Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites

You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that centrifuges installed 70–80 meters underground will be largely unaffected by bombs which are believed to have an effect down to a depth of 60 meters.

How they going to get to them?

I presume they will just fire the people who did the assessment.

Really? I think calculating the achieved overpressure to whatever structure underground after 6x 30k pound bomb impacts is far into the “genius” category. I’d wager you’d need a team of pretty smart people to even begin to get a wrong model of that.

Are the US and Israel going to continuously bomb any working crew in the area that goes to dig?

if you're American, watch out for army recruitment ads without the usual DEI flavoring

If they haven't removed the sensitive stuff before anyway after someone suggested they will make a decision within two weeks whether to attack.

Nukes or ground invasion, the point of the attack wasn’t to knock out the facilities, it was so that Trump can be dragged along ‘reluctantly’ so he can sell the conflict to his base. It is a persuasion technique called mirroring. Trump mirrors the position of the anti-war base, then slowly piece by piece he changes his position bringing his base with him. I guess how far it’ll go will depend on how effective the state is at suppressing anti-war sentiment. If history is a guide then the state can be surprisingly effective at this.

This is not a "genius" problem. This is mundane number crunching that every military has been doing for hundreds of years with ever increasing accuracy.

You need a few bombs and some places of varying geology to set them off. You take those data points, cross reference with all your historical knowledge and should be able to say whether a bunker of given construction a given depth under a given geology can be breached.

I hate how allergic to just testing and prototyping things modern engineering culture is.

Yeah, the bomb is expensive, but you gotta test it too so if you do it all right you get two birds with one stone.

I graduated from a very small high school. There were fewer than 20 guys in my graduating class, fewer than 40 total graduates. I graduated in 2002. 2 guys did not join the military; because of 9/11, the rest felt some kind of patriotic duty to join up.

Of the guys I graduated with, half died either in Iraq or Afghanistan between 2002 and 2006, or killed themselves shortly after returning home. The other half are broken. Either physically or mentally.

We cannot do that again. That we're involved in this shit show is an absolute travesty.

No genius needed, but all those involved are motivated to lie about it. The bombs have a depth range and 200ft (60m) is the optimistic depth for ideal conditions. These were far from ideal conditions as the location was specifically chosen to resist this. That and ultra high performance concrete is now a thing. This is why the entrance and exists were bombed and those are easy enough to dig back out again. The attack was telegraphed so advanced preparations were made. It is rumored that the entrances and exits were packed with dirt in advance to minimize the damage.

I wonder why the US wouldn't lie about the effective depth range. Seems kinda dumb to telegraph to your enemies how far to dig.

Already happened hehe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-wp4oJ2LY

“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." - Georg Hegel

I don't know if it's only effective depth of the ordinance that matters here. Positive interference could be used to amplify the explosive wave of the 6 bombs that were dropped with accurate-enough timing.

I agree, but I don't think it's entirely unique to this era.

The US Navy's torpedo station in Newport, RI produced torpedos that were really prone to failure during the first few years of WW2.

IIRC, the problem persisted so long because an admiral in charge refused to provide enough torpedos for adequate testing.

(Sorry if there are any errors here, I can't easily fact check at the moment.)

The math isn’t that hard and the ideal case is a linear extrapolation so people can sit down with a calculator and figure it out.

Credibility helps with deterrence.

Sure but they claim they put more than one on to it, it we don’t know how many or how accurate they were requiring one on top of the other to get more depth

They tested those bombs plenty. It's clear that they punched three holes in that mountain, but it's a whole frickin' mountain.

Never mind the fact that bomb damage assessment is one of the most difficult problems in photograph interpretation -- it's hard enough when the target is above ground, worse when it isn't.

If you were going to do that you wouldn’t waste energy breaking the rock to begin with. I highly doubt it’s feasible to time things that accurately and even if you could there is a lot of mountain in the way to soak up the energy.

The depth assumptions for the facility are often with a shallow gradient roads for the entrance and exits, but there is no need for the gradient to be shallow.

CL/CB - Continuous Liberation / Continuous Bombing

it's the ci/cd of american foreign poliyics

Moreover, I read the wiki ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP ) that 60m penetration specification is for ~35MPA concrete. And good basalt rocks easily go 100MPA. So if Iranians choose just good Mountain, and there are plenty of them...... Mother earth is really strong some places.

That's probably why they targeted the air duct system. It's already been cut and provides a blast channel.

Ah, the Death Star theory

This has been repeated so many times but the enriched uranium is far more vulnerable in transport.

The real weapons system specs are never disclosed. Even on retired systems the real capabilities are often still classified because they can provide clues to their replacements capabilities.

You are still relying on parameters that they are disclosing to you.

