MOAB - Mother of all Bombs

I don't know how many of ye guys have seen this, but it gives me a slight cringe factor:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-88-1028.jsp

____________________________

The Mother of all Bombs – how the US plans to pulverise Iraq
Paul Rogers
7 - 3 - 2003


A devastating new weapon will be part of the US’s massive assault on Iraq. Paul Rogers, openDemocracy’s international security correspondent, explains what it is, how it developed, and why its use is likely to destroy civilian lives in their thousands.






As the United States Air Force (USAF) builds up its deployments of aircraft in the Middle East, it has emerged that a huge new bomb has recently been developed that will be used in the war against Iraq. It is the most powerful conventional bomb to be deployed anywhere in the world and is described as having an effect as devastating as that of a small nuclear artillery shell.

The bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB) weapon, contains 9.5 tons of a very powerful explosive. It is intended primarily for targeting against infantry and armoured vehicles. It can kill people within several hundred metres of the point of detonation, and cause lung damage and other injuries over an even wider area.

The MOAB is an airburst weapon designed to be used against surface targets or shallow trenches, not deep underground bunkers. It represents a more powerful development of a 7.5 ton bomb, the BLU-82, originally produced during the US war in Vietnam; there, it was employed, among other things, for instant clearance of forest to provide helicopter landing zones. The BLU-82, sometimes called Big Blue or even daisy-cutter, was kept in the USAF weapons inventory after the end of the Vietnam war in 1975.

The BLU-82 was subsequently used to attack Iraqi infantry and trenches in the 1991 Gulf war, and more recently in Afghanistan. There, it was deployed against cave entrances and in open country around the mountains of Tora Bora. Journalists who visited areas where the bomb had been dropped reported scenes of extraordinary devastation.



Weapon of the strong

To convey the scale of destruction the MOAB can inflict, a comparison with the Provisional IRA (PIRA) bombing campaign in British city-centres in the early and mid-1990s is instructive. Two bombs were detonated in the City of London (1992 and 1993), a third in London’s Docklands area (1996), and a fourth in the retail heart of Manchester (also in 1996).

Damage on each occasion cost many hundreds of millions of pounds, and took up to two years to repair. These bombs, though, were crude fertiliser-based devices weighing up to a ton, nothing like as devastating as a commercial high-explosive. By comparison, a single MOAB would be at least fifty times as powerful as any of the PIRA bombs.

Furthermore, the PIRA bombs were intended primarily to cause economic damage, so casualties were relatively low. When the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka detonated a bomb of a similar size in the central business district of Colombo in 1996, nearly 100 people were killed and over 1,000 injured. The MOAB would be used in Iraq primarily and intentionally to cause high casualties. While US sources may say that the MOAB would be used in open country against the Iraqi military, there is every indication that the Iraqis will concentrate their forces in and around cities, especially Baghdad.

A war against people, not just ‘real-estate’

The current US war plan involves extraordinarily heavy air bombardments right from the first hours of the war, with several thousand targets hit in the first four days. The intention is to shock the Iraqis into surrender or retreat. With such a plan, an extraordinarily powerful weapon like the MOAB is virtually certain to be used in the opening stages of the war, as much for the sheer psychological effect of its blast as for the physical damage that it will cause.

The MOAB is one of many indications that talk of a ‘war against real-estate’, rather than against people, is highly misleading. It is one of a number of weapons, including cluster bombs, which are collectively known as area-impact munitions. These are specifically designed to kill and maim over a wide area. They were partly responsible for the 3,000-plus civilian deaths in Afghanistan, but even that was a relatively small air war compared with the one likely to be waged against Iraq.

One of the main contractors for the MOAB is reported to be the Dynetics Corporation, headquartered in Alabama but with plants in several other states. Its name is on the tail section shown in one of the few photos of the MOAB so far published, but the weapons section of the Dynetics website is currently blank. A fuller description of the MOAB, including a photo of the bomb with ‘Dynetics’ displayed on it, is available on the StrategyPage website, published 6 March 2003.

If, as expected, the Iraqis choose to fight in the cities and if, as equally expected, the US Air Force uses weapons such as the MOAB, then civilian casualties many times greater than those in Afghanistan are not just possible, but very likely.


____________


so it looks like the number of civilian deaths/injured could be alot larger than what we previously expected. If the US use these, are they any better than Saddam or any other nation using chemical weapons?

