US Drops The "Mother Of All Bombs" In Afghanistan.

The United States has dropped its largest non-nuclear weapon after it targeted ISIS a network of caves and tunnels in eastern Afghanistan.
U.S. forces used a GPS-guided GBU-43 bomb, which is 30 feet long and weighs a staggering 21,600 pounds.
It is known as the 'Mother Of All Bombs' – a play on 'MOAB,' an acronym that stands for 'Massive Ordnance Air Burst.'

A crater left by the blast is believed to be more than 300 meters wide after it exploded six feet above the ground. Anyone at the blast site was vaporized.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he was 'very, very proud' and called the operation 'really another successful job. We're very, very proud of our military.'

The Pentagon is denying that the attack was a revenge strike despite the fact that it came in the same area of Afghanistan where a Green Beret soldier was killed on Saturday.
Staff Sgt. Mark De Alencar of the 7th Special Forces Group was cut down by enemy small arms fire while his unit was conducting counter-ISIS operations.

Trump suggested he had not personally ordered the bomb strike but delegated authority to commanders in the field.
'Everybody knows exactly what happened. So, what I do is I authorize my military ... We have given them total authorization,' he said.

The move marks the fulfilment of a 17-month-old campaign promise Trump delivered in Iowa, when he scoffed at ISIS terror forces and said he 'would bomb the s**t out of them' if he became president.
It also comes at a moment in the young Trump presidency when tensions are rising with Russia over its role in Syria, where ISIS has its headquarters.

FACTS ABOUT M.O.A.B.
. It was first created as a psychological weapon, designed to scare the enemy into surrendering.
. But today, the GBU-43/B - dubbed the 'Mother of all bombs' - has been dropped on an Islamic State complex in Afghanistan.
. A crater left by the blast is believed to be more than 300 meters wide after it exploded six feet above the ground. Anyone at the blast site was
vaporized.
. This is the first time the Moab (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) explosive in combat for the first time. But what is the huge explosive, and how does it
work?
. The Moab or GBU-43/B is the world's largest non-nuclear weapon.
. It is designed to destroy heavily reinforced targets or to shatter ground forces and armour across a large area.
. Its blast is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT. By comparison, the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima had a blast yield of 15 tons of TNT.
. First tested in 2003, it was developed by by US forces in preparation for the Iraq invasion but was never deployed during the war.
. The huge bomb measure 30 feet (9 metres) long and 40 inches (1 metre) wide, and weighs 21,000lbs (9,500kg) – heavier than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.
. While it has a blast radius that stretches a mile in each direction the bomb leaves no lasting radiation effect because it is non-nuclear.
. Deploying such a large bomb isn't easy as even the world's largest bombing aircraft can't manage the Moab's size and weight.
. The bomb can only be deployed out of the back of large cargo plane using a unique system.
. A parachute pulls the bomb out of the plane on a box-like pallet that quickly separates from the explosive.
. Grid fins then extend from the body to help control the bomb's descent.
. It accelerates rapidly to its terminal velocity and is partially guided to its target via satellite.
. The bomb explodes six feet (1.8 metres) above the ground using an 'airburst' mechanism to spread its destructive power horizontally rather than
vertically.
. Today, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb hit a 'tunnel complex' in Achin district in Nangarhar province, US Forces Afghanistan said in a
statement.
. A specialized MC-130 'Hercules' cargo aircraft released the weapon at 7:00 p.m. local time.
. It was too big to drop from a traditional bomb-bay door or release from an aircraft wing, so 'we kicked it out the back door,' a U.S. official told Fox
News.
. The weapon's sheer power produces a blast that can be felt miles away, largely because of its construction.
. Engineers used an unusually thin aluminum skin to encase MOAB's payload, in order to avoid a thicker steel frame interfering with the impact on a
target.
. The Moab was first developed as a psychological weapon to scare enemy troops into surrender.
. A video of the original 'Elgin' test was released to the public in order to unsettle the Iraqi forces.
. 'The goal is to have the pressure be so great that Saddam Hussein cooperates,' then-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
. 'Short of that - an unwillingness to cooperate - the goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous
disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight against the coalition.'