moab bomb

March 11, 2003 7:47 PM

MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast), privately known in military circles as "the mother of all bombs," carries 18,000 pounds of tritonal explosives. It replaces the Vietnam-era "Daisy Cutter" a 12,600-pound bomb. It was tested in public for the first time today in Eglin Air Force base, Florida as PR to send Iraq a message (plus video). It is the largest conventional bomb in existence.
posted by stbalbach (49 comments total)

Clarification: The bomb weighs 22,000 pounds the amount of explosives is 18,000 .. Daisy Cutter gross weight is 15,000 pounds.

Tritonal is a newer class of explosives that is about 1.2X as powerful as TNT so the effective yield compared to the Daisy Cutter would be 21,600 pounds of TNT or 1.7X more powefull.

I'm having trouble finding any more details about this bomb from the usual sources.
posted by stbalbach at 7:54 PM on March 11, 2003

22,000 pounds? you don't even need the explosives. just put some steel inside and drop it from a plane and it'll dig a hole right to the earth's core
posted by matteo at 7:56 PM on March 11, 2003

Candygram would be cheaper and sweeter.
posted by ColdChef at 7:58 PM on March 11, 2003

The OKCity bomb was 4,550 pounds of ANFO while this bomb would be equivilent to 56,250 pounds of ANFO.
posted by stbalbach at 8:04 PM on March 11, 2003

It certianly looks like a great tool for precision attacks, in order to minimize civillian casualties.
posted by Jimbob at 8:19 PM on March 11, 2003

What a wonderful bomb.
posted by Opus Dark at 8:22 PM on March 11, 2003

That oughta strike terror into the Iraqis!

Personally, I don't dignify the upcoming military excursion with the term 'war'; 'slaughter' is much more accurate.
posted by mischief at 8:24 PM on March 11, 2003

the world is truly coming to an end.

I agree with mischief.

So what happened to us liberating the Iraqi people? Or did we mean piece by piece?
posted by eyeballkid at 8:32 PM on March 11, 2003

Personally, I don't dignify the upcoming military excursion with the term 'war'; 'slaughter' is much more accurate.

Heck, I also like to make my mind up about the details of events which haven't happened yet and objects that have yet to be invented. It saves time!
posted by clevershark at 8:38 PM on March 11, 2003

ooooh George W. Bush, let me feel your bomb. ooooh George W. Bush, it is soo big!!!!
posted by kv at 8:53 PM on March 11, 2003

...so is the Biblical bomb name just a coincidence? As I recall, the Moabites started out with people hiding in caves, the exact sort of people the bomb was designed to target. Though I believe Moab lived in Jordan....
posted by jbrjake at 8:56 PM on March 11, 2003

It's the... Moab!! They drop it on you and unleashes the power of 10,000 stoned mountain bikers! Doood!
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:03 PM on March 11, 2003

Though I believe Moab lived in Jordan....

you just wait
So we have what historian Charles Beard called the "perpetual war for perpetual peace" -- the nonstop conflict that's always justified by the peace just around the corner.
posted by matteo at 9:05 PM on March 11, 2003

Time to update the You Dropped a Bomb on Me page. (They got your Gap Band right here. MP3, 2.8MB)
posted by kirkaracha at 9:07 PM on March 11, 2003

I watched the video without sound using a grainy old version of Windows media player. It was strange, reminding me of a 1950s documentary.

As soon as Saddam logs on and comes to metafilter, he's gonna see this link and probably give himself right up.
posted by mecran01 at 9:11 PM on March 11, 2003

damnit. www.superbomb.com has already been snatched up.
posted by magnificentsven at 9:38 PM on March 11, 2003

On further reflection: What is the difference between a MOAB and a WMD?

] A turd by any other name still smells like ... [
posted by mischief at 9:52 PM on March 11, 2003

Now if the objective truly is to get rid of Saddam, why not drop one of these big mothers on each of his palaces?

If Saddam happens to be in one of his palaces, he'll be blown to hell. If he happens to be wandering in the tunnels he'll be freakin' emulsified. And if he's so lucky as to be nowhere near his palaces, then he'll find himself homeless and angry, and will do something stupid that'll end up getting him killed by his guardsmen or the Iraqi people.

