out and certainly the white house will be asked very quickly about the gbu-43. you mentioned 24,000 pounds, it massive, some have called it the mla b, the mother of all bombs, dropping it in eastern afghanistan, we expect to hear about that very quickly, probably right off the top. i think the other question that will probably be asked in his press briefing is just who is president donald trump? what i mean by that is when you look at some of the changes in position from the campaign to the president, it doesn t make you wonder, is it the same man who said nato was absolute and now isn t? is at the same in his had relations with russia would improve but maybe they are at a low point? is it the same man that told china they were a current seeming to be later, but now says they are not. needless to say, this is raising eyebrows not just here at home but all across the country. there are others who are consistent in their messaging, one of them certainly would be nikki haley over at the u
when the president was asked today about using that bomb for the first time in history, it sounded like he did authorize t the bomb in that instance. it sounded like perhaps he had given the general authorization to general mattis to use whatever weapon he decided was right for the mission. did you authorize it, sir? everybody knows exactly what happened. what i do is i authorize my military. we have the greatest military in the world and they have done a great job as usual. we have given them total authorization. and that s what they re doing. frankly, that s why they ve been so successful lately. the president got glowing review last week from most of the media in his first use of tomahawk missiles, his reviews on the use of the military s most destructive nonnuclear bomb will have to wait until there are at least initial reports on the number of civilian casualty, if any, and what tactical gain was achieved by the gbu-43.
the lives of any taliban fighters who might be in there or do we know? this is a concussive weapon, that means it explodes above those tunnels. the force of the blast would kill anything inside those tunnels, but it is not a penetrating bomb. again, it was first tested in 2003, and we used to hear about it being talked about in conjunction with if there were a military action against iran s nuclear program and had to actually be used for tunnels they are where suspected parts of that nuclear program where based, that is when we started hearing talk of this moab b as it is called by the air force, mother of all bombs because it is 21,000 pounds. just to give you an idea, a tomahawk is 1,000 pounds, and it certainly is a very powerful weapon. jon: is a guided, do we know? is it a precision weapon? i m not sure how precise you have to be with a 1 mile blast
take out the entire target in one fell swoop. general nicholson, who is the commander there, the commanding general, he wanted to send a signal to isis to show them the full might of the u.s. military power that s there. the military has been striking isis and afghanistan for more than a year now. president obama gave them that authority in january of 2016, but this is the largest strike that we know about to date. so it wasn t just the fact that this gbu-43 was used there, this enormous bomb, but this was a large strike. and what seems to be successful in that they know they took out the compound, they know they took out a lot of isis fighters. we re just waiting to get the specific numbers on who it was, any high level fighters who might have been there at the time, katy. courtney, you re talking about the message that this sends, and i want to get kelly kube in on this. what is this aggression we re seeing from the president of the united states? reporter: katy, you re
this is an area for dropping this bomb. it s rocky, hilly, has a lot of gorges. the overpressure will collapse those tunnels. it doesn t penetrate the ground. they have another bomb much larger than that one to penetrate if you need to to get underground. it has a concussive effect and collapses the tunnel. this is a bad guy area, to be sure. this is giving the afghan forces and the americans in the area problems for over a decade, this province area. this particular bomb, this gbu-43 as it s called, replaced another one from the vietnam era called a daisy cutter. you know, when you re talking about a commander, i m going to channel some of my former combat commander status on this, you literally look when you target areas, it s something called a joint munitions employment manual. it s a guide for your targets to