The Pentagon released stunning footage Thursday showcasing exactly how 30,000-pound heavy-duty bunker-buster bombs work such as the ones used against Iran’s nuclear sites demolished fortified targets deep underground.
The video showed a GBU-57 series MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) crashing into a target and kicking up a massive plume of dust moments before a blinding inferno appeared in a shaft during a test detonation.
Pilots who dropped the MOPs on Iran called the blast “the brightest explosion” they ever saw, saying, “it literally looked like daylight.”
The MOPs used in the strike — which can only be dropped by a B-2 Stealth Bomber — were developed in 2009 after the US learned of the existence of the Fordow uranium enrichment plant.
“Unlike a normal surface bomb, you won’t see an impact crater because they’re designed to deeply bury and then function,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Caine explained to reporters during a press briefing Thursday.
“All six weapons at each vent at Fordow [uranium enrichment plant] went exactly where they were intended to go.”
Another angle displayed during the briefing showed an MOP hitting a target in slow motion and cutting through the arched interior of a second ventilation shaft without detonating as it moved its way deeper through the test facility.
“A bomb has three effects that causes damage: blast, fragmentation and overpressure,” he explained. “In this case, the primary kill mechanisms in the mission space was a mix of overpressure and blast.”
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“Imagine what this looks like six times over.”