At any rate, this seems to me to be a better idea than mashing his untrained, malnourished, and coerced frontline troops into bloody pulp.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:06 PM on March 11, 2003

I hope the biblical name really is a coincidence.

I mean, we wouldn't want anyone thinking this is a religious war. no blood for crooked christianity!
posted by mcsweetie at 10:13 PM on March 11, 2003

Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.
posted by msacheson at 10:22 PM on March 11, 2003

sweet.
posted by xmutex at 10:49 PM on March 11, 2003

i find the fact that it's "guided to its target by satellite signals" (probably GPS) really funny. It just seems that front door delivery precision really wouldn't be that necessary with 18,000 lbs of high yield explosive.

OTOH, i suppose it's better than having the wind carry that 18,000 pounds off target.
posted by quin at 11:09 PM on March 11, 2003

Bah. Even the MOAB couldn't get through this defense system.
posted by homunculus at 11:24 PM on March 11, 2003

My god . . . that bomb . . . it's so powerful. Truly a force so great, held by nation so strong, will end war forever.
posted by quadog at 11:36 PM on March 11, 2003

These bombs are being used more as a psychological tool than an actual bomb. Initially these types of bombs were used to clear helicopter landing pads (hence the term Daisy Cutter ie clearing jungle ) in Viet Nam, but in Afghanistan the military found they were more useful being detonated in the atmosphere to scare the crap out of the enemy soldiers.
posted by PenDevil at 12:08 AM on March 12, 2003

Don't have a link, but in Afghanistan they dropped pamphlets on enemy positions, essentially saying "This is what we have. Tomorrow, we're going to drop one on you. Stay if you want."
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 1:17 AM on March 12, 2003

quin- 'OTOH, i suppose it's better than having the wind carry that 18,000 pounds off target.'
Which is what might happen to a daisy-cutter, given the delivery mechanism.
'A Daisy Cutter is so big that it can be "launched" only by pushing it out of the open back door of a transport plane - typically the MC-130 special forces version of the Hercules is used.'
'They are designed to explode on contact with the ground, but experts say on average 10 percent of them remain intact and can lie undetected for years, putting at risk anyone who goes near them.'
As in Kuwait:
'in the immediate post-conflict period, between February 1991 and December 1992, there were 1,348 injuries from ERW (compared to 531 mine-related injuries in the same period). By the end of 2002, there were 1,924 deaths and injuries; this, is in a country with a population of just 2.1 million'
I would agree with this sentiment, from Landmine Action:
"The horrific humanitarian consequences of unexploded bomblets and other ERW are very well documented. The petition says: ‘Enough is enough’. Users of these weapons should be obliged to take responsibility for prompt, thorough clear-up. Until this obligation is in place, cluster bombs should not be used."
posted by asok at 3:57 AM on March 12, 2003

I hate coming in late to these discussions, but indeed, here's some background on the nation of Moab;

Ancient nation located in the uplands east of the Dead Sea and now a part of Jordan. The area is unprotected from the east hence its history is a chain of raids by the Bedouins. The Moabites were close kin to the Hebrews and the language of the Moabite Stone is practically the same as biblical Hebrew. The relations of Moab with Judah and Israel are continually mentioned in the Bible.

So here's a bomb designed to be dropped on Arabs (formerly known as Bedouins), named after an old Hebrew city.
posted by jeremias at 4:27 AM on March 12, 2003

No, it's an acronym for "Mother of all bombs" which is coincidentally the name of an old biblical city. I can't imagine that weapons designers stay up nights, rubbing their hands with glee at the deliciously obscure and historically ironic names that they managed to come up with for their weapon systems.
posted by cardboard at 5:46 AM on March 12, 2003

It certianly looks like a great tool for precision attacks, in order to minimize civillian casualties.
posted by Jimbob at 8:19 PM PST on March 11

I second that emotion. Thanks Rummy.
posted by nofundy at 5:46 AM on March 12, 2003

Because I'd imagine weapon's designers are nothing like as geeky as software designers...
posted by twine42 at 5:50 AM on March 12, 2003

