WASHINGTON — The U.S. commander in Afghanistan who ordered use of the “mother of all bombs” to attack an Islamic State stronghold near the Pakistani border didn’t need and didn’t request President Donald Trump’s approval, Pentagon officials said Friday.
The officials said that even before Trump took office in January, Gen. John Nicholson had standing authority to use the bomb, which is officially called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat. The bomb, dropped by a special operations MC-130 aircraft, had been in Afghanistan since January.
The officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.
The bomb’s use has attracted enormous attention, but its aim in Thursday’s attack was relatively mundane by military standards: destroy a tunnel and cave complex used by Islamic State fighters in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan.
Nicholson had a secondary goal in mind, however, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters. The official said Nicholson wanted to demonstrate to leaders of the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan the seriousness of his determination to eliminate the group as a military threat.
The official said use of the weapon had nothing to do with sending a message to any other country, including North Korea.
The Air Force estimates each MOAB costs about $170,000 to build. It hasn’t said how much it cost to develop the bomb or how many exist. An Air Force spokeswoman, Erika A. Yepsen, said the bomb was made “in-house,” with some parts manufactured by the Air Force itself, so the overall cost is only an estimate. Most weapons are made by defense companies under written government contracts.
Nine years ago the Air Force published an account of how it came to manufacture the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, known technically as the GBU-43B, a designation that reflects the fact that it is precision-guided. The weapon from which it evolved, the BLU-82 (Bomb Live Unit-82), was about half MOAB’s size and was an unguided, or dumb, bomb.
The MOAB was developed and built at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida by the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate.
The Air Force account, written in March 2008, said MOAB “started out simply as an idea” that became a request in late November 2002 as the administration of George W. Bush was contemplating invading Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein.
The Air Force conducted and released video footage of the bomb’s final test detonation on March 11, 2003, just days before the U.S. launched its invasion.