Larissa
7th March 2003, 15:04
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.
TheBLU-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.
Transports of death
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.
Full article:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/artic...e-2-88-1028.jsp (http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-88-1028.jsp)
(Edited by Larissa at 12:05 pm on Mar. 7, 2003)
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.
TheBLU-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.
Transports of death
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.
Full article:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/artic...e-2-88-1028.jsp (http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-88-1028.jsp)
(Edited by Larissa at 12:05 pm on Mar. 7, 2003)