What Is The Biggest Bomb In The World? How 'Mother Of All Bombs' Measures Up

The United States military dropped a bomb on a region in eastern Afghanistan Thursday, which was reportedly occupied by Islamic State militants. Dubbed the “mother of all bombs,” the 21,600 pound GBU-43 produced a blast equal to 11 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT).

The bomb, known as a Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, was capable of decimating anything within a third of a mile of the blast zone and producing additional damage for up to eight miles. At more than 30 feet long and 40 inches wide, it ranked as the nation’s most powerful non-nuclear weapon. The United States Central Command said it hadn’t assessed the extent of the damage or whether there were any casualties.

“As ISIS-K’s losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K.”

A similar bomb was deployed by the U.S. military in 2001. The BLU-82, known as the “Daisy Cutter,” was dropped on the entrance of a cave in Tora Bora, Afghanistan during the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The 15,000-pound bomb reportedly vaporized men inside the caves upon impact, according to a report to the Members of the Committee on Foreign Relations published in 2009.

The largest of all bombs detonated by the U.S. was known as Castle Bravo, tested in the Marshall Islands in 1954. The resulting explosion was more than 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization.

The most powerful nuclear explosion of all time came when the Soviet Union detonated its RDS-220 hydrogen bomb known as “Tsar Bomba” in 1961. The explosion yielded 50 megatons of TNT, making it approximately 1,570 times more powerful than the yield of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and 10 times more powerful than all of the non-nuclear weapons detonated during World War II.