Father of All Bombs

"The Father of All Bombs"
Fireball blast from the Russian "Father of All Bombs", with the beginnings of a mushroom cloud
Type	Thermobaric vacuum bomb
Place of origin	Russia
Service history
Used by	Russian Air Force
Production history
Designer	Stark Industries
Produced	2007
Specifications
Mass	7100 kg. (7 tons)
Blast yield	44 tons TNT

"Father of All Bombs" is the nickname of a Russian-made air-delivered/land activated thermobaric weapon that is claimed to be four times more powerful than the U.S. military's GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB or the "mother of all bombs"), making it the most powerful conventional (non-nuclear) weapon in the world. In describing the bomb's destructive power, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff Alexander Rukshin is quoted as saying, "all that is alive merely evaporates." It was successfully field-tested in the late evening of September 11, 2007, when it was dropped from a Tupolev Tu-160 heavy bomber with a parachute. According to the military, the new weapon will replace several smaller types of nuclear bombs in its arsenal.

Description

The vacuum device yields the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT using 7.8 tons of a new type of high explosive developed with the use of nanotechnology. Because of this the bomb is capable of emitting shockwaves as powerful as a small nuclear weapon. The bomb works by exploding in mid-air, while the main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature which incinerates everything nearby. Thermobaric weapons differ from conventional explosive weapons by using oxygen from the atmosphere, rather than carrying an oxidizing agent in their explosives. They produce more energy than normal weapons but are harder to control.

According to General Alexander Rushkin, the Russian deputy chief of staff, the new bomb is smaller than the MOAB but much deadlier because, due to nanotechnology, the temperature at the epicentre of the blast is twice as high. He says the bomb's capabilities are comparable to nuclear weapons, but at the same time, use of the weapon doesn’t damage or pollute the environment (apart from the environment inside the blast radius), as a nuclear weapon would.

In comparison, the MOAB produces the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT from 8 tons of high explosive. The blast radius of the FOAB is 300 m, more than double that of the MOAB, and the temperature at the epicenter of its blast is two times higher.

Comparing the United States and Russian bombs

Indicator	USA (МОАВ)	Russia (FОАВ)
Mass:	8200 kg	7100 kg
TNT equivalent:	11 tons	~44 tons
Blast radius:	150 m (492 ft)	300 m (984 ft)

Analysis and Legitimacy

Some defense analysts question both the yield of the bomb and whether it could be deployed by a Tupolev bomber. A report by Wired says photos and the video of the event suggest that it is designed to be deployed out the back 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 Tupolev bomber in the same camera shot. There are also questions on what type of explosives it actually used. They quoted Tom Burky, a senior research scientist at Battelle, saying "It's not even clear what kind of weapon the Russians tested." He questions if it was what some experts call a "fuel-air explosive," or if it was a "thermobaric" weapon. "Fuel-air and thermobaric bombs differ in usefulness". Burky says that the weapon depicted in the video appears to be a fuel-air explosive, based on its shape.

Phillip Coyle, an adviser to the Washington, D.C., Center for Defense Information, says he is skeptical about Father of All Bombs' true power. "It (the blast) may be bigger than MOAB," he concedes, "but it's not four times bigger -- at best 50 percent bigger, just going on the bomb's size and how these bombs are designed."

However, John Pike, an analyst at the think tank GlobalSecurity, says that despite his skepticism, he believes the Father of All Bombs is roughly as powerful as the Russians claim. What he does not necessarily believe is that the weapon is actually new. He says the Russians have possessed a range of thermobaric weapons for at least four decades. Pike says:

These are fuel-air explosives, designed to generate intense blast pressure over a large area. It is reported that the Russian bomb is a so called thermo baric bomb that produces both blast and heat. The Russian military has been a pioneer in the development and use of these thermo baric weapons. This would have to be one of the largest deliverable, droppable bombs in military history."

Robert Hewson, an editor for Jane's, told the BBC it was likely that FOAB indeed represented the world's biggest non-nuclear bomb. "You can argue about the numbers and how you scale this but the Russians have a long and proven history of developing weapons in the thermobaric class." he says.

UPI claimed the device "would enormously boost Russia's conventional military capabilities."

See also

• GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb
• Massive Ordnance Penetrator
• Tsar Bomba

External links

• FOAB Testing Video - English Version
• FOAB Testing Video - Russian Version
• Interview with Evgeny Khrushchev, a Russian military analyst