Only Targets.
President Trump ordered a successful strike of Iran's nuclear facilities.
6 B-2 bombers dropped MOP bombs on Fordow and Natanz
All aircraft involved have returned safely, thanks to excellent planning. stealth, and Israel systematical dismantling Iran's air defense systems, with the B-2s landing back in the United States after a 36-hour mission.
FoxNews: A full breakdown of Operation Midnight Hammer, the 'largest B-2 operational strike in US history'
Hopefully, this sets back Iran's nuclear ambitions for quite some time, making it's nuclear programs pronouns was/were - at least for the immediate future.
Well done Mr. President. The strike has been years overdue.
4 comments:
Since I haven't heard of any radiation leakage, I wonder where they hid their enriched Uranium?
You won't see much for two reasons. First, un-irradiated U235 is hardly radioactive with a half-life of 7.038×10^8 years and U238 is even less active. One curie of radioactive material was originally defined as 1 gram of radium, and that gives a dose of 1 REM per hour at 1 meter. It takes 436kg of U235 to make a curie of material, and that is far, far in excess of the mass need for criticality.
Second, both isotopes decay by alpha emissions which can be blocked by water or a piece of paper, so nothing much is going to get out of the enrichment halls or storage bays.
PS - news reports are 7 B2s dropped 14 MOPs plus 20 cruise missiles from submarines.
Thanks for the very helpful explanation on the subject of nuclear radiation. I admit I don't know much about that type of radiation, although I did work around X-Ray equipment that was used to determine the chemistry of alloys, in order to make adds to the molten metal to bring it into spec. Two different critters completely.
The best thing about this strike is that while Trump's decision took out the nuclear ambitions of Iran for the foreseeable future, it also put the Russians and the Chinese on notice that not only does the U.S. wish peace, but we are capable of defending ourselves and our allies, and quite willing to make that call.
To riff off of RobT, if the nuclear material was in underground facilities, the chance of any radiation being detected by compression flattening said underground facilities is minimal, made even more minimal by the choice of nuclear material, that being uranium.
Given the situation I doubt even plutonium would be detected.
The design of the bombs does that, flattens things under it. Yes, they penetrate and then blow up, but that also uses the earth and materials above to hold in the explosion so it does more, eh, compression of materials below said explosion.
Think of your standard bomb explosions you see. Surface strikes are boomy in a spherical formation. While underground explosions are boomy in a vertical plume formation, the deeper the boom, the less wide the plume, like in a surface mine explosive use.
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