Boeing GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator)

mkellytx said:
The overpressure from the first bomb on each side blew the concrete caps off of the secondary air shafts.
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No doubt that same overpressure killed everyone inside the facility instantly too.
 
TomcatViP said:
If they had the air shaft capped with dirt and concrete, as the entrances, it's highly probably that there was nobody alive even before the bombs went in. ;)
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The site was abandoned, everybody who worked there had to be taken someplace safer, at least the people who work under the mountain. At least that's the square my money's on. The sealing of the entrances and shafts done to make USAF and Israeli special forces jobs harder. Honestly wonder if the overpressure from the first two weapons that went through the vents perpetrated down through them into the main cascade. It's likely academic since there were five more MOP's that blew up in the shafts.
 
"The weapons functioned as designed,meaning they exploded..."
General Dan Caine
Chairman,us joint chiefs of staff.

An actual quote.....:rolleyes:
I`ll say no more,I wouldnt want this post deleted as well.;)
 
"By the way; in the beginning of its development, we had so many Ph.Ds working on the MOP program, doing modeling and simulation, that we were quietly - and in a secret way - the biggest users of super computer hours within the United States of America."

-General Caine, June 26th, 2025.

The MOP began development in 2004.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4f-XxlW4Dw
 
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mkellytx said:
Wow, General Caine this morning was dynamite. His part of the briefing was masterful, that was expert use of storytelling messaging to be persuasive that separates very good leaders from exceptional ones. Our director of engineering called and insisted that I watch. Just to be clear, I'm not cheerleading a political side, we studied that topic in business school. My admiration is from how hard that is to pull off and come off genuine
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Gen. Caine certainly managed to address and allay some (I'd say even the majority) of the key concerns about the effectiveness of this particular action towards Iran's nuclear program on this occasion. Wouldn't have been hard to improve on previous efforts to describe the strike and its extensive background but thankfully set the bar higher than that. Focused, measured and concise while balancing discretion and openness. It was especially important that he managed to remind everybody that, going forward, DTRA and their counterparts in different guises and contexts certainly won't want for work in this World.
 
Sorry, am I the only one who think of building an underground site and then making a direct ventilation shaft is a bad idea?
I'm not an expert in civil construction, but wouldn't making an "N" shaped ventilation shaft have been safer? Maybe because of ventilation efficiency issues?
It's like building the Death Star and leaving an exhaust port that goes directly down to the reactor... who would ever think that the Rebels could attack right there?
 
Temistocle said:
Sorry, am I the only one who think of building an underground site and then making a direct ventilation shaft is a bad idea?
I'm not an expert in civil construction, but wouldn't making an "N" shaped ventilation shaft have been safer? Maybe because of ventilation efficiency issues?
It's like building the Death Star and leaving an exhaust port that goes directly down to the reactor... who would ever think that the Rebels could attack right there?
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I'm not sure there's an option, at least for massive facilities.
 
Temistocle said:
Sorry, am I the only one who think of building an underground site and then making a direct ventilation shaft is a bad idea?
I'm not an expert in civil construction, but wouldn't making an "N" shaped ventilation shaft have been safer? Maybe because of ventilation efficiency issues?
It's like building the Death Star and leaving an exhaust port that goes directly down to the reactor... who would ever think that the Rebels could attack right there?
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Probably very difficult to drill an N-shaped hole 90m down..
 
Temistocle said:
Sorry, am I the only one who think of building an underground site and then making a direct ventilation shaft is a bad idea?
I'm not an expert in civil construction, but wouldn't making an "N" shaped ventilation shaft have been safer? Maybe because of ventilation efficiency issues?
It's like building the Death Star and leaving an exhaust port that goes directly down to the reactor... who would ever think that the Rebels could attack right there?
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Yes,one does get the feeling that maybe this guy designed the ventilation system
jyn-erso-orson-krennic-galen-erso-mads-mikkelsen-clone-wars-png-favpng-EJ74pvzC8mEUG0Sn1Ww6nxTV5.jpg

I hear he literally wrote the book on thermal exhaust port design. ;)

You make a valid point when it comes to the shape of the ventilation intake ducting,but supposedly the people who built this had never heard of things like s-bends or u-bends,which is weird as they`ve been around for at least the last 245 years in the plumbing industry.
To be blunt this whole thing sounds like a silly mishmash of plot elements from star wars & top gun maverick.
Honestly about all thats missing is the the theme from Team America:World Police:rolleyes:
 
Guys, we would have to see the engineering drawings to see the exact conduit routing. Making conclusions on simplified diagrams presented to ease understanding of the public is not quite rational.

