The massive destructive power of the 30,000 pound bunker-buster bombs Donald Trump ordered to be dropped in Iran’s nuclear sites was put on full display in a newly released video.
During a Pentagon press conference days after the strikes, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine reiterated that Operation Midnight Hammer was a success.
The mission utilized over 125 planes and seven B-2 stealth bombers carrying a total of 14 bunker-buster bombs meant for Iran’s mountainous Fordow uranium enrichment facilities.
Trump said the site was ‘obliterated’ after the strike, but a leaked top secret intelligence assessment revealed that Fordow could be rebuilt in months – something the Pentagon and White House have furiously pushed back against.
To prove the mission’s effectiveness, Caine played a video showing exactly how the GBU-57 ‘bunker-buster’ bombs work.
In the video, a 20-foot-long and 30,000-pound GBU-57 can be seen slamming into the roof of a cave with wicked force.
Another angle shows the cave entrance and the bomb passing into the chamber before detonating in a fiery explosion.
U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped a total of 14 GBU-57s on Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, which is built deep under a mountain range.
‘Unlike a normal surface bomb, you won’t see an impact crater because they’re designed to deeply bury and then function,’ Caine explained.
‘All six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go,’ he added.
Though the video was a test of the GBU-57, and not footage from the actual operation, Caine said it proves how satellite imagery of the site cannot fully ascertain the damage caused within the subterranean nuclear site.
The explosion was so vicious that one of the B-2 pilots said it made the night sky turn into ‘daylight.’
‘[It was] the brightest explosion that I’ve ever seen,’ Caine claimed the pilot said. ‘It literally looked like daylight.’
Dropped from the B-2s, the GBU-57s arrived on their targets traveling 1,000-feet per second, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs shared.
Similar to the plot of ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ the bombs were aimed at the buried nuclear site’s ventilation shafts – the most vulnerable parts of the expansive facility.
Since the site had two main ventilation shafts, six bombs were dropped on each.
The video was ‘a culmination of over 15 years of development and testing,’ Caine said.
He told reporters that certain military officials spent a decade and a half studying Fordow and preparing for a strike.
There were ‘hundreds of test shots on various models,’ Caine said, noting that the military practiced its GBU-57 bombing runs on multiple targets of different types.
‘What they accomplished is truly historic, setting back the Iranian nuclear program untold number of years,’ Hegseth shared, noting it was ‘a devastating attack.’