I know this is explosive based, but i don't find them any nicer, than chemical, or biological weapons...

DadaKopf

Could anyone confirm whether this new bomb is a thermo-baric bomb? The openDem article says "It can kill people within several hundred metres of the point of detonation, and cause lung damage and other injuries over an even wider area", which suggests to me a thermo-baric weapon. I know they're not illegal but they should be.

Richard Boyd-Barrett made a very good point last weekend at the anti-war demo: in the past, wars were fought far away from civilians and were fought exclusively between soldiers. Victory was awarded to the general who defeated the enemy's army. Today, war is about destroyng an entire nation's ability to exist by destrying not only their army but the people's infrastructure, families and lives. War is about demoralisation and humiliation.

Anyway, my point is this: weapons such as the daisy-cutter and this MOAB cannot but maim and kill civilians even when directed against troops due to the nature of war. The only 'surgical strike' that will be effective in Iraq will be carried out by troops on the ground, fighting in close combat. I can't see how a bomb that rips people's lungs out of their chests can be choosy in who it kills and who it lets live. For evidence of the destructive effect these bombs can have, just take a look at Dagestan.

Now, if the US is going to use this weapon, and publicising it as it has, I expect Rumsfeld wants to, this only confirms the civilian death toll projected by the UN (and subsequently endorsed by US top brass as a likely outcome).

Any use of such a bomb would be reckless. In a country as populated as Iraq, these weapons will, no doubt, kill thousands of non-combatants. Bush and Blair condemn Saddam's WMD because of the huge threat they post to civilian lives but by their logic, they're guilty of gross double standards.

gandalf

Yes Dadakopt the MOAB is a thermo-baric or fuel air bomb which causes horrific injuries to those caught close to the detonation.

This situation is coming about because of Iraqis so called WMD, I personally would classify this ordanance as a WMD. Does this not make the action the Oil Junta are taking to be hypocritical in the extreme.

Gandalf.

Draco

According to this it isn't a fuel air bomb:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-88-1028.jsp

Both the MOAB and the BLU-82 have been incorrectly reported to be fuel-air explosive (FAE) weapons, where a cloud of a hydrocarbon-based aerosol is created that is then detonated. Because such an explosive uses the oxygen in the atmosphere as the oxidant, it is more ‘efficient’ than many high explosives, but it also requires relatively calm weather conditions and is difficult to use in quantities of more than a ton. Even so, a modern FAE is a very dangerous and damaging weapon, especially when used against buildings. There are unconfirmed reports that the Israelis used such weapons during the siege of Beirut in 1982. In that conflict, some 20,000 people died in and around the city.

The BLU-82 and the MOAB are, in fact, much larger and more powerful weapons even than an FAE. They are based on a mix of ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminium in an aqueous suspension or slurry, with a binding agent to hold the materials together before detonation. The effect of the BLU-82 is astonishing, and rare film shows a detonation, shock wave and subsequent mushroom cloud very similar to a small nuclear weapon, even if it is actually a conventional bomb.

seamus

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-12266799,00.html

Article with video. Scary.

ykt0di9url7bc3

The MOAB smells of thermo-baric imho or a new take on FAEs

The BLU-82 is your bog standard Daisy cutter, nothing new there


The Russiand demonstrated it publicly in Kosovo and it upset the U.S. Military who previously dismissed thermobarics as ineficient and incomparable to standerd munitions (so they say) ...Its amazing to think that the US have developed this weapon since then (having no reports that its was used against the Taliban - where FAEs have great effect against tunneled opponents)

The MOAB is an airburst weapon designed to be used against surface targets or shallow trenches, not deep underground bunkers

To think that they are about to use it now in urban warfare is funny when cleary against the problems of ineficient use (not sure what you'll kill) and high civilian mortality rate (not sure who you'll kill) the weapon is not suited to the job

The UK is the only other country that has openly admitted to researching these weapons and that has never gotten off the research platform afaik....


I think Mr. Rogers here is blatantly bleating for the anti-war cause

A devastating new weapon will be part of the US’s massive assault on Iraq. Paul Rogers, openDemocracy’s international security correspondent, explains what it is, how it developed, and why its use is likely to destroy civilian lives in their thousands.

