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VIDEO: Moment Mother Of All Bombs Erupts On ISIS Complex – 11 MOAB Facts

#Islamic State
by Last Updated

At 7:32 p.m. local time in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan on Thursday, an earth-rocking Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) was dropped out of the back of a U.S. Air Force MC-130 aircraft.

The Mother of All Bombs is said to have killed 36 ISIS militants who were in a tunnel and cave complex in eastern Afghanistan. The Pentagon released video of the moment the gigantic and powerful GBU-43 bomb detonated.

President Donald Trump, who authorized the attack, called the bombing a “very, very successful mission.”

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

Here are some facts about the MOAB:

  • First tested in 2003 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida in 2003, but hadn’t been used in combat until Thursday
  • Air Force officials said the blast of the test sent a cloud of dust 10,000-feet into the air and a mushroom cloud could be seen from 20 miles away
  • Developed as an Air Force Research Laboratory technology project in 2002 for use in Iraq
  • Largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. military’s arsenal
  • The thermobaric bomb is 30-feet-long and a diameter of 40.5-inch
  • Weighs 21,600 pounds and is packed with 18,000 pounds of explosives
  • The explosive yield is 0.018 kilotons, a typical nuclear yield is 10-180 kilotons
  • 40% more powerful than it’s predecessor, the Daisy Cutter from the Vietnam War era, which was dropped on the Tora Bora cave complex where Osama Bin Laden was thought to be hiding in 2001
  • It is a smart bomb with wings and grid fins for guidance as well as GPS
  • It is an air-blast bomb that will explode 6-feet from the ground to cause overpressure in all directions
  • The Air Force is said to have as many as 20 MOABs

Here is video of the Mother of All Bombs in action from the 2013 test.

[CNN/BusinessInsider/FoxNews]

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