Pentagon Releases Video Of Largest Bomb Strike Since Nagasaki

Less than 24 hours after it was dropped, the Pentagon has released video of the moment a 21,000 lbs GBU-43/B impacted on a Taliban tunnel complex, killing at least 39 ISIS terrorists and smashing a crater 300 meters wide.

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Video released by the Pentagon on Friday showed the “Mother of all Bombs” plummeting from the sky and exploding in eastern Afghanistan, as military officials said it flattened a cave-and-tunnel complex controlled by the Islamic State terror group.

The Department of Defense released the video Friday, less than a day after it dropped the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) atop the Achin district of Nangarhar province, which is close to the Afghan-Pakistan border. Officials said 39 ISIS fighters were killed.

President Donald Trump, who said he authorized the attack, called it a “very, very successful mission.”

“As [ISIS’] losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers, and tunnels to thicken their defense,” Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement. “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against [ISIS].”

The MOAB was first tested in 2003, but hadn’t been used in combat before Thursday.

The MOAB had to be dropped out of the back of a U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo plane due to its massive size.

“We kicked it out the back door,” one U.S. official told Fox News.

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The GBU-43/B is carried by a MC-130H Combat Talon II, a specialized version of the AC-130 cargo plane developed for United States Air Force Special Operations Command. The GBU/B is a GPS-guided weapon that detonates six feet above ground level and creates a massive blast wave.

The “Mother of All Bombs” dropped in Nangarhar province has more destructive power than any weapon the United States has used since the atomic bomb  “Fat Man”  was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in August of 1945.

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