{"id":2198,"date":"2025-06-19T19:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T13:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newstoday24hour.com\/en\/?p=2198"},"modified":"2025-06-19T19:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T13:06:10","slug":"israel-has-pushed-the-us-to-use-its-bunker-buster-bomb-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newstoday24hour.com\/en\/israel-has-pushed-the-us-to-use-its-bunker-buster-bomb-on-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel has pushed the US to use its \u2018bunker buster\u2019 bomb on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

As President Donald Trump\u00a0is warming to the idea\u00a0of using US military assets to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, officials and experts have suggested the US\u2019 30,000-pound \u201cbunker buster\u201d bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying the\u00a0Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, a facility thought to be key to Tehran\u2019s nuclear program, which is carved into a mountain and extends deep underground.<\/p>\n

The GBU-57A\/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), which has yet to be used operationally, is designed for \u201creaching and destroying our adversaries\u2019 weapons of mass destruction located in well-protected facilities,\u201d according to a fact sheet from the US Air Force.<\/p>\n

The weapon is a 30,000-pound bomb with 6,000 pounds of \u201chigh explosives,\u201d said Masao Dahlgren, a fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Missile Defense Project.<\/p>\n

The US is the only country capable of bombing a key Iranian nuclear site<\/strong>
\nThe key Fordow Iranian nuclear site has facilities buried so deep it makes it very difficult to damage with conventional weapon systems. The United States is the only country known to possess a bomb capable of striking a target so deep: the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It has \u201creally thick, hard shell,\u201d Dahlgren explained, in order for the explosives to withstand the impact of the ground and penetrate to the depths it\u2019s intended to reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the shell and there\u2019s the explosive in the fuse \u2013 the explosive needs to be robust enough to not detonate without being fused, the shell needs to be strong enough to go down that far and to hit that hard and to impart enough energy to even go down that far. And then the fuse needs to be hard enough to survive all that, and smart enough to know when to blow up,\u201d Dahlgren said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really complex program.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exact size of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is unclear; According to\u00a0 CNN report that that its halls are estimated to be 80 to 90 meters underground. A UK-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, said the MOP may not even be able to reach Fordow, saying in a recent report that it would \u201clikely require multiple impacts at the same aiming point to have a good chance of penetrating the facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fordow could be at the \u201cthe edge\u201d of the MOP\u2019s capabilities with only one munition, said Dahlgren.<\/p>\n

Testing for the bomb began in 2004 amid the heightened concern about weapons of mass destruction, Dahlgren said. One of the factors that led to its development, he added, were studies that showed bombing a facility\u2019s entrance \u201cwouldn\u2019t generate enough blast pressure to destroy the entire facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the need for these penetrators is really because it\u2019s hard to just bomb the entrances and get away with it,\u201d Dahlgren said. \u201cYou can temporarily slow the progress of a program but not fully destroy things that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2009, Boeing won the contract to integrate the weapons system with US aircraft. The Air Force\u2019s B-2 Spirit \u2013 a multi-role heavy bomber \u2013 is the only aircraft able to employ the bomb operationally.<\/p>\n

The B-2, made by Northrop Grumman, is the \u201cbackbone of stealth technology,\u201d according to the company. The aircraft flies out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, and was first publicly displayed in November 1988. The US used B-2 bombers in 2024 to strike the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, targeting underground weapons storage facilities.<\/p>\n

The bomber \u2013 flown by a two-man pilot crew \u2013 can fly approximately 6,000 nautical miles without being refueled, according to the Air Force. Its \u201cstealth\u201d capabilities allow it to \u201cpenetrate an enemy\u2019s most sophisticated defenses and threaten its most valued, and heavily defended, targets,\u201d the Air Force said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how many of the munitions the US has in its inventory; in 2009, Boeing delivered 20 of them to the Air Force, which was current as of 2015. Dahlgren estimated there are roughly 30 munitions in the US arsenal.<\/p>\n

CNN<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As President Donald Trump\u00a0is warming to the idea\u00a0of using US military assets to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, officials and experts have suggested the US\u2019 30,000-pound \u201cbunker buster\u201d bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying the\u00a0Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, a facility thought to be key to Tehran\u2019s nuclear program, which is carved into a mountain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nIsrael has pushed the US to use its \u2018bunker buster\u2019 bomb on Iran<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/newstoday24hour.com\/en\/israel-has-pushed-the-us-to-use-its-bunker-buster-bomb-on-iran\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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