Mr. Rogers explains how Mr. Bush is a mad raving gun happy twit who gets off on watching little Iraqi children cry as Mommy gets all of the air sucked out of her lungs before the heat shockwave smashes into her body

the article has little info on the MOAB, a bit more on what is isn't, and a lot of information on what it stands for if used in the conflict...

imho i think the US military have developed a FAE but only a prototype (just to say they have one!) and in the conflict they'll stick to the regular ordinance: Tomahawks, ACLMs & AGMs
It'll be a brave B52 pilot that'll bomb Baghdad in the first few weeks of a conflict

[edit]
Just as Sky news has pointed out (thx seamus)...prototype
and publicly tested too. Thats some fine sabre rattlin' by ole George
[/edit]

Chaos-Engine

I think something that should be made more clear. The LUNG efffect is huge from this MOAB. If you are 10x the distance of the blast radius away you still get collaposed lung more than not.
I'd be expecting neigbhourhoods of Iraqi's to die after they use this.
The US will NEVER put its troops in a Veitnam envirnment again. They would rather kill thousands and thousands of innocients before their troops would ever fight a close quaters war....

TomF

Am I the only one reading these postings who wonders if people understand "scare tactics" or "sabre rattling"? The whole idea of these information releases is to scare the Iraqi armed forces into giving up before there is any real fighting to be done. Earlier this week I read that the British forces in the south were testing their weapons and a group of Iraqi soldiers came in to surrender. The British had to tell them "Sorry, lads, a war hasn't started yet." and sent them back to the tender mercies of Saddam & Co.

Hobbes

Originally posted by TomF
The British had to tell them "Sorry, lads, a war hasn't started yet." and sent them back to the tender mercies of Saddam & Co.

That story was false.

Even if it was the English would take them as prisoners of war as returning them to Iraq would mean their execution.

pyure

if iraqi troops did surrender to the brits hell yes they'd be sent back.
you cant take pows when there isnt a war on, and they wouldnt be givin any form of protective custody or whatever you want to call it.

id have to agree that this 'new' bomb story is more that likely propaganda designed to scare the iraqis. no american government (well maybe, but the un certainly wouldnt) is going to sanction the use of massively destructive weapons on areas of high civillian population, it just wouldnt happen.

could be useful in the desert though, particulary against entrench troops.

but just because they have these weapons doesnt mean they'll be used.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

jd

http://www.afsoc.af.mil/panews/conventional_bomb.htm

"The dwindling inventory, lack of precision guidance, emerging technology, and new requirements apparently prompted work on the precision-guided MOAB and its 30,000-pound cousin, called "Big Blue." MOAB is designed to explode six feet above the ground for maximum blast effect. It also "makes a mushroom cloud," one source said, adding a psychological effect."


so moab has a big brother eek..

Hobbes

Originally posted by pyure
if iraqi troops did surrender to the brits hell yes they'd be sent back.
you cant take pows when there isnt a war on, and they wouldnt be givin any form of protective custody or whatever you want to call it.

In which case they could claim asylum, as sending them back would warrant a death sentance and really, why in gods name would they send them back? They could get intel from them, and the leaflets the US are dropping over Iraq are telling them to do just that. :rolleyes:

But as I said the story is complete fabrication.

TomF

I'm most humbly sorry if the Iraqi early surrender story was a fabrication, but would like to see some backup for the claim that it was a fabrication.

Lemming

Originally posted by jd
http://www.afsoc.af.mil/panews/conventional_bomb.htm

and its 30,000-pound cousin, called "Big Blue.

Oh

Dear

Lord :eek:

Umm ... MOAB is 21,000 pounds and it does this. .... but 30,000 !!! Sweet f*ck!

Koopa

he just gave you backup by pointing out that noone in their right mind would send the soldiers back - they could at least get some intel from them, or show them on TV as an example of how "iraqi's are pissed off with saddam, and we are doing them a favour by bombing them"

Koopa

nuclear weapons have not been used much so far largely because of the global effects they could have, so the americans are looking for a "clean" weapon which will kill as many of "the enemy" as possible, while not causing any fallout to the rest of the world.. the whole purpose of building bombs like the daisy cutters / MOAB is that they CAN be used, not as a scare weapon - why would a moab scare iraqi's any more than a thermonuclear weapon?
up till the 80's, iraq was an advanced nation technologically (no doubt because of its oil), they already know what nuclear weapons can do, why would they be "extra-scared" by these new bombs? "im not scared of a 10,000 ton or 200,000,000 ton nuclear bomb, but i am scared of a 10 ton bomb"?

nuclear weapons have radioactive fallout, these new bombs dont, so theyre usable - theres your answer

TomF

I would like to see some plausible evidence that the story was a fabrication. Yes, it seemed odd to me, on first reading the story of early surrender, that the men should be turned-back. However, I'm not a commander or even a sergeant in the British Army in Kuwait, and don't have any idea of what rules of engagement they are operating under. Isn't there some kind of wire service information with URL that can be posted here as supporting evidence for the bald claim that the story is a fabrication?

