Russia tests the “Father of All Bombs”

On 11 September, the Russian military announced that they had tested the “Father of All Bombs”, an aviation vacuum thermobaric weapon that can discharge shockwaves as powerful as a nuclear weapon. According to the Russian deputy chief of staff, General Alexander Rushkin, the new bomb is smaller but more four times more deadly than the North American Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, also known as MOAB or the “Mother of All Bombs”. The use of nanotechnology means that the temperature at the epicenter of the blast is twice as high as the MOAB. This makes the Russians weapon the most powerful known non-nuclear weapon in the world. Rushkin confirmed the extent of the FOAB destructive capability when he stated that "all that is alive merely evaporates." According to Russian sources, the weapon is equipped with the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT and has a blast radius of 300m.

The announcement that Russia had tested the weapon came during a climate of tension between the North America and western europe and the Russian regime. Most notably Russia, which now has one of the most powerful weapons arsenal in the world, has dismissed the arms agreement with Nato. In August, they also carried out a number of war games with China and four other Asian states.

On the day of the Russian announcement, Sergei Rogov, director of the Russian Academy of Science’s US and Canada Institute warned that Russia and the US were embarking on "an unrestricted nuclear and conventional arms race”.