Overpressure... as the Russians taught to the Afghani's, a small explosion in an enclosed space does massive damage to both soft and hard materials.

You don't have to blow something up to destroy it.

They probably have blast doors on those and USA made it very clear on Flightradar24 that the bombers are coming, lock the doors.

I would assume that this thing is entirely compartmentalized, so to destroy everything you will need a bomb in every room.

According to wikipedia, US made around 20 of those bombs and Trump used 14 of those. So %70 of the stockpile is gone in one go.

Especially on the main site they dropped 3 bobs per strike location, so at best they could have destroyed 2 compartments with 6 bombs. If those were able to penetrate of course.

Honestly, it looks like it was a show like the one where Trump fights professional fighters on the ring. Just significantly more expensive.

Maybe they should just generate those images in AI, would be much more cost effective propaganda.

I find this argument hard to believe. Israel had complete air superiority for a week and was monitoring all the sites, routinely hitting the above ground nuclear facilities. I’m skeptical Iran could transfer anything significant from Fordow and not be immediately spotted by Israel.

The math is really that hard? I have no idea what the soil or rock is, what happens when the first bomb hits it, the second, and then the third? Does the timing matter? Does the timing matter if it's 5 minutes between? 1 hour between? Seconds between? Does the type of soil or rock compact or loosen when bombed? What's the variation in explosive yield? Does the ground transfer force from a shockwave well or poorly? Does that change after the first one?

I really doubt this is very linear.

> The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-n...

> The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-n...

I still consider the main report to not be substantiated. Israel claims that they know where the stockpile is and that they have been monitoring sites[1][2]. Some official even claimed it’s mostly under the rubble. Not sure why one is to believed and the other not when neither have hard evidence.

1. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858895 2. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858619

And yet the leaked reports don't say that happened, they say it didn't work and that most of the material and equipment was likely already moved.

Is this where we are? Just making up technobabble to glorify the US war machine in a supposedly intellectual forum? All the while the white house says the report is real, but they disagree with the contents of their own intelligence report because "we want big bomb make big boom work good"?

After 25 years it has become abundantly clear that Iraq (the concept) is what the US is, and what it deserves.

There are physical limits to weight, hardness, max explosive energy and max kinetic energy and these are all known. The only way to exceed them would be to drop it from a higher altitude, like space, or give it a nuclear warhead. The US isn’t the only country that has tested bunker busters and the physics involved isn’t that hard. It’s just expensive.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that they had lost track of 400kg of 60% enriched uranium, which could yield 9-10 nuclear bombs:

https://nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/iran-uranium-stoc...

According to Israeli media, it is not known whether the Fordow underground nuclear complex has been destroyed.

Netanyahu has already declared victory, but Iran's nuclear capabilities will likely be completely restarted, most likely within a few years or some estimations says months.

There is no doubt that during that time Iran will strengthen its aviation, intelligence and reconnaissance, which have now failed drastically. "Regime change" goal for Israel also failed.

Many more Mossad agents and collaborators will fall in Iran over the next few months as IRGC begins its crack down and Israel will surely lose a huge portion of their main weapon. Further TRUMP declaring "no regime change" today, made this matter worse.

Iran practically has a script for its problems now. Israel has learned what will happen when Iran gets thousands of their hypersonic missiles and fixes the problem with the lack of launchers which Iran will certainly continue to produce.

Only a ceasefire has been achieved, but there will certainly be a second round (likely by Israel again once more intel is gathered), because a war like this never officially ended.

More importantly, let's not forget who paid the price at the end? As always, innocent Israelis and Iranians who never knew each other or had a problem with died.

Murdering PhD's in Nuclear Engineering would be cheaper, and is a continuous Israeli program already.

We’re in the BDP stage—Bomb Driven Politics. That’s when you drop the bombs first, and then you have a meeting.

Sure, but you have no firsthand knowledge of that information.

You are told the B2 can carry a certain payload weight.

You are told the B2 has a certain operational ceiling.

You are told the bombs are a certain weight.

You are told the bombs are made from a certain material.

You are told the bombs contain a certain type of explosive.

Everything you know about this device and its capabilities came from an organization that has every motivation to publish specs that are just enough to raise the eyebrows of the people this device is supposed to scare hell out of, but they have less than zero motivation to publish specs that speak to maximum capabilities.

So while your calculations might be accurate for the component values you gave it, your component values of your calculation are not accurate, because all you know is what you were told.

You can calculate these things based on wing size and airspeed and neither are hard to figure out, it’s clearly subsonic and it’s been seen in public.

While skunkworks are certainly a thing they’re not hiding some Star Trek antigravity device, physics is still physics and physical limits are physical limits. Look at the Otto Celera 500L if you want to see what attacking physical limits looks like. It’s an engineering problem and the fundamentals are well understood. The real magic is in creating the money to pay for it.