Koopa

how about some evidence to support the story first?

otherwise i could claim "george bush molests children", and claim i was right because i couldnt find any webpages which said "george bush does NOT molest children"

Éomer of Rohan

nuclear weapons have radioactive fallout, these new bombs dont, so theyre usable - theres your answer

That is sick but I actually think it plausible, though the danger of fallout did not stop the US under hawk guidance mass producing nuclear weapons before any other nation had even discovered them and then advocating their use at every opportunity, Japan, Korea, French Vietnam or Indochina, which ever you prefer, Iran/Azerbaijan and so on. It seems to be the hawks out in force at the minute over there - would you be surprised if they annmounced the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the 5th and 6th US fleets?

Turner

As for me I am pro a regime change even if it means war.
Its sure is an excellent show of strength alright. Hope Saddam decides to flee rather than put his army in the path of one of those.
If it ever is used in battle I just hope whoever deploys it has their grid references and location right. It sure could cause serious civillian casualties if something went wrong. Im confident that the Americans in cahoots with the British will get it right though. Id love to see it deployed right in the middle of Saddams presidential palace. Wonder what the troops will write on the side. Me personally would write "Suck on this Saddam".

Chief.

Éomer of Rohan

Oooooh who's a little war crazy then lol??? I think there have been enough points made to at least cast significant doubts on the nature of this war, though I for one do not believe it is about regime change, rather it is about oil and so on and so forth as we have laid out countless times.

if something went wrong

The point is, as many of the posts previously have shown and supported with evidence, this could cause civilian casualties if used AT ALL and it is important to note that America will face war in urbanised areas in all probability; I think we would like to avoid a Dresden?

Koopa

why would a 10 ton bomb scare the iraqi's, if a "tactical nuke" (supposedly around 500 tons or so) doesnt scare them? (im not saying it does, or it doesnt - im pointing out that these new bombs are tiny compared to even the smallest 'tactical' nukes, they wouldnt change the course of any war between america and iraq by much - the only thing is, they wouldnt leave much fallout so itd be kindof hard to tell how many had been used, etc. to any other nation other than america itself - and it could be used with impunity due to no fallout)

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by Chief---
Im confident that the Americans in cahoots with the British will get it right though

Just like they got it right so many times in Afghanistan?
It was probably a show of strength to some degree, but as others have pointed out, things like that aren't built with the intention of not being used.
Just watching the footage of the testing on the news, it was sickening to think of what excuses we're going to hear when one of these things "goes a-stray" and wipes out a town.
What's to say this won't happen "accidentally" in order to get a surrender like what was done in Japan during WW2?

TomF

I'm still not convinced the "surrender" story was a fabrication. The Houston Chronicle (in Texas, a newspaper that is anti-Bush, anti-Iraqi war, etc. etc.) recently surprised many readers by publishing a column written by a man named Austin Bay which was inspired by the "fabricated" surrender story.

Here is a small excerpt:

"A significant chunk of the Iraqi army is ready to surrender to American-led forces. The same goes for the Iraqi people. As a result, U.S. and British forces have developed battle plans designed to limit Iraqi civilians AND Iraqi army casualties, as well as limit damage to roads, power stations, oil fields and other civilian infrastructure.

These plans are intricate, and to pull them off in combat requires highly accurate, real-time intelligence. In questionable circumstance, U.S. commanders will "first protect the lives of deployed allied soldiers," a Pentagon way of saying the slightest indication of resistance or trickery will be met with overwhelming firepower. However, the long-range assessment is "enemies" like the poor Iraqis who met the British paras will soon become allies. Surrendering Iraqi soldiers may ultimately serve as security personnel in post-Saddam Iraq."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1815439

Hobbes

Originally posted by TomF
I would like to see some plausible evidence that the story was a fabrication. Yes, it seemed odd to me, on first reading the story of early surrender, that the men should be turned-back. However, I'm not a commander or even a sergeant in the British Army in Kuwait, and don't have any idea of what rules of engagement they are operating under. Isn't there some kind of wire service information with URL that can be posted here as supporting evidence for the bald claim that the story is a fabrication?

