Mother Of All Bombs

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

[Isn't this what used to be called Fuel Air Explosives?  And of course it had 
to be dropped by a 'Samaritan'--who says Americans don't know history.  
They'd announced the test but kept the exact day secret--I thought so no 
protests could be scheduled.  J.]

3-11-03
U.S. Tests 'Mother of All Bombs' in Florida

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force said it dropped a 
21,000-pound MOAB bomb on a range in northwest Florida on Tuesday in a 
successful first live test of a powerful new weapon nicknamed the "mother of 
all bombs."

Defense officials suggested the test was a message to Iraq ahead of a 
possible war about the might of the U.S. military.

 
"Obviously, anything we have in the arsenal, anything that's in almost any 
stage of development, could be used" against Iraq, said Gen. Richard Myers, 
chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A C-131 Samaritan aircraft dropped the bomb on a test range at Eglin Air 
Force Base a minute or two after 2 p.m. EST, a base spokeswoman, Senior 
Airman Nicholasa Brown, said.

The explosion sounded "just like thunder," Brown said from an office on the 
east side of the 724-square-mile base, adding that "We barely even heard it." 
The test took place on a range of the west side of the base.

The bomb packs 40 percent more power than America's current most powerful 
non-nuclear bomb, the 15,000-pound Daisy Cutter, which was used to pound the 
caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001, Eglin officials said.

Base officials warned residents in neighboring communities to expect a loud 
noise when the bomb was dropped

But police in Pensacola, about 30 miles away, said they heard nothing when 
the bomb was dropped and were unaware the test was completed.

"We felt nothing," Pensacola Police spokeswoman Cindy West said.

It was the first live test of the weapon, another base spokesman, Senior 
Airman Ryan Hansen, said.
"We've done some that were inert. This is the first one with munitions," 
Hansen said.

The MOAB is guided by global positioning satellites, an Eglin spokeswoman 
said. It spreads a flammable mist over the target then ignites it, producing 
a highly destructive blast.

The acronym stands for "Massive Ordnance Air Burst" but military officials 
have nicknamed it the "Mother Of All Bombs."

The power of the 10.5-ton MOAB bomb falls far short of that generated by 
nuclear weapons, however. The nuclear bomb the United States dropped on 
Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, generated 15 kilotons of energy.