My bomb is bigger than your bomb,

If the Cold War were still on, the former USSR would be building a bigger conventional bomb to best the US and so the "big bomb" race would be on. Pretty soon they would be big as houses and would require giant BLIMPS to deliver them.
posted by troutfishing at 6:08 AM on March 12, 2003

troutfishing, that'd be like watching a couple of toddlers trying to fight each other with tasers - grotesquely funny in a horrible sort of stomach-clenching way...
posted by Mars Saxman at 7:50 AM on March 12, 2003

My sister lives in Ft. Walton Beach, FL, which is fairly close to Eglin. They have a out a warning to the nearby residents about the testing of this thing. She's fairly used to testing of bombs and having windows shake on random occassions. She said that this was nothing like the rest. It rattled the walls, shook the cans in her pantry, etc. She said that she was very glad that they had warned the residents (something I guess they don't normally do) b/c otherwise she'd have thought that either Eglin was being attacked or Florida was having a random earthquake.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:26 AM on March 12, 2003

"Daisy Cutter" originally referred to the meter+ physical probe on the end of the bomb which triggered it's detonation above ground. That was eventually replaced with electronic systems, but the name stuck. Citation
posted by NortonDC at 8:29 AM on March 12, 2003

Isn't Florida pockmarked with underground caves and rivers? I should think exploding big-ass bombs around there would tend to cause cities to collapse into gigantic sinkholes!
posted by five fresh fish at 9:10 AM on March 12, 2003

what was that huge fuel-air bomb they supposedly used in the movie outbreak? i thought the f/a explosives were the biggest things the military had. why do i believe things i see at the movies?
posted by steef at 9:33 AM on March 12, 2003

asok, you're unaccountably commingling information about the Daisy Cutter and cluster bombs. The Daisy Cutter and MOAB are fuel-air explosives. They do not include 'bomblets'. In fact, the fuel-air explosive effect would be impossible if the ordnance were separated like that, because the payload needs to disperse and aerosolize before it's ignited.
posted by dhartung at 9:49 AM on March 12, 2003

>The Daisy Cutter and MOAB are fuel-air explosives.

No, they're not. Citation already provided.
posted by NortonDC at 10:21 AM on March 12, 2003

privately known as the mother of all bombs my ass. every news report i've seen reported this.
posted by alkupe at 10:33 AM on March 12, 2003

MOAB isn't a bunker buster? I thought it was supposed to penetrate deep into the earth. If not, scratch my thoughts on nuking the palaces!
posted by five fresh fish at 11:03 AM on March 12, 2003

Slim Pickins would look pretty tiny riding this thing rodeo style.
posted by sharksandwich at 11:12 AM on March 12, 2003

dhartung, the CBU-55 and CBU-72 are both considered FAE weapons. They have three submunitions, so they aren't what people immediately think of as a clustered weapon with dozens of submunitions. Whoever gave them the CBU designation, however, considered them to be cluster weapons.

That said, I share your puzzlement on how asok got from the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter to clustered weapons. The business about "...can lie undetected for years" is pretty funny given the size of the thin
posted by joaquim at 11:18 AM on March 12, 2003

For added hipster points: Eglin was the AFB that a young Hunter S. Thompson was stationed at and where he got his first break in journalism writing for the base paper.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:01 PM on March 12, 2003

Of course, we can't trust this particular weapon of mass destruction not to fall into the hands of terrorists.
posted by riviera at 3:36 PM on March 12, 2003

[obligatory anti-us comment... please ignore if you aren't as sleep deprived as I am]

riviera: it already is.

[you can open your eyes now...]
posted by twine42 at 5:54 PM on March 12, 2003

"This bomb makes my weiner feel this big," explained U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
posted by Skwirl at 12:56 AM on March 13, 2003

No, it's an acronym for "Mother of all bombs" which is coincidentally the name of an old biblical city. I can't imagine that weapons designers stay up nights, rubbing their hands with glee at the deliciously obscure and historically ironic names that they managed to come up with for their weapon systems.

For all those who play first-person shooters, the acronym for this bomb reminds me, and should remind you, of the B.F.G. or "Big Fucking Gun."
posted by Bag Man at 8:11 AM on March 13, 2003

The poor natives are terrified. The rich natives flee.
posted by talos at 8:43 AM on March 13, 2003