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The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, also known as the "Mother of All Bombs", has been dropped in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. It is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal.
The US military has dropped an enormous bomb in Afghanistan, according to four US military officials with direct knowledge of the mission. A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, nicknamed MOAB, was dropped at 7 p.m. local time Thursday, the sources said. [...] A MOAB is a 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition that is America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb.
The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, according to the military sources. They said the target was an ISIS tunnel and cave complex as well as personnel in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province.
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]." The statement said U.S. forces took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties.
Also at Fox News. The bombing came days after the death of a Green Beret in the same province, but a defense official said the bombing was unrelated. Another official had this to say:
The MOAB had to be dropped out of the back of a U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo plane due to its massive size. "We kicked it out the back door," one U.S. official told Fox News.
Update: The Afghan defence ministry says that 36 ISIS fighters were killed by the strike.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @01:24PM (26 children)
Not much bang for the buck, know what I mean? I mean, these are sand people—it just makes the US military look cartoonish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @01:34PM (2 children)
Not much bang for the buck, know what I mean? I mean, these are sand people—it just makes the US military look cartoonish.
But, But, TERRISTS!, man, TERRISTS!, the US gone bagged itself some TERRISTS!... $16million(+operational costs)'s a small price to pay for baggin' some TERRISTS!!
get with the program.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @01:48PM (1 child)
I'm a Monster Hunter [wikipedia.org] player, so I can understand investing a great deal in equipment and supplies to bag a monster.
What kind of carves do you get off of TERRISTSǃ? (Note: I'm using U+01C3 to indicate a postalveolar click, which I assume is part of this creature's name.) What kind of buffs does TERRISTǃ gear give you?
It must be some pretty epic gear....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @01:55PM
It must be some pretty epic gear....
Must be, if it takes something short of a nuclear weapon to wipe out 36 of the buggers....
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 14 2017, @01:34PM (9 children)
S'what I said, then the roomie informed me they were in a tunnel network. Still too expensive for the headcount by my reckoning but at least they had a semi-logical reason.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday April 14 2017, @02:50PM (8 children)
Wouldn't that make an airburst bomb rather ineffective? It is after all designed specifically NOT to direct its energy into the ground, inorder to destroy above-ground structures more effectively.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 14 2017, @02:59PM (3 children)
You'd think so, wouldn't you? I dunno, maybe they were going for kills with the sheer power of the shockwave rather than by collapsing the bunker.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Friday April 14 2017, @05:20PM (1 child)
Shockwave, temperature rise, but also asphyxiation from the bomb displacing all the surrounding oxygen and replacing it with anoxic/toxic smoke.
If you survive the physical blast and burn, you just faint and die.
Tunnels are not your friend against this kind of bomb.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday April 15 2017, @12:22PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday April 14 2017, @11:34PM
I think this and the firing of the Tomahawks is for show and/or to practice larger attacks against the next WWIII villian, whatever that may be.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @03:02PM (1 child)
It's the pressure wave that enters the tunnels, blowing apart anything in its way. Like a sonic boom but right next to the ground instead of a mile high. At one of the LDRS rocket launch events, a rocket did a 180 and hit the ground at mach 1+. The sonic boom liquefied the ground for a few minutes before turning solid again. It took a borrowed backhoe to dig it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @03:42PM
Large Dangerous Rocket Ships? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoli_Rocketry_Association [wikipedia.org] ?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday April 14 2017, @06:37PM (1 child)
For a thermobaric device this actually is a good - and nasty - use.
Thermobaric devices kill you in one of two ways - either the shockwaves (yes, in confined spaces that is plural) or by drastically lowering the pressure around you.
So, first it will try to pulp you, the it will try to suck the air and liquids out of you (lungs bursting if you're lucky, if you're unluckly you'll end up deaf and blind), and if detonated in a non-open area it will pulse those a few times for 10 to 50ms. And to add insult to injury you'll probably end up breathing in superheated and toxic unburnt fuel.
Then you have to look forward to if something collapses on you or if the ground liquefies.
Oh yeah, and if you are in a tunnel that didn't collapse you also will have to look forward to being hit by scorching debris and superheated air from the direction of the blast, and cool stormspeed gravel and anything you didn't secure from the other side.
If it was less good at killing you fast it would have had a good case for being outlawed due to being too cruel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:38AM
They're disgusting for using these things, and they're disgusting for giving a reason to use them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alphatool on Friday April 14 2017, @01:47PM (3 children)
It's cheaper than bringing them back to the US to execute them, less than half a million per head isn't bad compared with domestic costs [deathpenaltyinfo.org]. You know outsourcing has spiraled out of control when even the executions move overseas to reduce costs!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @06:23PM (2 children)
This new "normal" stinks on ice.
The fact that it is readily accepted by Joe Average is shameful.
That it is happening in a self-described Democratic and Christian nation makes it further deplorable.
You have skipped over a step in the process.
Notice that it does not say "no US citizen".
It does not say "no person within the USA".
It says "NO PERSON".
The US Constitution also says that the Congress alone has the power to declare war.
That last happened on December 8, 1941.
All military engagements by USA.mil since the end of those hostilities on September 2, 1945 have been unconstitutional aggression.
