Is the US military using a 'buffalo butcher knife to kill a chicken'?

According to the latest information, the "mother of all bombs" that the US used for the first time in Afghanistan on April 13 killed 36 IS terrorist fighters.

A MOAB bomb is transported at a US base. Photo: Reuters

Considered the world's most powerful non-nuclear weapon, the GBU-43B bomb dropped by the US on Afghanistan on April 13th surprised the world. This is the first time since its development and testing in 2003 that the GBU-43B has been used in the field.

The GBU-43B is officially known as the GBU-43B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (GBU-43B MOAB). The name MOAB also inspired the nickname “Mother of All Bombs”.

According to the military and diplomatic magazine National Interest, the note about MOAB in the US Air Force Armament Museum states: “GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (pronounced MOAB - often called the Mother of All Bombs), is a high-yield (non-nuclear) bomb, developed for the United States. At the time of development, it was touted as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever designed.”

Designed by the US Air Force in 2002, MOAB is considered the "descendant" of the BLU-82 'Daisy Cutter' that the US military used in Vietnam.

After testing in 2003 at Eglin Air Force Base (Florida), MOAB then participated in the Iraq battlefield at that time but was never used, until the events in Afghanistan on April 13.

The MOAB weighed 21,600 pounds (9,797 kg), about the weight of a large bus. It was packed with 18,700 pounds (more than 8,400 kg) of H-6 explosive as the explosive material, with a destructive force equivalent to 11 tons of TNT and a range of up to 1 mile (more than 1.6 km). The MOAB was large in size, measuring 9.17 m long, or about 5 times the height of a human head, and 1.029 m in diameter.

According to the National Interest newspaper, the MOAB bomb is not a penetrating weapon, and is mainly used to destroy targets in isolated, confined areas such as caves and mountain ravines.

In other words, MOAB is used to attack areas where enemy gunmen are concentrated, such as the tunnel system of Islamic State (IS) fighters in Achin district, Nagarhar province recently.

The military site Air Force Times describes that if used in a tunnel, the MOAB can collapse the entire system below.

Image of smoke rising from the explosion of a MOAB bomb during a test at Elgin Air Force Base, Florida, USA in 2003. Photo: Reuters

As some previous reviews, MOAB seems to be a weapon that focuses on intimidation, hitting the opponent's psychology through the image of the terrible destruction it brings.

The Independent (UK) on March 14 quoted a statement that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once declared on the Iraq battlefield: "The goal (of the 'shock and awe' strategy) is to create extreme pressure to force Saddam Hussein to cooperate."

With its special size, MOAB requires a special aircraft to carry and drop bombs, and that is the MC-130 of the US Air Force.

A MOAB bomb was dropped from an MC-130 transport plane in 2003 - Photo: Reuters

According to information from the anti-war propaganda website The Squander Bug, which specializes in reporting on military waste, the cost of manufacturing and operating the MOAB is extremely "huge".

Accordingly, the MC-130 costs about 30 million USD just to carry MOAB. The MOAB development program also spanned more than a decade, using the BLU-120B warhead with the KMU-593B guidance system.

Each component of the MOAB costs millions of dollars, resulting in each MOAB costing $16 million, and the total development cost of the MOAB being over $1 billion.

According to the latest information from Afghanistan, the recent bombing by the US military killed 36 IS fighters and destroyed a tunnel system.

According to Tuoi Tre