One of the keys to determining whether it actually worked is seeing what the Iranians are doing. What they appear to have done is cleared up enough to have a look inside and then abandoned the place - at least that's what various OSINT Xitter people report. If so you are overly pessimistic. One of the things I was hoping for evidence of, but haven't seen reports of, is a uranium fire because cleaning up after that would be a HAZMAT nightmare. Though if that was underground then there might not be much evidence at the surface.
Just to play Devils Advocate here. What would be so terrible about Iran actually getting nuclear weapons? We've been hearing for some time about "how close Iran is to building a bomb" yet, I've seen no reports of any nuclear tests. Which, as a non scientific, non military observer would be pretty conclusive nice of a weapon.
Israel has had nukes for years, both India & Pakistan possess them as does North Korea yet the US are the only nation to have actually used them.
And NorthKorea has made similar threats about both the US & South Korea.
I'm not saying that Iran or anybody else for that matter should possess nuclear weapons but there is a difference between public rhetoric & sabre rattling and the actual reality of launching a nuclear tipped missile against another country.
Agee with you Simon. The logic of nuke weapon use has held for 80 years: you hit me, I hit you. Should Iran actually build a device and be able to deliver it, would they use it on Israel knowing that they would be hit with multiple bombs in return?
If you're Israel, having experienced 45 years of Iran spending billions to attack your country from three sides, you would be remiss to not take Iran's apocalyptic ranting at face value.
All this (which I knew long before the Fordo strike because I'm an aerospace geek) worries me that next time those idiots will try a nuke anyway. I have no confidence in these Bozos.
The moron who thought a nuke could be used to defeat a hurricane is the idiot who would think dropping a nuke on anything is a good idea. Fuck Trump and the Kremlin gremlins he rode in on.
Based on the gaping holes in the ground on open source satellite imaging that weren’t there the day before the strike…
Denying cold hard evidence that the entire world can see for themselves isn’t gonna help your case. Comical attempt at disinformation. These weapons have been repeatedly tested and their effects are well known.
They never would have been used if they weren’t effective. This article is nothing but speculation in a desperate attempt to reject mathematical certainties.
The people who designed the weapon know exponentially more about the science than the author of this silly little article. Probably thinks he knows better than NASA too.
The main effect isn’t the explosion, it’s the seismic blast radius. The nuclear scientists that I’ve read now seem to agree the site is almost certainly destroyed. The scale of precise scientific equipment within the site would not have survived the reverberations, dust and smoke. Even if it failed to penetrate deep enough, it likely triggered collapses and cave ins below.
The program obviously lives on and can be rebuilt, but Fordo is inoperable.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to dig really really deep. It becomes more and more impractical. Digging it out after all the damage will be no different. You’re always one mistake away from a humanitarian crisis when you start digging deep.
Irans program has to balance being deep enough for survivability, but not so deep that a shallow cave-in means losing the facility forever. And not so deep that it’s impractical to truck material in and out.
We’ve already seen in satellite photos that Iran has had to create a temporary access road and has brought in an excavator to one the blast clusters. It’s not operable.
The Grand Slam was the daddy of these weapons designed by Barnes Wallace, but a third smaller and designed for softer geology. Intended to propagate an “earthquake” that destabilized structures, rendering them useless. Apparently they would break up against harder targets like sub pens
Trump and Co usual and definitely more and more daily fucking lies. Get rid of these gangsters and corrupt thieves before it is really really too late. Between you and me I think that unless serious actions are set in motion we can kiss bye bye to democracy in the US of A. As with nuclear bombs those buster-whatever devices have a “use by date X”. That was a good opportunity to follow the manufactor instructions and order pdq newer and much more expensive models, no?
Yes, there’s rock, there’s shock, there’s damping that limits the penetration. But don’t forget: inside, there are vulnerable electronics, motors, aligned structures, clean rooms, etc all of which took years to assemble properly. Yes, the MOP’s penetration is limited by the geology, but it can still disable the equipment.
It was obvious even before the bombing that it would fail. Despite having created the Massive Ordinance Penetrator specifically for Fordow, knowing it would fail was good reason not to actually use it. Only the threat that maybe, just maybe, such a big, specialized bomb might work was of any value. Per usual, Trump claimed victory while harming the United States.
Here's a re-post of a comment I originally wrote on Substack's "The Contrarian" thread, "The Dogs of War," immediately upon hearing about the bombing on June 23rd.