USA has clearly become a rogue nation, not even abiding by its own founding documents.
Look around you at the dilapidated infrastructure and the abused natural environment and the ever-poorer proletariat.
This is what an empire in decline looks like.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rts008 on Friday April 14 2017, @08:42PM (1 child)
Well, the 'Democratic and Christian' points are debatable[1], but I fully get your point and intent.
Otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly.
[1] democracy has almost completely been replaced with oligarchy, and as for the 'christian' aspect....HAHAAHAHAHA/ROFLCopter! The more they proclaim 'christian/christian values', the more heretic they become. Some of them are in a tizzy about 'Sharia Law'...those are the Christian Taliban, wanting to impose their distorted version of christian laws unto us all.
As an offtopic aside, the founding fathers were mostly NOT christian...most were atheists, or deists. The actual christians were a small minority. And the whole concept of a secular gov't., freedom of religian(which implies an equal freedom from religion to keep it from being a theocracy, etc...)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday April 15 2017, @01:32PM
So arguments should begin "the founding fathers were mostly christians who believed that [stuff you'd expect only very enlightened christians or non-theists to believe]." rather than "the founding fathers were mostly atheists ...".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Funny) by Oakenshield on Friday April 14 2017, @03:01PM
Sand People are easily startled, but they will soon be back, and in greater numbers.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday April 14 2017, @05:36PM
but it would ALSO make THEM look cartoonish: the heat from the bomb will turn those sand people into glass people, and all the local kids will throw stones at them or use them as candle holders or book ends.
If i was them, just before the bomb hit, i'd go into the 'weeping angel' stance and scare the bejeezuz out of those kids.
DON'T. BLINK! KID!!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Friday April 14 2017, @08:26PM (6 children)
You're looking at this from our point of view, not theirs.
This doesn't send the message "lol the US are such irresponsible spenders xD"
It sends the message, "I don't care who you are, where you are, or how many or few of your friends you have with you; we are going to completely obliterate you all if you keep fucking around."
Or, more simply, "There's a new sheriff in town."
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Friday April 14 2017, @09:06PM (2 children)
Or, more likely, "Why can't those assholes let us decide things on our own? Maybe they need a dose of their own medicine! *sigh* I guess the Cheeto-in-Charge needs another black eye-send the Freedom Fighters to strike terror! We have more fighters than he has money! New recruits come in all the time, after their families have been bombed indiscriminately."
You right-wing types, cowering in fear of 'the others' would be laughably pathetic, if you did not have(for now, but what about the near future?) destructive power available to pick on people with lesser power. Reality(and the world) has a Progressive bias(otherwise we would still sleep in caves and trees, clubbing our food, as right-wing conservatives). Your days(and numbers) are numbered, at least most of us can take some consolation from that.
In the near future, you and your ilk will be a footnote in the history books.
Enjoy your safeplace for now, special snowflake, progress is coming for you all, maybe at glacial speed, but as forceful as that same glacier. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:41AM
s/t
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Saturday April 15 2017, @09:31AM
"You right-wing types, cowering in fear of 'the others' would be laughably pathetic, if you did not have(for now, but what about the near future?) destructive power available to pick on people with lesser power. "
You're a real funny one. "You'd be so pathetic if you couldn't kick everyone's asses!" I agree! We would be pathetic if we couldn't kick anyones asses.
So let me break it down real simple for you:
Can't kick anyone's asses = pathetic.
And guess what, "In the near future, you and your ilk will be a footnote in the history books."
Saying stuff like this means you can't kick anyone's asses!
"progress is coming for you all, maybe at glacial speed, but as forceful as that same glacier. :-)"
You can't advance faster than we can melt that glacier. I am genuinely entertained at how passive and effeminate this post was. Thank you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @09:22PM
Disgusting. You cowardly ignorant fool.
These are the tactics of a brutish savage empire, not some romanticized town of the old west.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:00PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday April 16 2017, @05:42PM
It's a very heavily publicized part of Trump's "deal-making" strategy to go in guns blazing, set an extreme demand, then make it seem like compromise to make a deal split 60/40. If you believe that the business of capitalism is a very friendly endeavor where you are surrounded by nothing but extremely rich friends who want the best for you and your profits, then I'm not sure what to say to you. From my understanding, it is all back-stabbing, market manipulating, brown-nosing, and politicking - it's just that they have to be shrewd about it because it's their own money on the line, not just the taxpayers'. Think street gang vs. private school clique.
So AFAIK, politics, as business, is simply "Dealing with people and money" and if that's case, there could be some advantages to this strategy. I would wager Trump knows "people" better than you give him credit for, but you also must acknowledge that certainly, the US is much more divided than it was when Obama took office, there are many more severe threats to Western Civilization than there were when Obama took office, and so it might not be best to focus on "Making nice with everyone" and continuing to put their interests first, but might actually be best to start carrying the massive fucking stick that we have earned over the past 200 years, and start taking practice swings for everyone to see.
But you're right, maybe if we play nice-nice, everything will work out just fine and everyone will love us. After all, we've spent our whole lives around civilized people - why shouldn't everyone else in the world also be civilized?
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/08/muslim-asylum-seeker-beheads-ikea-shopper-in-sweden/ [thegatewaypundit.com]