(Notice that I have seen as much stupidity as a man can see in site building, so I am not saying the critic is incorrect but point to the inconsistencies in it. )
 
One has to remember that it's not like putting zig-zags in a trench or U-bends in plumbing. A trench has open air above it, when the blast wave meets an obstruction it can escape upwards, as it does do anyway. When it meets an obstruction in an underground vent shaft it is surrounded by hard compacted earth on all sides except the shaft itself and it won't travel back up because the pressure gradient isn't even close to favourable in that direction. As for drilling U-bends 90m underground, probably quite hard.
 
Temistocle said:
Sorry, am I the only one who think of building an underground site and then making a direct ventilation shaft is a bad idea?
I'm not an expert in civil construction, but wouldn't making an "N" shaped ventilation shaft have been safer? Maybe because of ventilation efficiency issues?
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How would the diagonal shaft be dug? And what is going to support the large "wedge" of rock that is hanging over the diagonal shaft?
 
Temistocle said:
Sorry, am I the only one who think of building an underground site and then making a direct ventilation shaft is a bad idea?
I'm not an expert in civil construction, but wouldn't making an "N" shaped ventilation shaft have been safer? Maybe because of ventilation efficiency issues?
Click to expand...

Probably wasn't an entirely direct shaft (I'd be surprised if it was); in one or another thread here (the "Midnight Hammer" one was closed) I linked to U.S. penetrator studies. Changes in geology, fissures and such can divert the projectile quite a lot. As this was known it can also be accounted for and empirically explored (the testing was something that was obliquely referred to in one of the briefings about the strike). Anyway the Iranians went to the (hasty) trouble of trying to cover the intakes which doesn't imply great confidence in their setup withstanding a GBU-57 w/o additional protection. Hopefully we'll get clarity on this too, eventually.
 
Also the USAF general Caine did say they had an observer(s) there for 16 years. We can only speculate about the design information they were able to extract and forward to US intelligence.
 
Sineva said:
I`ve just given this thread a quick once over and strangely no one seems to have posted the intel labs graphic of fordow,which is based on publicly available data.
View attachment 776621
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I'm hoping that the Mossad had shared that with the US.

This image (and the video) make it look like the vent shafts are angled at odd directions.
 
topspeed3 said:
Some say the damage was minimal:
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That channel has found pretty much the same source material I did (quite easily) pretty much immediately after "Midnight Hammer" strike but they didn't bother to credit the journalists and experts who were previously aware about those and/or unearthed the documents originally. The key takeaways could've been summarized in five minutes. Not that I don't meander or go on tangents here (that'd be a pot calling a kettle black) but the rest of that video didn't really matter.

Certainly the "minimal damage" part is hyperbole (as much as "obliterated" is as well). Everybody's still finding out, on Fordo and all the rest (other sites, recently undeclared sites, heu stock). All I know is that after being hit with the GBU-57s, whatever the Iranians are unearthing at Fordo, I'd hate to be a geologist, geotechnical or structural engineer on a team trying to establish the structural integrity of the place.
 
As mentioned both the IDF and DOD had people on site with knowledge of the whole structure so I’m inclined to believe the report from general Caine.

People using open source intelligence then their own conclusions should garner high levels of scepticism.
 
bobbymike said:
As mentioned both the IDF and DOD had people on site with knowledge of the whole structure so I’m inclined to believe the report from general Caine.

People using open source intelligence then their own conclusions should garner high levels of scepticism.
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General Caine's briefing is easy to believe because it was logical, understandably vague on some details and as to the BDA "we don't grade our own homework" (to quote him).

There are all stripes of open source analysts (with differing motives). The ones I mainly keep tabs on are fmr professionals and/or academics who have often originally embarked upon their fields because historically governments' intelligence and public facing communication in different conjunctions has been proven faulty, in one way or another. These open source analysts have a good track record and are not constitutionally adversarial to those in government, just independent of it. Call it a skeptics' dilemma if you will.

When it comes to what happened to Fordo, the documents they highlighted for the media and thus us (the general public) are the basic earth penetrator science documents upon which those who professionally plan such strikes rely on. These, combined with other data, already set a realistic range of outcomes. This alone is an important public service, especially in the current (social) media environment. Seeing these analysts' visibility metrics, they're actually woefully unknown and unappreciated.
 

Pentagon Moves To Replace Weapons It Used In Operation Midnight Hammer​

www.twz.com

Pentagon Moves To Replace Weapons It Used In Operation Midnight Hammer

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www.twz.com www.twz.com

Iran says enriched nuclear material 'under rubble' of facilities hit during Israel war
www.spacewar.com

Iran says enriched nuclear material 'under rubble' of facilities hit during Israel war

Tehran (AFP) Sept 12, 2025 - Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that enriched nuclear material remained under the rubble of facilities damaged during the recent war with Israel.
www.spacewar.com
 

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