EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., 13 March 2003 — The US Air Force successfully tested the most powerful conventional bomb in its arsenal on Tuesday, sending a mushroom cloud billowing into the sky over its Florida test range. It was the first test of the 9,450-kg MOAB explosive device nicknamed the “mother of all bombs.”

“It looked like a white mushroom cloud, almost like cotton or smoke you’d see from a fire, kind of billowy,” said base spokeswoman Karen Roganov, who watched from a rooftop 50 km away. “We did not feel anything. We saw the cloud and several seconds later we heard a boom.”

Defense officials suggested the test was a message to Iraq ahead of a possible war about the might of the US military. “Obviously, anything we have in the arsenal, anything that’s in almost any stage of development, could be used” against Iraq, said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

An aircraft dropped the bomb on a test range at Eglin Air Force Base in northwest Florida just after 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT), said a base spokeswoman, Senior Airman Nicholasa Brown. The explosion sounded “just like thunder,” Brown said from an office on the east side of the 1,882 sq-km base, adding that “We barely even heard it.” The test took place on a range on the west side of the base. “It did what it was supposed to do. It was a successful test,” a Defense Department official said.

The bomb packs 40 percent more power than America’s current most powerful non-nuclear bomb, the 6,750-kg “Daisy Cutter,” which was used to pound the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001, Eglin officials said.

Base officials warned residents in neighboring communities to expect a loud noise when the bomb was dropped. But police in Pensacola, about 45 km away, said they heard nothing when the bomb fell and were unaware the test was completed.

It was the first live test of the weapon, said another base spokesman, Senior Airman Ryan Hansen. “We’ve done some that were inert. This is the first one with munitions,” he said. The MOAB is guided by global positioning satellites, an Eglin spokeswoman said. It spreads a flammable mist over the target, then ignites it, producing a highly destructive blast.

Military officials gave the acronym as “Massive Ordnance Air Blast” or “Massive Ordnance Air Burst” but they have nicknamed it the “Mother of All Bombs.” The power of the 10.5-ton MOAB bomb falls far short of that generated by nuclear weapons, however.

The Daisy Cutter, used in Vietnam to clear swatches of jungle for helicopter landing sites, is a “dumb” bomb dropped directly over the target. The MOAB is more precise, relying on the satellite positioning system to hit its mark. The Daisy Cutter was designed to kill a large number of troops and programmed to detonate just before it hits the ground, spreading the blast over a 550-meter square area. When it was used in Tora Bora, military officials said it would have a psychological impact on people hiding in the caves because of the reverberation from the explosion.

Eglin officials said they did not know the size of the blast area of the more powerful MOAB. But officials said it was partly a psychological weapon designed to instill fear. “There is a psychological component to all aspects of warfare,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington. “The goal is to not have a war ... The goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight against the coalition, and there is an enormous incentive for Saddam Hussein to leave and spare the world a conflict,” Rumsfeld said.

Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would not say whether the new weapon would be deployed to the Iraq theater. “But obviously, anything we have in the arsenal, anything that’s in almost any stage of development could be used. We did that in Desert Storm with Joint Stars. We could do that with capabilities here,” he said.

Military sources said residents over a broad area of Florida were forewarned of the impending blast lest they mistake it for an earthquake or tornado. “It could be used as a pretty devastating weapon against ground troops, a psychological weapon,” said Jake Swenson, another Air Force spokesman at the base.