MOAB: The Mother of All Bombs

hello everybody welcome to another mega projects video this one's all about a bomb it's a particularly large bomb it's the largest non-nuclear bomb i believe ollie has written us a script so let's get into it shall we [Music] on the 13th of april 2017 a terrifying object drifted down from the sky towards cave complex in atchin district nangarhar province in afghanistan there was a peaceful calm on the ground before hell arrived what was falling that day was not just a bomb it was the largest non-nuclear device in the powerful arsenal of the united states it wasn't just a bomb it was the gbu-4 mobe the mother of all bombs now this isn't quite a complete history of bombs that would take forever but let us begin in 1945. bombs fundamentally changed during world war ii the two devices that detonated above hiroshima and nagasaki caused the kind of devastation the world had never seen the fact that whole cities could now be leveled by a single bomb was a truly terrifying advancement with the japanese emperor announcing the country's surrender a week after the bombing of nagasaki with that the age of the nuclear bomb arrived as we've seen time and time again right here on megaprojects the cold war was filled with countless cases of one-upmanship leading to glorious opportunities for megaprojects videos here in the future the us and the ussr they battled each other for prestige considerably more than they ever did in real life the need to go bigger and better than the other was a common trait across the decades and it certainly played a part in the soviet union sagging fortunes as it made its collapse in their development of nuclear bombs both nations built the kinds of nuclear weapons that would make the devices dropped on japan seem like firecrackers the largest u.s nuclear bomb was the b-41 with a massive 25 megaton yield roughly 500 of these were developed between 1960 and 1962. it's a bit excessive guys each one of these would have had a power of over 1 900 times that of the bomb dropped on hiroshima however the b-41 could not hope to match the monster that emerged in the soviet union the tsar bomber was first tested on the 30th of october 1961 over navia zemla island in the russian arctic sea detonated four kilometers in the air the blast had a yield of 50 megatons thought to be around 3 800 times as powerful as what was dropped on hiroshima and that bomb by the way side note from simon here that was initially intended to be a hundred megatons but they reduced its explosive potential because they were worried about it so by the early 1960s both the u.s and the ussr were in the possession of true apocalypse bringers thankfully that was the height of the madness and from there a series of treaties began to limit the testing and eventually the numbers of nuclear warheads around the world dropped off but what about non-nuclear bombs it's easy to focus on nuclear weapons but what if you just want to blow up a small area and you know not the entire world a few truly massive more conventional bombs also emerged during world war ii the british used a bomb known as grand slam 42 times during the war these earthquaking bombs weighing 10 000 kilograms were used to penetrate 40 meters into the ground before detonating the effect as you might imagine had more than a striking similarity to an earthquake the united states developed the t12 cloud maker between 1944 and 1948 but the massive 19 800 kilogram bomb was never used in combat in 2007 russia claimed they developed what they called the father of all bombs remember what i was saying about one upman's ship which is to say it is more powerful than the mother of all bombs seems like that cold war one-upmanship just continued especially recently however since the specifications and indeed any evidence it all seems very light we're not entirely sure about that one the mother of all bombs has its roots in another bomb which came to the fore during the vietnam war the 6800 kilogram blu-82 bomb-live unit bomb that was heavily used during the u.s engagement in southeast asia was known as the daisy cutter for the simple reason that it was initially used of clear landing zones for helicopters its role was expanded throughout the war and was sometimes used to hit specific targets such as warehouses bridges and even concentrations of troops and it wasn't just in vietnam that these bombs which at the time were the biggest in operation anywhere in the world were used daisy cutters landed inside both laos and cambodia the second of which occurred during the last combat operation in southeast asia in 1975 against the coma rouge the rescue attempt of u.s merchant sailors held captive by the khmer rouge came to be known as the mayor guess incident and is sadly remembered for the three u.s marines left behind on kotang after the evacuation who were later executed and the deployment of a blu-82 fast forward nearly 20 years and the u.s again found themselves at war as they combed the mountains of afghanistan in search of osama bin laden several blue 82s were dropped on taliban or al-qaeda targets in november and december of 2001. they were not simply used for the catastrophic damage they could cause but also for the psychological impact that such a weapon has on enemy combatants and this was exactly what the u.s had in mind with the mother of all bombs [Music] the bomb was first tested in combination with the explosive tritonol which is a mixture of 80 tnt and 20 aluminium powder on