MOAB-Next to Nuclear bomb's, this is the MOTHER of All Conventional Weapons
MIRVman
largest conventional bombs ever built.
It is called the MOAB
http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Mar2003/030311-D-9085M-007.jpg
Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) weapon and is shown here being
prepared for testing at the Eglin Air Force Armament Center on March
11, 2003.
The Pentagon hopes the test will pave the way for use of the bomb
against critical targets on the surface and underground..
The MOAB is a precision-guided munition
http://bbsnews.net/bbsnphotos/show.php/800x600/filephotos/moab-bomb-l...
weighing 21,700 pounds and will be dropped from a C-130 Hercules
aircraft ( C-130) http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=92
for the test. It will be the largest non-nuclear conventional weapon in
existence.
The Air Force released video of the test, which showed the bomb
falling through the sky and bursting into a massive fireball upon
impact. A cloud of smoke then rose hundreds of feet into the sky
Video of C-130 deployment In this video ,
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2003/030311-D-9085M-004.ram
supplied by the U.S. Department of Defense, you can see the pallet and
bomb come out of the back of the plane and then separate from one
another within a few seconds.
Due to the size of the ordnance, the item is extracted from either an
MC-130 Talon II or "Slick" C-130 Hercules by way of a parachute.
The bomb then accelerates rapidly to its terminal velocity.
It was the final test of the new Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB,
and the first to use actual explosives. Two previously undisclosed
tests, one in February and one on Friday, were inert.
The video was released in hopes of placing additional pressure on the
Iraqi military, officials said.
"The goal is to have the pressure be so great that IRAQ cooperates,"
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters. "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."
The National Earthquake Information Center said it found no seismic
activity as a result of the explosion, as some in the military had
indicated might occur. A 10,000-foot cloud had been expected and local
residents had been warned of possible loud noise
Kathy Fite, a waitress at the International House of Pancakes in Fort
Walton Beach, about 20 miles from the test site, said she heard the
explosion, but it did not rattle the restaurant's windows or shake the
ground.
She described the explosion as loud, but "not real loud." Fite said the
blast was comparable to the sound of warships that sometimes test fire
in the area.
Pentagon officials said they were examining results of the test to
determine whether it worked as designed.
MOAB, privately known in military circles as "the mother of all bombs,"
http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/B/moab.jpg has been under
development since late last year.
As originally conceived, the MOAB was to be used against large
formations of troops and equipment or hardened above-ground bunkers.
The target set has also been expanded to include deeply buried targets
But military officials say that the MOAB is mainly conceived as a
weapon employed for "psychological operations." Military officials say
they hope the MOAB will create such a huge blast that it will rattle
Iraq troops and pressure them into surrendering or not even fighting.
Officials suggest perhaps the Iraqis might even mistake a MOAB blast
for a nuclear detonation.
The MOAB is deployed on a pallet from a C-130
http://www.robjohnson.cc/America_At_War/Graphics/Moab_Bomb.gif
aircraft. It initially has a parachute, but as it deploys, the Inertial
Navigation System and Global Positioning System (GPS)
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html take
over. The bomb also has wings and grid fins for guidance.
The MOAB is an Air Force Research Laboratory technology project that
began in fiscal year 2002 and is to be completed this year.
DoD photo. (Released)
http://files1.turbosquid.com/Preview/Content_on_3_7_2003_14_25_44/MOA...
Massive Ordnance Air Burst. It is a bomb designed to destroy heavily
reinforced targets or to shatter ground forces and armor across a large
area.
In this short TRETISE, we'll examine this new high-powered bomb and see
where it fits into the U.S. arsenal.
Here are the basic facts about the MOAB:
It is currently the largest conventional bomb (as opposed to a nuclear
bomb) in the U.S. arsenal.
The bomb weighs 21,700 pounds (9,525 kg).
The bomb is 30 feet long and 40.5 inches in diameter.
It is satellite-guided, making it a very large "smart bomb."
It bursts about 6 feet (1.8 meters) above the ground.
The idea behind an "air burst" weapon, as opposed to a weapon that
explodes on impact with the ground, is to increase its destructive
range.
A bomb that penetrates the ground and then bursts tends to send all of
its energy either down into the ground or straight up into the air. An
air burst weapon sends a great deal of its energy out to the side.