> You can calculate these things based on wing size and airspeed

If you can calculate the depth and damage those bombs did based on wing size and airspeed (which technically is another parameter you really don’t know, but are relying on what you are told) you ought to be working for the government.

Feel the same, not to mention Israel would have spies in Iran, satellites all over it.

The US military isn't the only entity making airplanes and bunker busters. We don’t need to rely on their figures to know a great deal about what happened. You are assuming they have some order of magnitude hidden capacity which would break the laws of physics, and I’m very confident that they didn’t do that.

Nuke them and then say that the Iranians f'ed up while handling the material?

Gotcha. So your perspective is there are other entities making airplanes with the capabilities of the B-2 and a bunker buster bomb equivalent to the GBU-57 so much so that you can reliably determine capabilities of those weapon systems…as a layman with just a hand calculator?

That is a $2B aircraft and a $20M ordinance (each). You want to tell us exactly what entity has anything even remotely equivalent? No one else but the US could bear to afford it. Maybe China…but if they have it’s not common knowledge.

I think you have pretty much dug yourself a hole here on your knowledge and capabilities…you have landed into silliness now. (That pun was definitely intended)

No amount of money enables an aircraft to violate the laws of physics. Clearly your knowledge on aircraft is limited otherwise we would have a shared understanding of the physics involved and wouldn’t even be having this argument.

It's a pretty dumb ordnance, gravity delivered GBU57 is a physics bound problem. The dimensions etc are known, you can give it the most optmistic assumptions, i.e. complete steel for max penetration, release at altitude where it reach max terminal velocity without grid fins deployed, run that through ndrc/young pentration equations etc. There aren't any super secret parameters for subterfuge like electronic warfare. Eitherway there's public videos of GBU57 in action - grid fins deployed to hit a traffic cone - defense autists counted frames, did napkin math, it's more or less what's purported ~ mach 0.8-1.2 penetrator designed for ~60m concrete. IIRC the assume sphere cow math for heavier all steel, no grid fin (i.e. not accurate), max out at mach ~2, doubles energy, penetrates ~80m.

On the other hand, Fordow's construction time is known... as far as I know, many years before fgcc / uhpc and other "advanced" concrete formulas PRC formulated against US penetrators. And Israel probably has entire blue print, so who knows. E: quick lookup and GBU57 seems to be revealed shortly after guestimate of when Fordow started construction, possible Fordow could update design in anticipation, but then again, B2s were known entity and Iran's engineers can probably guestimate out what the maximum size/weight penetrator US could deliver on B2s before knowing GBU57 existed.

> According to wikipedia

Wikipedia says "at least 20" and cites a source that says the exact number is unknown.

In general Wikipedia is an extremely inaccurate source for military aviation. I have found while following the citations that information is routinely entirely fabricated in this topic, with unrelated or marginally related citations added without quotes to make them seem plausible.

Also likely softer rock to begin with

Or the Top Gun Maverick lookalike.

What if it has some sort of a booster to increase its kinetic energy just before the hit?

Also the behavior might improve in an area already weakened by a ventilation shaft/previous hit (first bomb turns 40 meters into fine gravel + detonates weakening quite a large are, second and third bomb easily go deeper)

You are mixing ft and meters...Do not land on Mars or Europa.

For concrete, ( that the mountain limestone is almost like..) is only 18 meters.

"... analysts at Janes say the weapon can penetrate about 200 ft (60 m) of earth or 60 ft (18 m) of concrete.."

In other words: We selectively embrace intelligence assessments when they justify our actions, yet dismiss them when they prove politically inconvenient...

Israel could not spot hundreds of Hamas terrorists rehearsing the 7 of October attacks, and using cell phones for weeks, 20 miles from their Urim base in the Negev desert. [1]

Or could they? ;-)

[1] - https://mondediplo.com/2010/09/04israelbase

Who is arguing that? I’m not. The only argument I have made is that you do not have all the values you need to plug into your “calculator” to make a BDA.

But perhaps you can figure all of those values you need by just knowing the wingspan and airspeed of the aircraft delivering the payload, if so…I defer to you and this amazing deductive knowledge that you possess.

I think 1) is unlikely, b2 bays can't fit much more, gbu57 is mostly metal and no booster for penetration 2) is what no one knows, but we (as in the public) also don't know layout/construction, i.e. actual depth, bunker design (can emb sloped concrete/steel layer to deflect penetrators laterally so follow up drop don't go straight down).

For it to be super-linear an additional meter of concrete / earth / whatever must be easier to penetrate than the one before it which I would classify as a physical impossibility. This is why linear is the ideal case.

A bomb is much cheaper than a factory. That was the message of this bombing run: try to restart you nuke game again, and we’ll bomb you again. And that time we won’t stop until we topple your regime.

