The Iran Nuclear Program thread

[taiwan_girl]

[jon-nyc]

Six craters in Fordo.

[Mik]

Wow. Fourteen MOPs.

[LuFins Dad]

[jon-nyc]

Except oil is fungible so if you cut off supply anywhere those not getting it will seek it elsewhere and bid up prices.

Though I agrees this wouldn’t be nearly as painful as it was 50 years ago.

[jon-nyc]

[jon-nyc]

@Mik said in The Iran Nuclear Program thread:

Wow. Fourteen MOPs.

Imagine the impact. They drop a 30,000lb skinny aerodynamic bomb from 40,000 ft. It’s going Mach 1+ when it hits. 80% of the weight is the casing. It can go through 200ft of 5,000 psi concrete. Then the 5,000 bomb goes off.

[Mik]

The morning news shows are trying their best to slam the raid.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace said in The Iran Nuclear Program thread:

How about the Trump admin managing not to leak any details of this op before it happened. I'm proud of them.

Apparently there were leaks if you run in conservative columnist circles.

Also NYT gave a heads up that it was imminent but that was an Israeli source.

[jon-nyc]

I wonder how you even do damage assessment for something like Fordo. Probably sigint from the Iranians once they figure it out. Which may well take months.

[jon-nyc]

This is in western Iraq near the Iran border.

[jon-nyc]

FoxNews says at least one pilot was female.

[LuFins Dad]

@jon-nyc said in The Iran Nuclear Program thread:

@Mik said in The Iran Nuclear Program thread:

Wow. Fourteen MOPs.

Imagine the impact. They drop a 30,000lb skinny aerodynamic bomb from 40,000 ft. It’s going Mach 1+ when it hits. 80% of the weight is the casing. It can go through 200ft of 5,000 psi concrete. Then the 5,000 bomb goes off.

They are effectively Rods from God weapon systems.

[Horace]

[jon-nyc]

Comic and amateur historian Dave Smith.

Posed ‘no threat’. Alrighty.

[Mik]

I think it true that Iran did not pose an existential threat to threat to the US, unlike they did to Israel. But certainly a threat.

[Horace]

Categorical statements like "no threat" are always wrong. It's just a matter of whether one wants to interpret language with some good will towards the speaker.

I feel there are plenty enough unknowns here to at least allow that reasonable people can be on either side of the discussion of whether this was a good idea for the US.

For my part, I'll go ahead and Trust Israel and the US intelligence apparatuses, and cautiously take them at their word that the world is today a safer place for both Israel and the US, as compared to what it was before Israel attacked Iran. Plus, those bombs were pretty awesome. Amazingly awesome.

[kluurs]

@Horace said in The Iran Nuclear Program thread:

I feel there are plenty enough unknowns here to at least allow that reasonable people can be on either side of the discussion of whether this was a good idea

All of what you said was expressed very reasonably, but this is the part that sometimes gets lost.

[Mik]

To think otherwise is to believe oneself prescient. I
There were good arguments both ways but ultimately one must make a decision. Now that’s been done it’s time to get behind it and the country.

[Horace]

Among the most important unknowns is whether those bombs actually worked. From a pre-bombing article on bunker busters:

America’s huge bunker-busting bomb is not sure to work in Iran
The Massive Ordnance Penetrator may struggle to wipe out the deepest nuclear facilities

ISRAELI AIR strikes have destroyed some buildings on the surface of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but the heart of the operation at sites such as the Fordow fuel-enrichment plant is still likely to be intact, hidden deep underground. Destroying this type of facility requires bunker-busting bombs more powerful than any conventional weapon that Israel can deliver. Donald Trump, America’s president, has indicated in recent days that he is coming around to the idea of helping. On June 17th he warned “our patience is wearing thin” with Iran. Reaching Iran’s bunkers will take a special kind of bomb: the US Air Force’s GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP).

The MOP is a huge weapon weighing 13 tonnes; other conventional bombs are closer to one tonne. It is deployed on the UFO-like B-2 stealth bomber—flown exclusively by the US Air Force—which can carry only two at a time. The bomb has never been used in action.

The MOP is dropped from high altitude to smash through rock using sheer kinetic energy. It has a narrower profile than general-purpose bombs to concentrate the force in a small area, and most of its weight comes from its thick steel casing. Only 20% of the bomb’s total weight is the explosive filler. The casing is a special ultra-strong alloy known as Eglin Steel (named after an Air Force base in Florida where it was developed). A MOP can reportedly penetrate 60 metres of standard concrete (see chart).

The bomb was first tested in 2007, and its design has been upgraded several times since. At least 20 are known to have been delivered in the first batch. As with smaller bunker-busters, MOPs are probably fitted with a void-sensing fuse which detects its surroundings and detonates when it emerges from solid rock into a cavity. A facility might have multiple levels, and the fuse can be programmed to explode on the third level underground, for example, in order to cause the most damage.

MOPs were developed by America’s air force when it found that its existing bunker-busters could not damage Iraqi bunkers during the invasion in 2003. A new weapon had to be rushed into service. The MOP aimed to smash even deeper and harder bunkers being built in Iran and North Korea.

Chart: The Economist
However, there are limits to what even the biggest bunker-busting bomb can do. Whereas the MOP can go through over 60 metres of standard concrete, which can withstand 5,000 pounds-per-square-inch (psi) of pressure, that drops to eight metres for concrete of double the strength. In recent years Iran has advanced considerably in the field of Ultra High-Performance Concrete (UHPC), producing material with strengths of 30,000 psi or more.

The Pentagon is well aware of the challenge posed by UHPC. By 2014 it had developed its own version, Eglin High-Strength Concrete, for weapons tests. This does not mean the problem has been solved. In a 2021 article in Aerospace & Defence Technology, a magazine, Gregory Vartanov of Advanced Materials Development, a Canadian defence-materials company, claimed that bombs made from Eglin steel would not be strong enough to penetrate the best UHPC. Just how strong and thick the Iranian concrete is, and how much America’s bomb has been upgraded, may make the difference between success and failure.

And even if the bomb can break through, hitting the target may not be straightforward. MOPs need great accuracy to be effective and, like most American guided bombs, they rely on GPS satellite guidance. Military GPS is supposed to be jam-resistant, but in Ukraine American-supplied bombs have been severely affected by Russian jamming. In some cases it had reportedly decreased their accuracy from 20 metres to 1,200 metres before fixes helped to restore their accuracy. But jamming techniques have improved too, turning it into a cat-and-mouse game.

Israel is less reliant on GPS, and has alternatives such as the SPICE guidance system, which relies on cameras on bombs and uses AI-guided steering to reach the target. Israel has used weapons with SPICE in the current campaign against Iran. America may want to hastily retrofit this—or an American equivalent—to a MOP if America’s generals lack confidence in GPS, although this process could take some weeks.

No conventional bomb except a MOP has a chance of finishing off Fordow, and only America can supply them. But even if Donald Trump decides to drop one (or even several), it is not assured to succeed. ■