U.S. forces in Afghanistan dropped a 22,000-pound bomb on Islamic State forces in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, the Pentagon announced, using the largest non-nuclear bomb ever employed in combat.
Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the bomb was “the right munition” to use against the Islamic State because of the group’s use of roadside bombs, bunkers and tunnels.
The bomb, which is known as the GBU-43, is one of the largest airdropped munitions in the U.S. military’s inventory and was almost used during the opening salvos of the Iraq War in 2003.
By comparison, U.S. aircraft commonly drop bombs that weigh 250 to 2,000 pounds.
The U.S. military has targeted similar complexes and dropped tens of thousands of bombs in Afghanistan, raising the question of why a bomb of this size was used Thursday. It was unclear what the GBU-43 strike accomplished, as the bomb is not designed to penetrate hardened targets such as bunkers or cave complexes.
The Pentagon said in its statement that “U.S. Forces took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties with this strike.”
When asked about the bomb Thursday, President Trump praised the military as the “greatest” in the world. “We have given them total authorization, and that’s what they’re doing, and frankly that’s why they’ve been so successful lately,” he said.
The bomb marked the second time in a week that the Pentagon has launched a high-profile strike. Last Thursday, the military targeted a Syrian airfield as retaliation for a chemical attack by President Bashar Assad that killed scores of civilians.
A spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan did not respond to a query regarding the bomb’s effects on its intended target, an Islamic State tunnel complex in Nangarhar province.
This particular bomb is not the biggest in the Pentagon’s non-nuclear arsenal. The larger 30,000 pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, designed for destroying heavily fortified bunker complexes, has never been used outside a test environment. While the GBU-57 is heavier, the GBU-43 has a larger warhead and explosive yield.
The GBU-43 is an evolution of the unguided 15,000-pound BLU-82 bomb. First used in Vietnam, the C-130-launched BLU-82 was often dropped to turn patches of jungle into helicopter landing zones. This earned the BLU-82 the nickname “daisy cutter.” The BLU-82 was used multiple times in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan when U.S. forces were closing in on Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The use of the GBU-43 in eastern Afghanistan comes less than a week after a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was killed fighting in the same region. Army Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, was mortally wounded by small-arms fire Saturday.