the 11th of march 2003 at eglin air force base in florida as far as we know it went well and it was tested again on the 21st of november 2003. measuring 9.1 meters end to end it is as long as the height of four half michael jordan's okay then and it has a diameter of 103 centimeters but is the power inside that makes this special or awful depending on how you'd like to look a bomb it's blast yield is 11 tons of tnt and the mother of all bombs is primarily designed for soft or medium soft targets meaning it would not be effective in attacking a bunker but would be great attacking an isis camp in the mountains it's also important to put this bomb into perspective with large-scale bombing raids during operation arclight in the vietnam war the united states air force conducted over 10 000 bombing raids typically involving two groups of three aircraft a standard mission dropped 168 tons of ordnance on an area measuring just 2.4 kilometers by 0.8 kilometers therefore a single mission during this operation would have had a similar impact as 10 to 17 mother of all bombs it's a fearsome and hellish weapon but principally it's designed to be used in isolated instances dropping this kind of bomb is not as simple as just hitting a switch and crying bombs away as they used to do the mother of all bombs needs to be deployed in a particular kind of way its carrier would normally be the mc130 the lockheed goliath that handles many heavy duty missions for the u.s air force at an altitude of 1 800 meters or above the bomb which sits on a cradle is deposited out of the back bay door of the aircraft and begins its descent by parachute once the bomb is safely clear of the plane it detaches from its cradle and with the fins guiding it the bomb uses its satellite guidance system to reach the target the bomb detonates just two meters from the ground with a huge amount of oxygen burned causing suffocation both above and below ground around 20 of these bombs have been manufactured out of mccallister army ammunition plant in mcalester oklahoma since 2003 with the air force stating that each one costs 170 000 which in today's money is about quarter million but many speculate this isn't entirely accurate the total program cost is thought to be around 314 million dollars which included development testing etc if that is the case the cost per weapon would be roughly 16 million dollars and the figures here have been adjusted for inflation [Music] this brings us back to april 13 2017 the only time a mother of all bombs has been used in combat operations the previous administration had shied away from using it out of fear of causing significant civilian casualties but four months after his inauguration president donald trump authorized the use of a bomb against an isis cave and tunnel system in the mountains of afghanistan casualty reports are varied to say the least with an afghan army spokesman claiming 94 isis militants were killed including four commanders he went on to add that the strike had caused no civilian casualties these reports have come into question with some claiming that the number of militants could have been as low as 36 while others say a teacher and his son were among the dead in terms of defeating isis it's not really clear how successful this attack was if we use the low casualty number of 36 it would mean a cost of 450 000 to kill each isis militant whether that is worth it to military leaders only they know [Music] pope francis commented about the bomb shortly after its use a mother gives life and this one gives death and we call this device a mother what is giving on and he wasn't alone while the disgust of organizations like isis is evident what a surprise the terrorists don't like being blown up with it the use of such a weapon did prove far from popular perhaps some assumed that this kind of warfare was now a thing of the past but the truth is it's never really gone we just don't see it that often modern warfare has taken on a much more sterile cold nature bombs and missiles can be launched hundreds if not thousands of miles away while drone operators sitting in the united states have the power to obliterate targets on the other side of the world even when we see war on television we still see images of smaller scale attacks that might damage buildings but often don't entirely destroy them the truth is that these weapons are out there thankfully we don't see them too often but make no mistake about it they are out there lurking the fear of causing civilian casualties has probably never been higher especially when it is the richest most powerful country in the world striking one of the poorest but i dare to say that this is a feat that comes from negative media coverage rather than a genuine regard for human life the mother of all bombs is so monstrous it has limited its use and that is probably why we have only ever seen one strike using it if anything it is used as a psychological deterrent much more than an actual weapon when the enemy carries the fearsome power of the gods well how can you possibly fight against it so i really hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below and don't forget to subscribe brand new videos on this channel three times a week so that's fantastic subscribe and you'll get those and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 1,068,439

Rating: 4.8440084 out of 5

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Id: PFF-Bs8trfU

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020