Centrifuges and driving equipment, sure.

But U-235 doesn't stop being U-235 because you pressurized or heated it up. Can't blow up atoms.

Best case, instead of a pile of enriched uranium, you now have a highly concentrated mine.

Sure, you'd have to separate it again, but getting U-235 away from dirt and rock is a lot easier than separating it from other uranium isotopes.

Even if it was stored as volatile UF6, what, you've converted it to UO2F2 / U3O8?

Polling of independents at 60/40 against should scare the shit out of the GOP, if they intend to press this.

I expect there is no desire on Trump's part for a long game, and he just took an isolated opportunity (Iranian air defenses smashed and air force suppressed) to wave the flag and look militaristic.

Limiting the strike to nuclear facilities also provides deniability to Iranian civilians that, unlike Israel, the US isn't looking for a full scale war.

Not with regard to multiple bombs.

> Does the type of soil or rock compact or loosen when bombed?

Is the most relevant question.

It seems reasonable that fractured rock may be easier for subsequent bombs to penetrate.

That's accurate. They sped the torpedoes up, but failed to redesign the trigger, with the end result of ideal (and taught) geometry shots having a low chance of detonating. (Among other problems)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo#Problems

Even if I were to accept the dubious premise that there is enough fractured rock to make a difference and there is no hampering with rocks falling into the void and that it's possible to hit the exact same spot repeatedly without touching the sides, all that would do in big O notation would be increase the constant factor. It would not be super linear after the second bomb.

If your are talking about bombs that hit side by side then clearly that is sub-linear as no matter how fractured the rock it’s not easier to push through than air.

An explosion creates a pressure wave. A pressure wave fractures rock. Fractured rock may be easier to pierce than solid rock.

Ergo, if first bunker buster penetrates to maximum depth -20m and then explodes, fracturing rock within a __ radius, then second bunker buster travels through that fractured rock, the second (and so on) may be able to penetrate deeper.

I have no idea about the physics of penetrating fractured vs non-fractured rock, but it's a physically plausible mechanism.

Furthermore, given the multi-minute timeline reported, there's enough time for the bombs to be deployed sequentially.

In the linear case a bomb twice the size goes twice as deep.

Take a bomb, cut it in half and drop each half separately, one after another into the same hole, would you except the cumulative depth to be greater than the whole bomb or less? Consider that in the case of the whole bomb it is equivalent to two halves arriving at the exact same time.

It's not about bomb size.

It's about bomb quantity and sequential effects.

Yeah, swinging military "might" around in the middle east is a GREAT IDEA... zero unintended consequences...

... just none.

.. every time a win....

are you even sentient?

Most modern goods are valuable and hard to replace because of their mechanical or chemical properties, and so blowing them up destroys the value.

My understanding is that U-235 is not like that, blowing it up accomplishes very little when recovery consists of what they'd already be doing to clear the debris, plus some mechanical and chemical separation.

And a nuclear armed Iran is better?

Scaling is about bomb size, that’s what linear was referring to. No one is arguing that multiple bombs can’t ‘drill’.

Gotcha. Sounds like we're in agreement, then.

The strike may have been able to achieve greater penetration depth with multiple sequential weapons impacting the same point (i.e. the three seen in satellite imagery).

Edit: official reporting is 6 weapons per shaft, into 3 visible entry points per shaft, so there's at least some doubling.

https://www.twz.com/air/gbu-57-massive-ordnance-penetrator-s...

And now we've learned that these weapons were purpose designed and built specifically for this mission back during the Obama administration:

https://www.twz.com/air/gbu-57-massive-ordnance-penetrator-s...

As in, the were designed to be dropped on this one particular facility, they're not general purpose weapons.

I'm confident that 'drilling' with multiple bombs was the known approach prior to the attack. The planned approach to soviet bunkers was to use repeated accurate strikes of nuclear bombs to achieve a similar drilling for their bunkers.

There appears to be an assumption that the main facility was exposed to blasts from the tunnels and since that appears to be an obvious weakness I'm wondering why the Iranians wouldn't have blast doors between the tunnels and the facility as a form of redundancy. I am still worried that this is part of an approach to slowly warm Americans up to another war, much easier to sell a limit strike as a success, then 3-6 months later when the Iranians have recovered it'll be even easier to sell another strike or a more involved engagement.

They can buy enriched uranium from at least 2 sources...

The expertise and equipment to develop and maintain a nuclear arsenal at scale is vastly more important.

Public opinion polling after the strikes, especially for independents, hasn't been favorable. 60/35 independent against? https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3925

The administration forgot the political tenet that you lead the public into supporting military action before taking the action, not after.

But I guess that level of ignorance is what you get from B-tier politicians who would sign on to this admin.