Amazing story and details on the GBU-57.
On the #GBU57, US CJCS says the strikes on Fordow were 15 years in the making, with that target being the primary driver behind the MOP's development and evolution.
In 2009, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran for security purposes.
He was shown some photos and some highly classified intelligence of what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran. He was tasked to study this facility, [and] work with the intelligence community to understand it, and he was soon joined by an additional teammate,” Caine continued. “For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target, Fordow, a critical element of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program. He studied the geology. He watched the Iranians dig it out. He watched the construction, the weather, the discard material, the geology, the construction materials, where the materials came from. He looked at the vent shaft, the exhaust shaft, the electrical systems, the environmental control systems, every nook, every crater, every piece of equipment going in and every piece of equipment going out.”
Along the way, they realized we did not have a weapon that could adequately strike and kill this target,” according to Caine. “So they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57.”
By the way, in the beginning of its development, we had so many PhDs working on the MOP program, doing modeling and simulation that we were quietly, and in a secret way, the biggest users of supercomputer hours within the United States of America.
The MOPs each had their “fuze programmed bespokely” in order for “each weapon to achieve a particular effect inside the target,” and that each of the 12 bombs “had a unique, desired impact angle, arrival, [and] final heading,”
A pair of ventilation shafts, with their openings above ground, were the primary targets.
The cap was forcibly removed by the first weapon, and the main shaft was uncovered. Weapons two, three, four, [and] five were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1,000 feet per second, and explode in the mission space,” Caine continued. The sixth bomb in each group “was designed as a flex weapon to allow us to cover if one of the preceding jets or one of the preceding weapons did not work.”
All six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go.
In 2009, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran for security purposes.
twz.com/air/gbu-57-mas…
