News story out now revises it to 94.
Here’s an aerial view from CENTCOM of the bomb drop, explosion, concussion wave, and ensuing fire/smoke pillar. If you look closely just to the right of center at about five seconds in you can see the bomb dropping.
Okay,most of what’s been posted has been complaints about how truly poorly written the opening post is, and retorts back and forth about it, with zero improvement. Then some comments specifying what the bomb was.
I’m taking the opening post to be an overly terse way of asking "what lessons(of an entirely unspecified kind, which the OP still expects everyone to simply KNOW) have been learned from the dropping of this one bomb, followed by vaguely asking after the status of the US military arsenal.
The only logical thing to guess about the second pseudo-question, since it is directly connected to asking about the dropping of this one bomb, is whether dropping this one bomb caused significant a change in the overall arsenal. The answer to the second question is rather obviously “not a damn thing, save that there’s one less of those bombs, and a certain amount of air fuel was used to drop it.”
The most logical answer to the first semi-question about “lessons learned,” is that it is too soon to ask that, save in a purely rhetorical way.
It will not be possible to assess it’s effectiveness, as compared to using different weapons, for a very long time.
There is no evidence YET that using it on this one particular cave system, killed any particular ISIS leadership, or otherwise critically damaged ISIS in any way at all, save the loss of less than a hundred fighters.
No evidence has been presented YET, that this particular cave system was strategically important in any large way.
The fact that it was one very big bomb, and not a lot of smaller ones, might have had an effect, but again, we wont be able to know for a VERY VERY ling time.
In a simple practical sense, we do know that this particular device did explode as planned (so far as the people in charge have said).
We know that some Trump supporters see it’s use as the fulfillment of one of his “promises,” but that isn’t really a lesson learned, it’s just political wishful thinking. After all, the actual general who ordered it to be used, said flat out that not only did Trump have nothing to do with the decision to use it, but that it’s use was not prevented by the previous administration. In short, the fact that Trump is the President was not a factor in it’s use, so the only possible lesson to learn from that, is that you can’t make fanatics believe the truth. However, since that lesson is as old as time, it’s not something learned here.
I guess all that means that the answers to the OP’s opening post are:
Question one: status of the arsenal: there is one less MOAB available.
Question two: lessons learned: only one, that this particular device worked as expected.
For all other concerns or worries, it is too soon to know the answer.
Ask again in about a year, and we may have more valid things to say .
Was a drone or other asset used for this?
Sometimes the world just need a little reminder here and there as proven clear by all of these discussions regarding this news. It’s a reminder to the whole world that peace comes at the point of a bullet and tolerance to the rules of civilized societies is limited.
No “vast military knowledge” is needed to see there are other options, just a knowledge of history - some of the options that have worked in the past, doubtless would be even less attractive than MOAB for various reasons (gassing the tunnels, for instance, likely won’t fly) but there are other boots-on-ground options that don’t entail “clearing out the tunnels on foot” - shell most of the entrances and blockade the rest, for instance. Of course, that still involves possibly putting precious soldiers in harm’s way.
That is a better ROI, for sure.
The MOAB is much too heavy to be carried by any currently operational unmanned aircraft. It’s dropped from the loading ramp of a C-130 using a drogue parachute. I assume there is a backup plan for dropping it in areas where there are enemy air defenses (a C-130 is much more vulnerable than purpose-built bombers because it’s slow).
I think he was asking about whatever took the video, not the one that dropped the bomb. Did the C-130 take the video as well or was it a recon drone used for damage assessment or something like that?
I don’t know why they’d bother sending something else to watch the blast. The MOAB is GPS-guided but if there are no air defenses the C-130 can just hang around and watch the bomb go off itself.
Yeah, you’re right. Occurred to me also just after the post.
The MOAB is gravity-propelled, with not much drag, so it descends pretty rapidly after being ejected; it might be difficult to get the C-130 moved to a suitable vantage point before detonation, so a camera drone hanging around at lower altitude and greater horizontal distance might make sense.
The aircraft taking the CENTCOM vid was not the bomb dropper. We see that by the trajectory of the bomb coming in from an angle and speed that precludes the vid vehicle being the dropper.
The vid shows us that the vid vehicle is relatively slow-flying and is in a clockwise orbit around the target at an altitude of at least 10,000 feet above the target. Perhaps much higher depending on the optics’ zoom.
The data shown in the view are very simplified vs. what one commonly sees in a targeting system. Although nowadays all that stuff is overlaid in the software domain, not the video domain so it’d be easy to filter all that out before public release of the data. The crosshairs move as if they’re tracking a GPS point until they get manually slewed around after impact as the cloud develops and shortly before the vid cuts off.
My bet is they sent a drone more or less like this one: General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper - Wikipedia. You’d also expect part of the drone’s job (drone operator’s job actually) would be to watch for the proverbial “wedding party” and have the C-130 pull off if one was seen.
But that’s semi-informed guesswork, not citable fact.
I saw one estimate that an individual MOAB costs about $170,000 (possibly because it’s produced by the Air Force and not by contractors, perhaps only the material and labor costs are included?)
It’s high-explosive, not fuel-air or thermobaric, and it’s guided – the reports say JDAMS (which as I understand it means satellite guidance).
Also, while we’re striving to be precise:
ordnance: bombs
ordinance: law
Which one’s principal?
They’re wrong.
Thermobaric bombs are filled with fuel, but no oxidizer; they rely on atmospheric oxygen to react with the fuel they carry.
The MOAB is filled not with fuel, but with H6 high explosive. It is not dependent on atmospheric oxygen for detonation, and is therefore not a thermobaric bomb.
Automatic, semi-automatic…rocket, airplane…close enough for media.
I generally agree, and especially on not relying much on general media to be right about weapons technology.
OTOH there isn’t a rigid technical definition of ‘thermobaric’. The so called Metal Augmented Charge warhead in the ‘thermobaric’ version of the Hellfire missile has conventional explosive and powered aluminum, the latter intended to be dispersed by the explosive at high temp and react with atmospheric O2 to create a longer hotter explosion. But H6 is…a mixture of HE (RDX and TNT) and powdered Al. The Al % is just not as high in H6, and the original reason for adding it was different. H6 is basically a insensitive version of the WWII Torpex, where Al powder was added for the reaction among the Al powder, CO from partial decomposition of the explosive and the water to generate a more energetic bubble for underwater weapons like torpedoes, mines etc. than the same weight of HE alone. However neither RDX nor TNT contain enough O2 themselves to fully decompose in the absence of atmospheric O2, then also fully oxidize the Al powder, so exploded in the air there will be some ‘thermobaric’ follow on effect of the powder. Again it’s a lesser effect than the one aimed for in a warhead like the ‘MAC’.