Webloggin » Russia Explodes Worlds Biggest Non-Nuclear Device

Count this up as another shot across the bow of the Bush administrations attempts to build a missile defense system. Russia has responded to the U.S. MOAB (often called the “Mother of all Bombs”) by creating what they label the FOAB, or “Father of all Bombs”.

Isn’t it great when bomb makers show us their witty sense of humor?

The Russian bomb, which has no known official name, has been dubbed Father of All Bombs by its designers, Russia’s Channel One News says in its report.

It contains about seven tons of high explosives compared with more than eight for the Moab but is four times more powerful because it uses a new type of explosives developed with the use of nanotechnology, according to the channel.

“Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon,” Gen Alexander Rukshin, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff, told the channel.

It has, he says, “no match in the world”. (src. BBC)

Yeah, and we should dismantle all our nukes because other nations wouldn’t think of continuing to develop WMD’s.

If anything this bolsters the need to create those missile defense systems and increase funding for military responses to these threats. Not as an aggressive testosterone driven race to see who can build the bigger bomb but rather as a deterrent. Like it or not deterrents work and Putin needs some good incentives to ramp it down a bit. Russia, unlike the United States have used these style bombs before.

Russia used such weapons in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Hewson says, and he suspects that the bomb shown on TV was conceived for the Chechen conflict but never actually used because of the sheer scale of the destruction it could wreak.

He believes that the test blast was a “statement” by Russia comparable in its psychological effect to America’s demonstration of the Moab just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq - a demonstration never followed up by its actual use.

“The Russians are in a phase of needing to make statements at the moment and have done the same thing,” Hewson says.

The giant bomb was transported by a Tu-160 “Blackjack” supersonic bomber, itself in the news recently when Russia revived the Soviet practice of sending heavy bombers out on long-range flights.

Or maybe we should just share a cup of tea and talk about being nice.