A rchive Date
[ 12-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1814659
Air Force tests 21,000-pound monster bomb
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle News Services
March 12, 2003, 9:54AM
WASHINGTON -- In a flashy debut for its biggest non-nuclear bomb, the Air Force on Tuesday dropped a 21,000-pound behemoth onto a test range in Florida, hoping the test would rattle nerves in Iraq as well.
U.S. military officials wouldn't say whether the Air Force bomb would be used in a war against Iraq. It is officially designated the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB, although it has come to be called unofficially the Mother of All Bombs, a rough allusion to Saddam Hussein's claim before the 1991 Gulf War that that conflict would be the "mother of all battles."
"Anything we have in the arsenal, anything that's in almost any stage of development, could be used," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman, called the test successful. "It did what they expected it to do. Nothing malfunctioned," she said.
The Air Force has not said how such a bomb might be used in combat. John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, said Tuesday it might be useful against Iraqi Republic Guard formations or even targets around Baghdad such as one of Saddam's palaces.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated that the big bomb, which was dropped out the back of a C-130 transport plane over a test range at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., was as much a psychological tool as any weapon.
"The goal is to not have a war," he said. "The goal is to have the pressure be so great that Saddam Hussein cooperates. Short of that ... the goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight against the coalition and there's an enormous incentive for Saddam Hussein to leave and spare the world a conflict."
A Pentagon official who reviewed a videotape of the test said the bomb created a tall cloud of debris that billowed into the sky but did not resemble the mushroom-shaped cloud of a nuclear blast. The Air Force videotape was to be released later.
Some area residents felt the bomb's detonation but said the explosion was not as big as they had expected.
"It was kind of weak," said Patricia Sariego, a receptionist at the Best Western hotel in Navarre, on the southern edge of Eglin. She said the blast shook doors.
The bomb packs 40 percent more power than America's current most powerful non-nuclear bomb, the 15,000-pound "daisy cutter," which was used to pound the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001, Eglin officials said.
The daisy cutter is a "dumb" bomb dropped directly over the target. The MOAB is more precise, relying on the satellite positioning system to hit its mark.
The daisy cutter was designed to kill a large number of troops and programmed to detonate just before it hits the ground, spreading the blast over a 600-yard square area. When it was used in Tora Bora, military officials said it would have a psychological impact on people hiding in the caves because of the reverberation from the explosion.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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