Bombing raid that shattered Iran's nuclear dreams

The 12-bomb US strike on Iran's Fordow complex has “very likely” demolished the nuclear site beyond repair, military experts have told The National.

Suggestions have surfaced that Israeli intelligence might have found a “chink in the armour” at the site buried deep in a mountain near Qom that would have allowed the 13,600kg bombs to penetrate the centrifuge hall.

While the full results of what the military call the “battle damage assessment” has yet to be made public, the likelihood is that the precision-guided GBU-57s were sent down at an angle, increasing their chances of deep penetration.

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The operation saw 75 precision-guided weapons used, including the 14 bunker busters with 125 US aircraft involved, including refuelling tankers.

Operation Midnight Hammer caused “extreme damage and destruction” to Iran’s nuclear sites, said Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's highest ranking military officer.

Bombing angles

This means that they would need to get through about 100 metres of protection rather than 500 metres if dropped from directly overhead.

The bomb’s explosives are designed for a controlled blast inside a confined area, with its outer casing made from exceptionally strong Eglin steel that allows it to penetrate up to 60 metres of reinforced concrete before detonating.

On the 6.2 metre bomb’s flight path down to Fordow, the weapons operators would have been able to made mid-course adjustments to bring it to within a few metres of target.

It is highly likely they were dropped in sequence so that each could use the damage caused by the preceding device to penetrate deeper into the mountain.

They would have first destroyed the entrance to Fordow that is dug into the side of the mountain.

Shaken to obliteration

The long-range mission by six B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, each carrying two GBU-57s, was the equivalent of a 500-bomber raid from the Second World War, said military expert Francis Tusa.

“Fordow ought to have been shaken to obliteration because that amount of ordnance is very significant,” said the editor of the Defence Eye publication. “If they have actually gone into the main part of the building, then that would have completely destroyed the plant.”

US President Donald Trump is signalling this was a “one-off” strike to finish the job the Israelis had started, and that the US will not become further involved unless Iran retaliates.

America’s military therefore appears to have gambled in getting the mission accomplished in one hit by using 14 of its reported stockpile of only 20 GBU-57s – two of the bunker busters were also used on the Natanz plant.

It was also important to note, said Dr Frank Ledwidge, a former British military intelligence officer, that Fordow was built in the early 2000s at the same time the GBU-57 was being developed, making it unlikely the complex was constructed to withstand the attacks.

“The Americans had a high degree of certainty that the mission would have succeeded with the aim to destroy the facility and render it inoperable for future use,” he said. “I believe they used the minimum force to guarantee some form of success, while giving the best chance of a strategically insignificant response from Iran.”

Long-distance bombing

The raid is also significantly smaller than the 2,400 aircraft used on the first night of allied bombing on Iraq in 1991, in which a number of aircraft also flew from the US.

Sunday’s attack, more than 11,000km from the B-2 base in Whiteman, Missouri, required several mid-air refuelling attachments.

Given that each bomber was carrying 27,200kg of ordnance, they had an exceptionally heavy payload, meaning that air-to-air refuelling was needed as they crossed the Atlantic and Mediterranean towards Iran.

At the same time a deceptiion operation that gained traction among flight radar websites was launched with B-2s heading westwards over the Pacific.

As they finally crossed into Iranian airspace, after about 18 hours flying, US submarines in the Gulf region unleashed a barrage of 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles that would have flown below radar to take out any remaining air defence threats in the B-2s path, as well as strike the Natanz and Isfahan nuclear plants.

Then, from a distance of several kilometres, the stealth bombers, dropping their weapons in carefully choreographed sequence, would have unleashed the biggest explosions witnessed in a single small area on Earth outside of a nuclear detonation.

Message received?

The “one-off strike message” might mean the war will be brought to a quicker conclusion, said Richard Pater, director of the Bicom Anglo-Israeli think tank.

He suggested there was little more to be done by Israel other than “washing up” in terms of the completing the job on eliminating Iran’s missile launch capacity.

He said he expected Israel would make an assessment this week to “draw a line in the sand and say mission complete”, allowing the Americans to achieve a diplomatic solution. “But that again depends on Iran, and on the terms in which they're prepared for ceasefire and surrender,” he added.