Senior Pentagon officials on Sunday described an extraordinary coordinated military operation targeting Iran that took place under utmost secrecy and showcased what the American military was capable of when it put in place its doctrine of using air and naval forces to strike an adversary.
But neither Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nor Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could immediately say whether Iran still retained the ability to make a nuclear weapon. Mr. Hegseth repeated President Trump’s assertion from the previous night that the nuclear sites had been “obliterated.” General Caine did not.
The final battle damage assessment for the military operation against Iran, General Caine said, was still to come. He said the initial assessment showed that all three of the Iranian nuclear sites that were struck “sustained severe damage and destruction.”
Mr. Hegseth and General Caine, appearing before reporters in the Pentagon’s briefing room for the first time since they took office, described an intricate operation that began at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, home to the B-2 stealth bombers used in the strikes, and hit three nuclear sites in a span of less than a half-hour — 6:40 p.m. to 7:05 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday.
The bombers took off in secrecy on Friday night from Missouri for the more than 7,000-mile trip, which involved multiple refuelings. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to reach the skies above Iran, where they struck the heavily fortified nuclear site at Fordo, as well as facilities at Natanz.
The operation used 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs — often referred to as “bunker busters” — with the first two dropping at 2 a.m. Sunday local time, General Caine said. A U.S. Navy submarine also launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles, he said. Those were directed at a third site, Isfahan.
General Caine said that Iran had not deployed fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to hit back at the American warplanes. “Throughout the mission, we maintained the element of surprise,” he said, adding that “we are currently unaware of any shots fired at the U.S. strike package on the way in.”
The strikes were the first operational use of the GBU-57, Mr. Hegseth said. It is a 30,000-pound guided bomb that contains the explosive power of approximately 5,500 pounds of TNT and is designed to attack deeply buried targets. It can be carried only by B-2 stealth bombers.
General Caine said the operation “was designed to severely degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure.”
The main portion of the attack was carried out by seven B-2 bombers that launched from the United States from midnight Friday into Saturday morning, the general said, while additional B-2s headed over the Pacific Ocean as “a decoy.”
The flight to the target area over Iran took 18 hours, the chairman said, and required “multiple in-flight refuelings” from tanker aircraft before linking up with fighter escorts and entering Iranian airspace.
At approximately 5 p.m. Eastern time, just before the American warplanes flew over Iran, a U.S. Navy submarine in the region launched the Tomahawk missiles, General Caine said.
Fourth- and fifth-generation warplanes flew ahead of the B-2s, according to the general, indicating that either F-35 or F-22 fighters — or a combination of the two, along with older warplanes — attacked additional sites on the ground, including Iranian air defenses, in preparation for the stealth bombers’ approach.
The lead B-2 dropped two of the bombs on “the first of several aim points at Fordo,” and a total of 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators were used to attack “two nuclear target areas” in Iran, according to the Pentagon.
In total, “approximately 75 precision-guided munitions” were used during the operation, inclusive of the penetrator bombs and cruise missiles, General Caine said.
The operation’s name was “Midnight Hammer.” General Caine called it a “highly classified mission with very few people in Washington knowing the details of the plan.”
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.
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