Post by magnum on Nov 18, 2019 0:34:04 GMT
The GBU-43 MOAB is actually not all that useful in combat. It was only used once in combat in 2017 against a cave complex housing ISIS fighters in Afghanistan. I would be surprised if it is ever dropped again in combat.
The MOAB is a 21,000 pound bomb that was designed to replace the Vietnam-era BLU-82 Daisy Cutter. In Vietnam, the daisy cutter was designed to clear out vegetation for helicopter landing zones. However, it was gradually pressed into service as an anti-personnel weapon. In addition to being larger than the daisy cutter, the MOAB also boasts GPS guidance.
Although the MOAB can deliver a massive blast to its target, there are much cheaper and easier ways to achieve the same result. Blast radius has a cubic relationship to explosive weight. In order to double blast radius, an explosive’s weight needs to be increased 8-fold. As a result, when trying to destroy targets across a large area, it’s easier to use more bombs than bigger bombs. This is the premise that cluster bombs work on. About 8 2000-lb JDAMs could destroy an area as large as a MOAB’s blast radius, and they would be far cheaper and easier to deliver.
At that, the MOAB could probably not be delivered in a conventional war. The bomb is so large that it needs to be dropped from a C-130. The bomb is simply too large to be carried by any of the bombers or fighters in the US’s inventory. However, a MOAB-armed C-130 would likely be unable to penetrate the air defenses of a peer adversary in a conflict in order to deliver the MOAB. It would be far easier to have fighter bombers deliver 2000-lb JDAMs. As a result, it could only realistically be used in low-intensity conflicts, where American dominance of the skies was not contested.
Consequently, the MOAB and its Russian cousin, the Father of all Bombs are little more than gimmicks. The development of these weapons was little more than a pissing contest between the superpowers to see who could develop the largest non-nuclear bomb. However, it is unlikely that either weapon will be used in combat again.