One picture shows how the US routinely drops more explosives than the MOAB
Weighing a whopping 21,60o pounds, the MOAB - also known as the "mother of all bombs" - isn't nearly as destructive as the US' nuclear weapons.
The MOAB also isn't as destructive as the 1,118 bombs the USS Harry Truman dropped on Iraq and Syria throughout 2016 as part of the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said during a press briefing on Thursday that the US used the MOAB to destroy "a system of tunnels and caves that ISIS fighters used to move around freely, making it easier for them to target US military advisers and Afghan forces in the area."
"The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously, and in order to defeat the group, we must deny them operational space, which we did," Spicer said.
A US Air Force official, meanwhile, told Business Insider that the MOAB "was the right munition for what we were engaged in."
While the MOAB does have a truly impressive blast radius and can cause an awesome amount of destruction, it doesn't even come close to a nuclear bomb or the combined explosives dropped by even one US aircraft carrier during one deployment.
In fact, one picture shows a US B-52 dropping way more explosives than the MOAB in a single go.