- US used 12 bunker-buster bombs in strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities
- Bombs targeted ventilation shafts at Fordow, penetrating over 1,000 feet per second
- Strikes on Natanz and Isfahan involved fewer bombs and a submarine-launched missile
On Thursday, in a news conference at the Pentagon, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described in great detail the planning and execution of the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Gen. Caine shared test footage of the bunker buster bombs. 12 of these were used during the Iran strikes, a US official told CNN.
They pushed back against the classified Defense Intelligence Agency report that the attacks damaged the facilities but did not destroy them, and that the country's nuclear programme has been pushed only by a few months.
Hegseth said that the strike was "decimating - choose your word - obliterating, destroying." He added that the report was "low confidence" and had "gaps in the information".
They played videos of how the bombing took place on the nuclear sites, explaining how the bombers attacked. Unlike other normal bombs, the damage done by a bunker-buster bomb, cannot be seen on the surface level. They are designed to deeply bury and then function.
"A bomb has three effects that cause damage: blast, fragmentation and overpressure. In this case, the primary kill mechanisms in the mission space were a mix of overpressure and blast," Gen Caine added.
Hegseth blamed the media for questioning the success of the strike and said the media cannot cheer for Trump. "Searching for scandals, you miss historic moments like recruiting at the Pentagon, historic levels in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy", he said.
Gen. Caine did not get political, but focussed on the two officers at the Defence Threat Reduction Agency who studied the subterranean nuclear plant at Fordow for 15 years to plan the attack, the personnel who developed the 30,000-pound bombs that the B-2's dropped, the crew who flew the 37-hour mission, and the troops who defended an American base from Iranian retaliation.
He described how all the six bombs "went exactly where they were intended to go" and added that "unlike a normal surface bomb, you won't see an impact crater". He said the bombs targeted ventilation shafts located on the opposite sides of Fordow, that Iran tried to cover with concrete before the strikes.
On each side, he said, the first bomb opened the shaft and the four bombs after it entered "at greater than 1,000 feet per second". The final and sixth bomb would act like a "flex weapon" in case any of the bombs preceding it had an issue.
However, they did not speak about Natanz, which was attacked with only two penetrator bombs, and Isfahan, which was struck by only one missile fired from a Navy submarine. Asked by reporters on what happened to the 880 pounds of uranium buried in the underground tunnels at Isfahan, Hegseth said, "We're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where."
US President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to share that, "The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out of facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move."
