As if we didn't have enough foreign policy issues to discuss with the recent events happening in Syria and North Korea, the U.S. has now dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever in Afghanistan. An article on cnbc goes into further detail:
This is the first time the GBU-43 bomb, known as the "mother of all bombs," has ever been used in combat, according to Adam Stump, the Pentagon spokesman. The bomb contains 11 tons of explosives and is formally known as the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb.Stump says the bomb was dropped on a cave complex believed to have Islamic State fighters according to the Associated Press. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a daily briefing on Thursday that ISIS fighters use the caves to "move around freely." He explained that in order to defeat the terrorist group, the U.S. must deny it operational space.
Is this useful for the fight against ISIS? Do you support the direction foreign policy is currently moving?
I want to say they named it after George Bush. I don't know what the U stands for though.
I thought we had been dropping MOAB's before. The whole thing about them is they suck all the oxygen out of the cave and basically suffocate insurgents.
I wonder how much money and how long are we going to be dropping ordinance on this undeveloped country. I mean we are bombing mountains. This is utterly rediculous.
EDIT
"Since then, Russia has tested its "Father of All Bombs", which is claimed to be four times as powerful as the MOAB."
Oh man, that is high comedy lol
Am I the only one who thinks the headlines are kinda clickbait-y? "Largest Non-Nuclear Bomb", I was expecting this thing to have leveled a town. I'm sure it's technically correct and works specifically for caves and shit but damn once I looked it up on youtube I was pretty unimpressed.
Yup. Not calling false flag or anything like that, but I think they propagand this stuff a little to get that extra coverage. Calms the Russia talks down for the rest of the week. A "middle eastern bombing campaign" has been a fact of life for post 2000 world, but "MOAB biggest of all time!!!" gets every network fired up.
Notice how none of the news has this Russia investigation going on anymore? It used to be non-stop congressional investigation. Now it is MOAB, Syrian bombing, North Korea, etc.
Pretty coincidental.
The bomb has a blast radius of a mile and leaves a 300-meter crater. I'm not even sure how a battle damage assessment can be conducted on one of these. Like, if you're trying to get an accurate casualty count, you couldn't because everything is vaporized. The MOAB detonates above ground and the massive overpressure causes the caves below to collapse.
The bombs have a unit cost of $16 million and about $314 million was spent on the initial R&D. Fucking wild.
$16MM is more effective than ground troops at the end of the day, in this situation. Cost of doing business.
This was Pres. Obama's central argument wrt drone strikes
Does this administration have a coherent foreign policy doctrine?
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