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Saturday, April 15, 2017

One MOAB Costs $16 Million, Not $314 Million

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or "mother of all bombs," dropped on ISIS targets in Afghanistan wasn't as expensive as users on social media think.

According to military information site Deagel.com, a single MOAB costs $16 million, not $314 million as many have stated.

That figure is actually what the U.S. military spent to design and produce 20 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, according to The Los Angeles Times.

According to The Daily Caller News Foundation, the figures in the LA Times article "only refer to the cost of the Air Force's biggest bunker busting bomb, the 5,300 pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), or GBU-57, which is built by private defense contractor Boeing Company."

The Daily Caller continues to explant that "while the two bomb types are related, they serve different functions," and that "the MOAB, like its Daisy Cutter predecessor, can only be dropped out of a C-130 built by Lockheed Martin, and the MOP is deployed from the B-2, a Boeing aircraft."

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The US's Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb does not cost $314 million, or $16 million, but $170,000 a unit, the US Air Force told Business Insider on Friday....The $170,000 figure makes sense considering a general-purpose 1,000-pound MK-83 costs about $12,000. The MOAB simply features more high explosives and larger fins to direct the GPS-guided munition."

$314 million? $16 million? Or just $160,000? Which is it? I strongly suspect the last one. Just shows you can't trust anything you read in the media.

Anonymous said...

That changes everything.

Anonymous said...

And it was paid for years ago. They have actually cost more money just being moved around and sitting in a stockpile.

Anonymous said...

It seem to me whatever it cost to build it is just wasted if it just sits there and you don't use it. It would be like spending a fortune on an exotic car and never driving it. It's only worth the money if you use it.