U.S. drops "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan, marking weapon's first use

The U.S. dropped a bomb containing 11,000 tons of explosives on an ISIS cave complex in Afghanistan’s Nangahar province on the border with Pakistan on Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed to CBS News’ David Martin.

The bomb, officially called a GBU-43, is known as the “mother of all bombs.” It is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal and has never before been used in combat.

The Afghanistan strike had been in the works for a number of months. The weapon was brought into Afghanistan specifically for this mission, Martin reports.

General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was required to get permission to use the weapon, but it’s unclear how far up the chain of command his request was approved.