISIS In Afghanistan, First Time MOAB Has Been Used In Combat


President Donald Trump just dropped the “Mother of all Bombs” on a network of ISIS caves in Afghanistan. The MOAB has never before been used in combat. It is the largest and most powerful non-nuclear weapon possessed by the United States.

The MOAB printed on the side of the Mother of all Bombs officially stands for “Massive Ordnance Air Bust.” MOAB is a GPS-guided GBU-43 bomb. The non-nuclear bomb dropped on ISIS caves in Afghanistan weighs in at a massive 21,600 pounds and is 30 feet long. The Tomahawk cruise missiles that were fired at a Syrian airbase last week after the chemical weapons attack on civilians weighed only about 1,000 pounds each.

During a brief press conference, Trump administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer deemed the MOAB to be an “accurately delivered weapon,” the Daily Mail reports.

“The United States takes the fight against ISIS seriously, and in order to defeat the group we must deny them operational space – which we did,” Spicer continued.

Sean Spicer also said the Mother of all Bombs was chosen because it packs the power to crush caves and underground spaces ISIS fighters use to not only move about freely without being detected but also as a launch point for their terrorist attacks.

The MOAB carries 11 tons of explosives and boasts a mile-wide blast radius. Because of the manner in which it has been constructed, the force of the blast from the GBU-43 bomb can reportedly be felt for miles away. The engineers who designed the largest non-nuclear weapon built the bomb out of an extremely thin aluminum to better house and deploy its payload.

A thicker grade of aluminum would have reportedly interfered with unleashing the full power of the Mother of all Bombs when it hit the intended target, Fox News reports.

The MOAB was transported to Afghanistan by an MC-130 Hercules cargo aircraft, arriving around 7 p.m. local time. Because of its immense size and weight, the MOAB could not be released from a bomb-bay door like a traditional bomb. It was also too large to be launched from the wing of an aircraft, so it was reportedly kicked out the back door of the plane.

“As [ISIS’] losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense,” the commander of the United States forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, said. “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against [ISIS].”

General Nicholson also noted in his prepared statement that all possible precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties when dropping the powerful non-nuclear weapon in Afghanistan.

Pentagon representative Adam Stump told the press he believes the Mother of all Bombs was deployed on an area in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province often utilized by ISIS terrorists. The province is located near the Afghanistan border with Pakistan.

The powerful non-nuclear bomb was first tested in Florida at Eglin Air Force Base. Production of the non-nuclear weapon was fast-tracked in 2003 so it could be used in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Officials at the Defense Department later decided enemy fighters were not putting up the level of resistance necessary to order the deployment of the MOAB, so the largest non-nuclear weapon in the arsenal of the American military was shelved until today.

President Donald Trump is expected to speak to the nation about his decision to drop the Mother of all Bombs in Afghanistan by late Thursday afternoon.

Check back with the Inquisitr for more details about the MOAB being used on ISIS caves in Afghanistan as additional details become available.

[Featured Image by Andrew Burgess/Shutterstock]

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