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The MOAB is the most powerful conventional bomb ever used in combat as measured by the weight of its explosive material. [29] [30] The explosive yield is comparable to that of the smallest tactical nuclear weapons, such as the Cold War-era American M-388 projectile fired by the portable Davy Crockett recoilless gun.
Some defense analysts question both the yield of the bomb and whether it could be deployed by a Tupolev Tu-160 bomber. A report by Wired [7] says photos and the video of the event suggest that it is designed to be deployed from the rear of a slow moving cargo plane, and they note that the bomb-test video released by the Russians never shows both the bomb and the bomber in the same camera shot.
The MOAB contains 18,700 lb (8.5 t) of Composition H6 explosive, which is 1.35 times as powerful as TNT, giving the bomb an approximate yield of 11 t TNT. It would require about 250 MOAB blasts to equal the Halifax explosion (2.9 kt).
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The GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) is a precision-guided, 30,000-pound (14,000 kg) "bunker buster" bomb used by the United States Air Force. [2] The GBU-57 (Guided Bomb Unit-57) is substantially larger than the deepest-penetrating bunker busters previously available, the 5,000-pound (2,300 kg) GBU-28 and GBU-37.
Also, a nuclear weapon's power is not infinite — it's limited to the device's explosive yield. This makes a single blast or even a limited nuclear exchange survivable for most people.
Some tactical nuclear weapons have specific features meant to enhance their battlefield characteristics, such as variable yield, which allow their explosive power to be varied over a wide range for different situations, or enhanced radiation weapons (the so-called "neutron bombs"), which are meant to maximize ionizing radiation exposure and to ...