Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Nathan Gay.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan
"Razin" Caine in a Thursday press conference with Defense Secratary Pete Hegseth provided a detailed description of the American strikes and released video showing how bunker-buster bombs crippled Iran's nuclear facilities.
Caine revealed that the United States military had developed the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, better known as bunker buster bombs, more than 15 years ago, specifically with Iran's nuclear program in mind.
He showed several military graphics and videos showcasing exactly how the bombers were to inflict extensive damage at Iran's Fordo nuclear site.
"All six weapons at each vent at Fordo went exactly where they were intended to go. A bomb has three effects that causes damage: blast, fragmentation, and overpressure," Caine said.
"In this case, the primary kill mechanism in the mission space was a mix of overpressure and blast ripping through the open tunnels and destroying critical hardware."
Thursday's press conference comes after the Trump administration accused CNN, The New York Times, and other legacy media outlets of attempting to torpedo the success of the strikes, quoting a leaked preliminary assessment that said the attack only set Iran's nuclear program back by months.
"The majority of the damage we assessed based on our extensive modeling was a blast layer combined with the impulse extending from the shock. Imagine what this looks like six times over," Caine added.
The media asked Gen. Caine if he was pressured to provide a rosy assessment of the destruction at Fordo, to which he pushed back,
"No, I have not, and no, I would not."
The U.S. strike on Fordo primarily focused on two ventilation shafts as the
"primary point of entry into the mission space," Caine said.
"In the days preceding the attack against Fordo, the Iranians attempted to cover the shafts with concrete to try to prevent an attack," he said.
"I won't share the specific dimensions of the concrete cap, but you should know that we know what the dimensions of those concrete caps were. The planners had to account for this. They accounted for everything."
"The cap was forcibly removed by the first weapon, and the main shaft was uncovered. Weapons two, three, four, five were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1,000 feet per second, and explode in the mission space. Weapon number six was designed as a flex weapon to allow us to cover if one of the preceding jets or one of the preceding weapons did not work. There were six on each side."
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