Now Putin shows off monster the Father Of All Bombs...
RUSSIA warned yesterday it has the Father Of All Bombs – four times more powerful than the monster dropped by the US in Afghanistan.
Moscow’s rival to the US Mother Of All Bombs, dropped on a jihadist terror group cave and tunnel network is apparently smaller and lighter.
But the Kremlin’s is packed with a new type of high explosive, equivalent to 44 tons of TNT compared with the US bomb’s 11.
The FOAB – known officially as the Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power – was tested in 2007.
The temperature produced by the blast was said to be twice that generated by America’s MOAB.
And it has a wider blast zone with shockwave effects similar to those caused by a small nuclear weapon.
According to the properties widely circulated by Russia, this would make it the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the world. But the absence of any public pictures has led US defence analysts to question the Russians’ claims about its power and size. The US military and Afghan government yesterday defended the first ever use in combat of America’s biggest non-nuclear weapon.
A spokesmen said the dropping of the MOAB had achieved its goal of destroying a network of heavily mined tunnels and bunkers used by so-called Islamic State fighters.
Aerial footage released by the Pentagon yesterday demonstrated the massive force unleashed by the bomb, which has a mile-wide blast radius.
Up to 36 fanatics, said to include an IS commander, were obliterated in the blast and no civilians harmed, it was claimed.
US and Afghan forces have been working together since last month on an intensive campaign to stop IS gaining ground in Afghanistan.
The group has struggled to establish itself in the country since announcing its arrival in early 2015, as it is opposed by Taliban militants as well as by the government and its allies.
But it has claimed responsibility for a spate of deadly suicide bomb attacks.
The GPS-guided MOAB, known officially as the GBU-43B, is launched from a transport plane at a cost of about £12.8million per bomb.
Footage from its first test in 2003 showed it sending up a huge mushroom cloud visible for 20 miles.
Former US state department spokesman and ex-air force colonel PJ Crowley said it was “like creating a minor earthquake”.
The top US military commander in Afghanistan said the decision to use the bomb was based on military needs, not wider political considerations.
General John Nicholson told
reporters: “It was the right time to use it tactically against the right target on the battlefield.”
Forces at the scene reported that it had “achieved its intended purpose” of destroying the IS “sanctuary”, he said.
US President Donald Trump hailed “another successful job” by the US military and said its successes this year were down to him giving commanders “total authorisation” to act as they saw fit.
The deployment of the massive bomb comes shortly after the US cruise missile attack on a Syrian government airbase in retaliation for the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians, including children.