The MOAB http://www.redrat.net/BUSH_WAR/images/moab2.jpg is not the
largest bomb ever created. In the 1950s the United States manufactured
the T-12, a 43,600-pound (19,800-kg) bomb that could be dropped from
the B-36.
Compared to a nuclear bomb, the MOAB produces a tiny explosion. The
smallest known nuclear bomb -- the Davy Crockett fission bomb
http://www.brook.edu/FP/projects/nucwcost/davyc.HTM -- has a 10-ton
yield.
The difference is that a nuclear bomb that small weighs less than 100
pounds (45 kg) and produces significant amounts of lethal radiation
when it detonates.
For comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of
14,500 tons of TNT and weighed only 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg) -- half
the weight of the MOAB. See my
How Nuclear Bombs Work .
http://nuclear-citizenry-in-motion.blogspot.com/2006/03/physics-of-ma...
The Delivery
Instead of being dropped from a bomber through the bomb bay doors, the
MOAB is pushed out of the back of a cargo plane such as a C-130 The
bomb rides on a pallet.
A parachute pulls the pallet and bomb out of the plane and then the
pallet separates so that the bomb can fall. Once the bomb is falling, a
guidance system based on
the Global Positioning System
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html takes
over and directs the bomb to its target.
The weapon is intended to have a high altitude release, allowing for
greater stand-off range for the delivery vehicle.
Following deployment from the aircraft via parachute, the MOAB weapon
is guided approximately 3 nautical miles through a GPS system (with
inertial gyros for pitch and roll control), JDAM actuators, and is
stabilized by series of fixed wings and grid fins.
The weapon, which uses the aircraft's GPS prior to launch, takes
several seconds to reconnect to the GPS signal after it has been
deployed, which is normal for GPS weapons.
The Power Inside
The MOAB is built by Dynetics http://www.dynetics.com/
.
The 21,700-pound [9,500 kilogram] bomb contains 18,700 pounds
http://www.homestead.com/flowstate/files/paris_big.jpg of H6,
(Trional) an explosive that is a mixture of RDX (Cyclotrimethylene
trinitramine), TNT, and aluminum ( The aluminum improves the brisance
of the TNT -- the speed at which the explosive develops its maximum
pressure.
The addition of aluminum makes tritonal about 18%
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/images/moab-...
more powerful than TNT alone.)
H6 is used by the military for general purpose bombs. H6 is an
Australian produced explosive composition. Composition H6 is a widely
used main charge filling for underwater blast weapons such as mines,
depth charges, torpedoes and mine disposal charges.
HBX compositions (HBX-1, HBX-3, and H6) are aluminized (powdered
aluminum) explosives used primarily as a replacement for the obsolete
explosive, torpex.
They are employed as bursting charges in mines, depth bombs, depth
charges, and torpedoes. HBX-3 and H-6 have lower sensitivity to impact
and much higher explosion test temperatures than torpex.
The MOAB weapon produces a very large explosive blast, with lesser
fragmentation effects due to a thin-walled aluminum casing.
A Daisy Cutter, http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm was
developed during the Vietnam war. The Air Force could drop a Daisy
Cutter to create an instant helicopter landing site.
The explosive force would clear out trees in a 500-foot-diameter
(152-meter) circle.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38946000/gif/_38946619_daisycut...
It contains 12,600 pounds
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0303/moab.vs.daisy.cutter/daisy...
(5,700 kg) of ammonium nitrate, aluminum and polystyrene, a
combination known as GSX (gelled slurry explosives). GSX is commonly
used in mining and is a commercial high explosive that is inexpensive
and easy to produce. TNT is a military high explosive.
http://archiv.neviditelnypes.zpravy.cz/obrazky/2002/01/18361_3_obraze...
Many in the military are wondering why the new MOAB bomb has not been
used in Iraq. The rumor is that the only one available was the one used
in the live test.
But there aren't many targets for the MOAB. Some call it the "humane
bomb," as nearly all bombs of this type (the earlier BLU-82 "Daisy
Cutter") have been used to clear helicopter landing zones or
minefields.
In Iraq it would be more useful for it's psychological effect. A MOAB
going off in a dusty landscape tends to create a visual effect similar
to that of an atomic bomb. There's something about a mushroom cloud
billowing up in the suburbs of Baghdad that sends a certain kind of
message.
The MIRVman