An Air Force cargo plane dropped the most powerful conventional bomb in the U.S. arsenal onto a Florida test range on Friday, producing a fiery blast and huge cloud in the last developmental step for a nearly 11-ton behemoth dubbed the "mother of all bombs." An MC-130 Combat Talon dropped the 21,700-pound satellite-guided GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, onto a test range at Eglin Air Force Base in northwestern Florida, said Jake Swinson, a spokesman for the Air Armament Center at the base. "It looked like a big mushroom cloud filled with flames as it grew and grew and grew," Swinson said after the afternoon test. "It was one of the most awesome spectacles I’ve seen."
The MOAB, the most powerful nonnuclear U.S. bomb, carries 18,700 pounds of high explosives, detonating just above the ground when the tip of the 30-foot-long bomb hits the earth, Swinson said. It was the final of four developmental tests for the "mother of all bombs" -- but only the second in which it was detonated. The previous live test on March 11 followed two inert tests. The United States in the past has had larger conventional bombs, but none are as big in the current U.S. arsenal. The MOAB is envisioned as a successor to BLU-82, the 15,000-pound "Daisy Cutter." The "Daisy Cutter" was used to clear helicopter landing areas in the Vietnam War and then was used in the 1991 Gulf War and in 2001 in Afghanistan. In the latter two conflicts, U.S. commanders used the "Daisy Cutter" partly for the psychological effect on the enemy of such a massive blast. |