Because googling is hard for some.

The story was first reported by two tabloid papers (one in UK, one in the US). I have seen no major paper or site take it up for a while.

Checking google.

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=1860

Last night the Ministry of Defence officially denied the incident had taken place, but the story was corroborated by an intelligence source.

Note about stories. If you don't have a name of the source it's a 99% chance of being BS.

Also to add to that, all the stories are exactly the same layout which would suggest that they all stem from the same source (one of the two tabloid papers).

bonkey

Just to clarify one issue.....

I believe that MOAB, Big Blue, the Daisy Cutter, and all of those types of weaponry are not classed as WMDs because there are no lingering after-effects, as there would be with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Yes, you may have a collapsed lung, or a crushed rib cage, but you wont have chemicals eating you away while you wheeye through terminal anthrax, all the while slowly dieing of radiation poisoning.

I may be mistaken, though, because I have a sneakig suspicion that ballistic missiles are classified as WMDs, even though the missile itself is only a delivery mechanism.

Having said that, if MOAB causes lung collapse and other debilitatig injuries over such a large radius, it is entirely possible that it could/should be banned under something more like the Geneva Convention, which sets pretty strict guidelines on the acceptable effects of weapons. You know...its responsible banning things like Dum Dums which are designed to be massively debilitating/crippling if they fail to be fatal.

jc

Victor

I picked up this quote from a mailing list.

New York Times
March 12, 2003
Largest Conventional Bomb Dropped In A Test In Florida
By Thom Shanker

"The MOAB is carried aloft aboard an MC-130, [not a C-131] ..........

Officials said they were unaware if the name MOAB was chosen for a biblical reference. According to Genesis, Moab was born through an incestuous relationship between Lot and a daughter following the destruction of Sodom. The Book of Numbers tells how the Israelites chose the Plains of Moab as their final camp before entering the Promised Land.

Of course, the "surrendering" soldiers would have to know they wanted refugee status, but against this "Is it true that the Iraqi troops were originally trained by the French?" and "A British Army source in Kuwait contacted me [not the original author]", "The Iraqis found a way across the fortified border, which is sealed off with barbed-wire fencing, watchtowers, and huge trenches." and other references show it to be less than trustworthy. I'm not sure, but I don't think the Iraq - Kuwait border is fortified, I had understood it to be marker posts only as it is mostly desert.

Both these links provide further evidence that this site is little more than a sophisticated crank.

http://www.chronwatch.com/index.asp
http://www.chronwatch.com/aboutus/index.asp

Originally posted by TomF
I'm most humbly sorry if the Iraqi early surrender story was a fabrication, but would like to see some backup for the claim that it was a fabrication.

How about backing up the "story"? Isn't the onus on the person making an allegation to back it up.

Originally posted by Éomer of Rohan
That is sick but I actually think it plausible,

Yes it is sick, it is war.

Originally posted by Éomer of Rohan
would you be surprised if they annmounced the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the 5th and 6th US fleets?

Naval tactical (i.e. not ICBMs) nuclear weapons are banned by a Russian-American treaty.

Originally posted by bonkey
I may be mistaken, though, because I have a sneakig suspicion that ballistic missiles are classified as WMDs, even though the missile itself is only a delivery mechanism.

Consider them parallel as opposed to "the same". Medium (300 - 750km) and intermediate (750 - 2000km) range missiles are considered destabilising as they give even a regional power the ability to engage in non-MAD behavior.

There are suggestions from the US Air Force to put conventional warheads on "old" ICBMs, however this would be hugely destabilising as it reduces the threshold at which such missiles would be used and would have the Russians / Chinese / whoever warming up their own missiles, which leads to ......

TomF

If one sees the ChronWatch.com site as that of a crank, I can't imagine what would one think of
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/

TomF

I am continuing to search the Internet for support of the surrendering Iraqi soldiers story, but am not particularly encouraged by finding the story on
http://www.thespeciousreport.com/index.html

Naval tactical (i.e. not ICBMs) nuclear weapons are banned by a Russian-American treaty

Do you really think they'd hold by this treaty, if it meant saving american soldiers lives? They'll drop the nuke regardless.