"'Mother of All Bombs' Used for 1st Time in Warfare" Topic

The U.S. military dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday just days after a Green Beret was killed fighting ISIS there…

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So the Mother of All Bombs was fast tracked for the Mother of All Battles.

and certain people worry about barrel bombs dropped on ISIS and its allies …..

I don't know what the Pentagon would do to playtest their toys without these useful brushfire wars. (Too bad for you if you live in these places.)

The MOAB at 21,000 lbs is 6,000 lbs heavier than the FAE "Daisy Cutters" dropped in Afghanistan back in 2001.

They have the explosive power of small nukes without the radioactive fallout.

The RAF's Grand Slam, or Bomb, Medium Capacity, 22,000 lb, used against hardened German targets in World War Two was, as the name suggests, 22,000 lb.

Oops. There goes the neighborhood.

It conveniently takes this off tonight's news (from the BBC report):

"The news came hours after the Pentagon admitted an air strike in Syria mistakenly killed 18 rebels.

It said a partnered force had mistakenly identified the target location as an IS position, but the strike on 11 April had killed rebels from the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is backed by Washington."

There seems to be media speculation that this was a deliberate message to certain countries who might be causing diplomatic difficulty for the US of A at the moment.

It is very bizarre. One article says it costs USD 14.7M to manufacture (really!?!) and another article says it killed 36 isis members.

I would have thought this type of hardware to be used strategically. So unless these targets are "high value" it is a significant waste of money (that could be used differently).

Something doesn't match.

Dwight – the concern comes from Assad's use of barrel bombs against such military targets as bread queues and hospitals…

$14.7 USD million is "chump change" to our decision makers. Tomahawk cruise missiles cost $1.5 USD million apiece and we just launched 59 of them the other day against an airfield that resumed operations soon after the attack. You do the math.

It's only taxpayers' money.

I didn't know that ISIS was in Astan. How do they get along with the Taliban?

Badly.

The RAF's Grand Slam, or Bomb, Medium Capacity, 22,000 lb, used against hardened German targets in World War Two was, as the name suggests, 22,000 lb.

But it had a blast equivalent to 6.5 tonnes of TNT. MOAB has a blast equivalent to 11 tonnes.

@Dwight: Agree with Stu on this one (mark this date on your calendar, the two of us agreeing doesn't happen very often!)

I could care less about what gets used to kill DAESH. But there are international laws in warfare regarding the deliberate targeting of civilians.

We call the people who deliberately target civilians War Criminals, and we usually hang them by the neck until dead.

It appears these particular ISIS members were inside tunnels drilled into the mountainsides. BBC interviews with local civilians seem to suggest no particular unhappiness regarding their demise.

A bunch of bad guys died.
Maybe NK got a reminder.
Maybe the Chinese see the USA as that bit more likely to act against a potential threat.
Maybe the military also got some more test data.

Just from a purely financial cost benefit analysis.
I think I can see a strong argument that the return on investment was justified.