÷×÷×÷×÷×÷
The most likely outcome of the bombing of Fordow is that the underground centrifuge chambers are either unharmed or could be fairly easily repaired.
It is not true that the Massive Ordinance Penetrator digs itself 200 feet into the ground. Instead, it digs to various depths depending upon the ground it encounters. 200 feet would be the easy case, if it were penetrating only ordinary dirt interspersed with some rock. If it hit concrete that had been reinforced to military standards, it would penetrate about 25 feet. This means that each bomb had the potential to penetrate to some depth in between.
To dig through 300 feet of solid rock ending in the reinforced concrete roof of the centrifuge chambers, many bombs would need to follow each other through exactly the same hole. The satellite photographs show that this did not happen; the holes are only near each other. The resulting possibilities are complex. Some or none of the holes may or may not intersect underground. Being close to another hole may allow a penetrator to shatter an adjacent wall, or not. In either case, the ultimate depth of penetration is unknown, because this bombing is properly thought of as an experiment. Anyone who declares a certain outcome is depending upon too many likely incorrect assumptions.
We do not know the exact outcome, but we do know this: For a successful mission, after penetrating 300 feet, the last in a series of penetrators would need to have had enough energy left to penetrate the reinforced concrete roof of the bunker. The odds of that are slim, knowing for certain that the bombs did not follow the same holes.
There is one other possibility. In World War II, the British learned that bunker busting bombs that appeared to narrowly miss their targets actually did more damage. Direct hits merely distributed their pressure waves evenly about the roofs of bunkers, and so were resisted, whereas off-center blows caused an "earthquake effect." This compressed the bunker downwards, causing the floor to buckle upwards, damaging or destroying the contents. The question would then be: If, in this case, the penetrators stopped 100 or more feet short of their targets (or whatever significant distance), would the bunkers below have withstood any damage? That's a lot of rock distributing the pressure above the reinforced concrete roof, so the likely answer is, "Yes."
One need not apply specific engineering or geological expertise to see that the odds of success were low. This attack will more likely become a national embarrassment than a success. Either way, the diplomacy that may have ended the threat is finished, not so long after Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that had the situation under control.
I could, of course, be wrong, but unless there are any moles passing reliable information to the outside world, there will be no way to know what the Iranians find after they dig their way back into Fordow. The exception would be that, if the answer were embarrassing, they would tell the world!
Note to engineers: GPS is not good enough to guide this bomb. A visual system to identify the previous bomb's hole and guide the next bomb into it is needed, if it could be made to work at such high speeds.
÷×÷×÷×÷×÷
The question has since emerged as to whether the bomb could have ridden down a ventilation shaft and successfully reached the bunker. The satellite photographs show that none of the threesomes of bombs hit in exactly the same place, although they were close. This suggests that landing dead-center on a ventilation shaft would have been unlikely.
Even if a bomb did land on a shaft, it would have had to have been on an exactly on-axis trajectory to follow it without significant resistance, and that would be after first penetrating rock to reach the shaft. This also seems unlikely, albeit not impossible.
Even a perfect hit would have had to not meet the obvious block that the Iranians likely constructed, a series of turns or offsets in the shaft so that no one bomb could have a lucky free ride.
Reading in Mr. O'Donnell's post about how well rock absorbs the shockwaves of even nuclear explosions suggests that the centrifuges were not shocked into failing a hundred feet or so below the pentrators.
Politics will not decide this issue. Physics and geology suggest that Fordow was likely either unharmed or minimally damaged.
Iran is a geological mash-up, formed by the interactions among three tectonic plates. The most uniform bits a Precambrian igneous blocks, think granites, but those are hard to mine, so it’s likely that the sites were placed in fairly heterogeneous material. Bye Bye Miss American Pie from the sky.
I think that is a good reality check to the Trump 'regime' claims
Unfortunately, the Trump regime has a tenous grasp of any sort of reality at best...
Some more expert commentary here - https://www.twz.com/nuclear/los-alamos-scientists-insights-on-the-gbu-57-massive-ordnance-penetrator
One of the keys to determining whether it actually worked is seeing what the Iranians are doing. What they appear to have done is cleared up enough to have a look inside and then abandoned the place - at least that's what various OSINT Xitter people report. If so you are overly pessimistic. One of the things I was hoping for evidence of, but haven't seen reports of, is a uranium fire because cleaning up after that would be a HAZMAT nightmare. Though if that was underground then there might not be much evidence at the surface.
The limits of air power were never more apparent than in Vietnam.
“Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes.”
Kurt Vonnegut
Just to play Devils Advocate here. What would be so terrible about Iran actually getting nuclear weapons? We've been hearing for some time about "how close Iran is to building a bomb" yet, I've seen no reports of any nuclear tests. Which, as a non scientific, non military observer would be pretty conclusive nice of a weapon.
Israel has had nukes for years, both India & Pakistan possess them as does North Korea yet the US are the only nation to have actually used them.
Because Iran has stated directly that if they get a bomb they will seek to destroy Israel with it
And NorthKorea has made similar threats about both the US & South Korea.
I'm not saying that Iran or anybody else for that matter should possess nuclear weapons but there is a difference between public rhetoric & sabre rattling and the actual reality of launching a nuclear tipped missile against another country.
The Iranian regime has been attacking US and Western interests since taking power. "Death to Israel. Death to America."
Agee with you Simon. The logic of nuke weapon use has held for 80 years: you hit me, I hit you. Should Iran actually build a device and be able to deliver it, would they use it on Israel knowing that they would be hit with multiple bombs in return?
If you're Israel, having experienced 45 years of Iran spending billions to attack your country from three sides, you would be remiss to not take Iran's apocalyptic ranting at face value.
Which holds true for Russia, DPRK, India or Pakistan.
All this (which I knew long before the Fordo strike because I'm an aerospace geek) worries me that next time those idiots will try a nuke anyway. I have no confidence in these Bozos.
Norden bombsight enters the chat.
The moron who thought a nuke could be used to defeat a hurricane is the idiot who would think dropping a nuke on anything is a good idea. Fuck Trump and the Kremlin gremlins he rode in on.
Even the Defense Intelligence Assessment was preliminary right? How soon before we should aspect knowing with more certainty?
(I realize there's a lot of variables to that answer. Perhaps too many)
Umm, no.
Based on the gaping holes in the ground on open source satellite imaging that weren’t there the day before the strike…
Denying cold hard evidence that the entire world can see for themselves isn’t gonna help your case. Comical attempt at disinformation. These weapons have been repeatedly tested and their effects are well known.
They never would have been used if they weren’t effective. This article is nothing but speculation in a desperate attempt to reject mathematical certainties.
The people who designed the weapon know exponentially more about the science than the author of this silly little article. Probably thinks he knows better than NASA too.
I'm all for scepticism, however the Trump Administration has a history of Deception, Extraordinary Claims etc.
> They never would have been used if they weren’t effective.
That’s a bizarre statement. The military used the most effective conventional weapon available and hoped it would do the job.
Certainly, the bombs went boom, but it’s unlikely they penetrated to the level of the underground complex, which is very deep.
The main effect isn’t the explosion, it’s the seismic blast radius. The nuclear scientists that I’ve read now seem to agree the site is almost certainly destroyed. The scale of precise scientific equipment within the site would not have survived the reverberations, dust and smoke. Even if it failed to penetrate deep enough, it likely triggered collapses and cave ins below.
The program obviously lives on and can be rebuilt, but Fordo is inoperable.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to dig really really deep. It becomes more and more impractical. Digging it out after all the damage will be no different. You’re always one mistake away from a humanitarian crisis when you start digging deep.
Irans program has to balance being deep enough for survivability, but not so deep that a shallow cave-in means losing the facility forever. And not so deep that it’s impractical to truck material in and out.
We’ve already seen in satellite photos that Iran has had to create a temporary access road and has brought in an excavator to one the blast clusters. It’s not operable.
> The scale of precise scientific equipment within the site would not have survived the reverberations, dust and smoke.
I don’t know how moveable that equipment is, but it appears it might have been removed in the lead-up to the attack.
Oops
Great update on the sorties and weapon
The Grand Slam was the daddy of these weapons designed by Barnes Wallace, but a third smaller and designed for softer geology. Intended to propagate an “earthquake” that destabilized structures, rendering them useless. Apparently they would break up against harder targets like sub pens
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_(bomb)
Trump and Co usual and definitely more and more daily fucking lies. Get rid of these gangsters and corrupt thieves before it is really really too late. Between you and me I think that unless serious actions are set in motion we can kiss bye bye to democracy in the US of A. As with nuclear bombs those buster-whatever devices have a “use by date X”. That was a good opportunity to follow the manufactor instructions and order pdq newer and much more expensive models, no?
