armor
The father of all bombs – will Russia use its super bomb against Ukraine?
The photo shows the explosion and the beginning blast of the father of all bombs.
© Videoscreenshot
British military circles warn that Putin wants to use the father of all bombs in a “shock and awe” campaign against Ukraine. The bomb is as powerful as a small nuclear weapon and is also intended to break the morale of the Ukrainian army.
The father of all bombs – this is the most powerful conventional bomb in the world and it is in Putin’s arsenal. The British “Mirror” writes, citing military circles, that Putin has ordered the use of the weapon against Ukraine. The British believe the weapon is intended to be used in a “shock and awe” campaign from the very beginning of hostilities. “Shock and Fear” means that the attacks in the first few days will be so powerful that the opponent’s morale will be broken.
And the “father of all bombs” – abbreviated FOAB – Father Of All Bombs is suitable for this. Like the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) from the US, the Father of All Bombs is technically a thermobaric aerosol bomb. The enormous explosive power comes about because these bombs do not mix and transport an oxidizer into the explosive. It is saved, the oxygen in the ambient air is used for the explosion. Therefore, these massive bombs cannot explode at one point. The explosives are first distributed in a huge cloud in the air and then detonated. The result is an enormous pressure wave, the direction of which can be optimized by the type of ignition. An aerosol bomb is a higher impact type of air mine.
demoralizing effect
The mother and father of all bombs are also extremely large explosive devices. The FOAB unleashes the power of 44 tons of TNT – but is said to weigh only seven tons. It would thus be far more effective than the US weapon. The MOAB (GBU-43/B MOAB) weighs about 9.5 tons – of which 8.5 tons are explosives – and produces an explosion equivalent to the force of 11 tons of TNT. The father of all bombs is four times more powerful than the MOAB. Its primary fireball blast radius is 300 meters, while that of the MOAB is 150 meters.
The US used the mother of all bombs (MOAB – GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast) in April 2017 over a bunker facility in Afghanistan. According to unconfirmed information, the Russians are said to have dropped the far more powerful FOAB in Syria in 2017 in order to break open the siege ring around the city of Deir ez-Zor.
Push in bunkers
The massive aerosol bomb unleashes a deadly effect in many ways. The United States used the depth of their weapon in Afghanistan. The pressure wave from the explosion cloud acts like a mighty blow to the ground. Bunkers and fortifications are crushed to a great depth. So it works very differently than the classic bunker busters, which try to penetrate the bunker through the ground. Because of the large area of destruction, even deeper installations do not offer any protection against the thermobaric weapons. The explosion would destroy all access to the surface, and the crew would be hopelessly buried below.
Clumsy weapon
The Russians would presumably also take advantage of this effect and switch off complex bunker and defense systems with a bomb. Because of the size of the bomb, it can only be dropped by a small number of aircraft, and it would be unsuitable for moving targets.
On the surface, the double pressure wave causes destruction in a wide area. There is a primary pressure wave from the explosion and a secondary one as the air rushes back out. Human lungs would rupture from the pressure. In the center of the explosion, a annihilation zone of about 600 meters is formed, here everything is pulverized by heat and pressure. The effect of the Russian bomb on the surface is likely to be greater than that of the American counterpart, because the explosion temperature of the Russian weapon is said to be twice as high. The Russian bomb is a classic unguided free-fall bomb, the American steers itself exactly to the target.