How Much Did It Cost?

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted a story about the MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs) recently used in Afghanistan.

The article reports:

The giant bomb U.S. forces dropped Thursday on an ISIS training camp in Afghanistan did not cost $314 million to develop, or $16 million per unit as reported by multiple news outlets.

Every news report about cost of the “Mother of All Bombs” relied on a misreading of a 2011 article or a dubious internet website that InfoWars once linked to with a “healthy bit of skepticism.”

The actual cost of the bomb is unknown. The actual cost of the program isn’t publicly available because the Mother of All Bombs, officially known as GBU-43 or the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), is manufactured by the military and not a private defense company.

The article goes on to explain that the cost estimates the news media is making are based on the cost of 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 article further explains:

While the two bomb types are related, they serve different functions — the MOP is designed to destroy underground bunkers as deep as 200 feet below the surface, while the MOAP wipes out everything on the surface within a mile radius. 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.

Many news organizations, including TIME and CNBC, also cited Deagel.com, a site with extensive lists of weapons assets owned by multiple countries, which claims the MOAB costs $16 million per unit, the same amount as the reported cost of the MOP.

Deagel links to no source to verify its information. The site’s IP is registered to an address in Spain, and the most press they’ve received was for a 2015 prediction that the U.S. population would drop by more than 80 percent by 2025 due to an economic and cultural collapse. “The American collapse is set to be far worse than the Soviet Union’s one [sic],” the forecast said.

Whatever the cost of the bomb, it effectively sent a strong message to those who seek to harm America or its soldiers. We will fight back.