The heroic pilots who helped drop the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities in a super-secret mission over the weekend were awed by the explosive power of the devices, according to the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“We know that the trailing jets saw the first weapons function and the pilots stated, ‘This was the brightest explosion that I’ve ever seen. It literally looked like daylight,’” Lt. Gen. Dan Caine explained during a press briefing Thursday.
Caine also emphasized that the GBU-57 series MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) heavy-duty bunker-busters don’t leave “impact” craters — shooting down skepticism that the mission wasn’t successful.
Satellite images released after the mission show six holes where the deep-diving bombs appeared to have penetrated the mountain above Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant.
“Unlike a normal surface bomb, you won’t see an impact crater, because they’re designed to deeply bury and then function,” Caine said.
“Five [weapons] were tasked to enter the main shaft moved down into the complex at greater than a thousand feet per second, and explode in the mission space,” he explained about the attack on Fordow.
The US military had specially developed the MOP to deal with Fordow after learning about its construction nearly 15 years ago, Caine said.
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