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Gbu-43 / B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb

GBU-43 / B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb

How powerful is a GBU-43 / B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb or "Mother of all bombs" in layman's terms?

Bomb Blast Air Ordnance Massive Gbu-

This is about 40 times more powerful than the normal 500 pound bombs we use in combat. And they are spectacularly effective so this must me unbelievable. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of one of these.

Gbu-43 / B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb History & Civil Business Politics

Well, they're the second most powerful conventional yield bombs that the general public is aware of (The most powerful being Russia's tongue in cheek 'Father of All Bombs', though if I recall right there was some question as to how much more powerful the FOAB was compared to the MOAB. I'll also eat my hat if there isn't something considerably more powerful developed as a black project.)

The thing boasts an 11 ton payload, and has a listed blast radius of 150 meters.

Or to put it another way, it makes pretty much all other conventional bombs look like driveway fireworks, but still doesn't come close to rivaling nuclear armaments.

Edited: daishain on 13th Apr, 2017 - 6:18pm

Bomb Blast Air Ordnance Massive Gbu-

Is the power of a bomb like this in its weight? Better way to ask might be is simply making it heavier make it better?

Bomb Blast Air Ordnance Massive Gbu-

The effective power of a bomb is usually listed by using trinitrotoluene, or TNT, as an effective unit of measurement.

When I said the MOAB has a payload of 11 tons, I didn't mean it weighs that much (Although that number is pretty close). Instead, I meant that in order to create an explosion of similar power using TNT, one would need to pile up 11 tons of the stuff.

By comparison, the 'Fat Man' nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki weighed about 5 tons, but produced an explosion equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT.

Edited: daishain on 13th Apr, 2017 - 6:29pm

Gbu-43 / B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb

And to add to what Daishain said, that A-bomb was 20 kilotons. Both we and Russia have developed bombs that are multiple megatons of explosive power which is thousands of times more powerful than an A-bomb. That said, most of our nukes are 'only' in the 500 kt range.

Daishain,

I saw where that bomb had an effective yield of 20 tons of TNT... But that's in a USAF pamphlet I have and could be inaccurate.

Gbu-43 / Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb

I was going off of the wikipedia page. Source 5r

One would think the USAF would have a better idea than whoever wrote the wiki page, but I'm not in a position to declare which is right.

Edited: daishain on 13th Apr, 2017 - 6:50pm