Yes, there’s rock, there’s shock, there’s damping that limits the penetration. But don’t forget: inside, there are vulnerable electronics, motors, aligned structures, clean rooms, etc all of which took years to assemble properly. Yes, the MOP’s penetration is limited by the geology, but it can still disable the equipment.
It was obvious even before the bombing that it would fail. Despite having created the Massive Ordinance Penetrator specifically for Fordow, knowing it would fail was good reason not to actually use it. Only the threat that maybe, just maybe, such a big, specialized bomb might work was of any value. Per usual, Trump claimed victory while harming the United States.
Here's a re-post of a comment I originally wrote on Substack's "The Contrarian" thread, "The Dogs of War," immediately upon hearing about the bombing on June 23rd.
÷×÷×÷×÷×÷
The most likely outcome of the bombing of Fordow is that the underground centrifuge chambers are either unharmed or could be fairly easily repaired.
It is not true that the Massive Ordinance Penetrator digs itself 200 feet into the ground. Instead, it digs to various depths depending upon the ground it encounters. 200 feet would be the easy case, if it were penetrating only ordinary dirt interspersed with some rock. If it hit concrete that had been reinforced to military standards, it would penetrate about 25 feet. This means that each bomb had the potential to penetrate to some depth in between.
To dig through 300 feet of solid rock ending in the reinforced concrete roof of the centrifuge chambers, many bombs would need to follow each other through exactly the same hole. The satellite photographs show that this did not happen; the holes are only near each other. The resulting possibilities are complex. Some or none of the holes may or may not intersect underground. Being close to another hole may allow a penetrator to shatter an adjacent wall, or not. In either case, the ultimate depth of penetration is unknown, because this bombing is properly thought of as an experiment. Anyone who declares a certain outcome is depending upon too many likely incorrect assumptions.
We do not know the exact outcome, but we do know this: For a successful mission, after penetrating 300 feet, the last in a series of penetrators would need to have had enough energy left to penetrate the reinforced concrete roof of the bunker. The odds of that are slim, knowing for certain that the bombs did not follow the same holes.
There is one other possibility. In World War II, the British learned that bunker busting bombs that appeared to narrowly miss their targets actually did more damage. Direct hits merely distributed their pressure waves evenly about the roofs of bunkers, and so were resisted, whereas off-center blows caused an "earthquake effect." This compressed the bunker downwards, causing the floor to buckle upwards, damaging or destroying the contents. The question would then be: If, in this case, the penetrators stopped 100 or more feet short of their targets (or whatever significant distance), would the bunkers below have withstood any damage? That's a lot of rock distributing the pressure above the reinforced concrete roof, so the likely answer is, "Yes."
One need not apply specific engineering or geological expertise to see that the odds of success were low. This attack will more likely become a national embarrassment than a success. Either way, the diplomacy that may have ended the threat is finished, not so long after Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that had the situation under control.
I could, of course, be wrong, but unless there are any moles passing reliable information to the outside world, there will be no way to know what the Iranians find after they dig their way back into Fordow. The exception would be that, if the answer were embarrassing, they would tell the world!
Note to engineers: GPS is not good enough to guide this bomb. A visual system to identify the previous bomb's hole and guide the next bomb into it is needed, if it could be made to work at such high speeds.
÷×÷×÷×÷×÷
The question has since emerged as to whether the bomb could have ridden down a ventilation shaft and successfully reached the bunker. The satellite photographs show that none of the threesomes of bombs hit in exactly the same place, although they were close. This suggests that landing dead-center on a ventilation shaft would have been unlikely.
Even if a bomb did land on a shaft, it would have had to have been on an exactly on-axis trajectory to follow it without significant resistance, and that would be after first penetrating rock to reach the shaft. This also seems unlikely, albeit not impossible.
Even a perfect hit would have had to not meet the obvious block that the Iranians likely constructed, a series of turns or offsets in the shaft so that no one bomb could have a lucky free ride.
Reading in Mr. O'Donnell's post about how well rock absorbs the shockwaves of even nuclear explosions suggests that the centrifuges were not shocked into failing a hundred feet or so below the pentrators.
Politics will not decide this issue. Physics and geology suggest that Fordow was likely either unharmed or minimally damaged.
Iran is a geological mash-up, formed by the interactions among three tectonic plates. The most uniform bits a Precambrian igneous blocks, think granites, but those are hard to mine, so it’s likely that the sites were placed in fairly heterogeneous material. Bye Bye Miss American Pie from the sky.
Didn’t I read that they dropped a completely different bomb because they knew the bunker was too deep?