This is what America's 'mother of all bombs' looks like when it explodes

The MOAB was first tested at Elgin Airbase in 2003 

Will Worley
Friday 14 April 2017 10:21 BST
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Old footage of 'Mother of All Bombs' test is thought to be same bomb as US' attack on Afghanistan

This is the video which shows the test of the ‘mother of all bombs’ - the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the US military.

The GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) was dropped on Isis positions in Nangarhar province, eastern Afghanistan.

Known as Isis in Khorasan Province (Isis-K), the extremist group has been gaining strength in recent months.

The MOAB is one of the most powerful bombs in the US armoury outside of nuclear weapons– giving rise to its nickname.

The 10,000kg bomb’s explosion is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT and its blast radius is said to be a mile wide.

Designed in 2002, the MOAB has only been detonated on a handful of occasions.

Its first use was at Eglin Air Force base, Florida, in 2003.

Defence officials believed the MOAB could be used as part of the US ‘shock and awe’ strategy during the invasion of Iraq, and recorded the test to scare Saddam Hussein’s troops into surrender.

But the weapon was never deployed in Iraq, and its only combat use so far was the operation in Afghanistan.

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