- EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla.
(Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force successfully tested the most powerful conventional
bomb in its arsenal on Tuesday, sending a mushroom cloud billowing into
the sky over its Florida test range.
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- It was the first test of the 21,000-pound MOAB explosive
device nicknamed the "mother of all bombs."
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- "It looked like a white mushroom cloud, almost like
cotton or smoke you'd see from a fire, kind of billowy," said base
spokeswoman Karen Roganov, who watched from a rooftop 30 miles away. "We
did not feel anything. We saw the cloud and several seconds later we heard
a boom."
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- Defense officials suggested the test was a message to
Iraq ahead of a possible war about the might of the U.S. military.
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- "Obviously, anything we have in the arsenal, anything
that's in almost any stage of development, could be used" against
Iraq, said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs
of Staff. An aircraft dropped the bomb on a test range at Eglin Air Force
Base in northwest Florida just after 2 p.m. EST, said a base spokeswoman,
Senior Airman Nicholasa Brown.
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- The explosion sounded "just like thunder,"
Brown said from an office on the east side of the 724-square-mile base,
adding that "We barely even heard it." The test took place on
a range on the west side of the base.
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- "It did what it was supposed to do. It was a successful
test," a Defense Department official said.
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- 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.
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- Base officials warned residents in neighboring communities
to expect a loud noise when the bomb was dropped. But police in Pensacola,
about 30 miles away, said they heard nothing when the bomb fell and were
unaware the test was completed.
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- It was the first live test of the weapon, said another
base spokesman, Senior Airman Ryan Hansen. "We've done some that were
inert. This is the first one with munitions," he said.
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- The MOAB is guided by global positioning satellites,
an Eglin spokeswoman said. It spreads a flammable mist over the target,
then ignites it, producing a highly destructive blast.
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- Military officials gave the acronym as "Massive
Ordnance Air Blast" or "Massive Ordnance Air Burst" but
they have nicknamed it the "Mother Of All Bombs."
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- The power of the 10.5-ton MOAB bomb falls far short of
that generated by nuclear weapons, however.
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- The Daisy Cutter, used in Vietnam to clear swatches of
jungle for helicopter landing sites, 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.
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- Eglin officials said they did not know the size of the
blast area of the more powerful MOAB. But officials said it was partly
a psychological weapon designed to instill fear.
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- "There is a psychological component to all aspects
of warfare," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington.
"The goal is to not have a war ...
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- "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 is an enormous
incentive for Saddam Hussein to leave and spare the world a conflict,"
Rumsfeld said.
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