The deep penetrating bombs that the US dropped into two Iranian nuclear amenities have been designed particularly for these websites and have been the results of greater than 15 years of intelligence and weapons design work, the Pentagon’s prime leaders mentioned Thursday.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, mentioned at a press briefing that they’re assured the weapons struck precisely as deliberate.
Caine, the nation’s prime navy officer, supplied new particulars concerning the work that went into constructing the “bunker-buster” bombs and the way the US used them to burrow into the Iranian websites. He sought to point out the extent of destruction however didn’t immediately deal with President Donald Trump’s assertion that Tehran’s nuclear programme has been “obliterated.”
A labeled briefing that pushed US work on bunker busters
The bombs, referred to as the GBU-57 A/B Large Ordnance Penetrator, have their roots in a decades-old labeled briefing “of what seemed like a significant development undertaking within the mountains of Iran,” Caine mentioned.
That turned out to be the Fordo gasoline enrichment plant, with development believed to have began round 2006. It grew to become operational in 2009, the identical yr Tehran publicly acknowledged its existence.
The labeled briefing was proven in 2009 to a Protection Menace Discount Company officer, who with a colleague “lived and breathed” Fordo for the following 15 years, finding out the geology, development dig, the earth moved and “each piece of apparatus stepping into and each piece of apparatus going out,” Caine mentioned.
What they concluded: The US did not have a bomb that would destroy these websites. So the Pentagon started working, Caine mentioned.
“We had so many PhDs engaged on the mock programm — doing modelling and simulation — that we have been quietly and in a secret manner the most important customers of supercomputer hours inside the US of America,” he mentioned.
How the bunker busters are designed
The 30,000-pound bomb is comprised of metal, explosive and a fuse programmed to a selected detonation time. The longer the fuse, the deeper the weapon will penetrate earlier than exploding.
Over time, the navy examined and retested it a whole bunch of occasions on mock amenities, Caine mentioned. Crews fine-tuned the bombs to detonate within the mock enrichment rooms, delaying detonation till that they had reached a place to ship a strain blast by way of open tunnels to destroy tools underground.
How the US mentioned it bombed an Iranian underground nuclear facility
Fordo had two most important air flow routes into the underground facility — and officers rigorously eyed these entry factors as a option to goal the positioning.
Every route had three shafts — a most important shaft and a smaller shaft on both facet, which seemed nearly like a pitchfork in graphics offered by the Pentagon. Within the days previous the US assault, Iran positioned giant concrete slabs on prime of each air flow routes to attempt to defend them, Caine mentioned.
In response, the US crafted an assault plan the place six bunker-buster bombs could be used towards every air flow route, utilizing the primary shaft as a manner down into the enrichment facility.
Seven B-2 stealth bombers have been used, carrying two of the huge munitions apiece. The primary bomb was used to remove the concrete slab, Caine mentioned.
The subsequent 4 bombs have been dropped down the primary shaft and into the advanced at a pace of greater than 1,000 ft per second earlier than exploding, he mentioned. A sixth bomb was dropped as a backup, in case something went incorrect.
Along with the 12 bombs dropped on Fordo, with six on every air flow route, two extra hit Iran’s most important Natanz facility, Caine mentioned.
Every crew was in a position to affirm detonation as they noticed the bombs drop from the plane in entrance of them: “We all know that the trailing jets noticed the primary weapons perform,” Caine mentioned.
The pilots reported again that it was the brightest explosion that they had ever seen — that it seemed like daylight, he mentioned.
Questions stay concerning the whereabouts of Iran’s extremely enriched uranium
Caine mentioned the munitions have been constructed, examined and loaded correctly, guided to their meant targets after which exploded as designed.
“Iran’s nuclear amenities have been destroyed,” Hegseth mentioned.
Nevertheless, questions remained as as to whether the extremely enriched uranium that Iran would want to develop a nuclear weapon was on the web site on the time. Requested repeatedly, Hegseth didn’t say if the uranium had been destroyed or moved.
“I am not conscious of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that claims issues weren’t the place they have been imagined to be — moved or in any other case,” Hegseth mentioned.
