Which, it should be pointed out, is almost certainly never going to happen from an air campaign alone, either by Israel or the US. People are talking like a regime change is possible outcome here and that is laughably implausible. Even if senior figures like the Supreme Leader are killed they will not meaningfully change the regime in any way (hell Iran killing Trump or Netenyahu would be more like regime change than the Israel or the US killing Khamenei)
You think that the idea (that only the B2 bomber is capable of delivering this bomb) is the result of one journalist’s misunderstanding and that this false idea somehow spread to every other journalist, newspaper and news source throughout the world? That is one powerful meme.
And here is an Air Force article that says, “The B-2 Spirit is the only aircraft in the Air Force programmed to employ the MOP.”
So the infection has reached into the Pentagon.
Programmed, not capable.
Though actually thinking about this. Do we have any evidence Israel has less capable bunker busters than than US. They have a very sophisticated defence industry and more reason than anyone else have to develop bombs than can destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. It’s not like bunker busters are some crazy technology only available to nuclear superpowers.
I suspect all this discussion (the whole “US bunker busters are needed to destroy Iranian nukes” talking point, not this specific SDMB thread) is just an attempt to bring the US into the war.
If it is, it’s almost certainly because the Air Force realized that the mission would need stealth, not because it’s physically impossible to drop it from a B-52. Because, again, we have an actual picture of a B-52 dropping one in testing.
Why this matters is because we are talking about this in the context of Israel and a hypothetical use against Iran. It might help if I make explicit what I have been implying: if the US wanted to give one or more bombs to Israel to use against Iran, it wouldn’t need to give them a B-2 as well merely to carry and drop the bomb, if physics was the only concern. There is almost certainly a way to configure some other aircraft to deploy the bomb, only that aircraft wouldn’t have the stealth capability of the B-2.
ETA: Also, “programmed to employ the MOP” is kind of a weasel word on the part of the Air Force. “Programmed to employ” is not synonymous with “capable of employing.” It speaks more to mission profiles and planning than to physical capability.
No. I have to keep reminding myself the facility was not named after a hobbit.
This was my thought too. We may end up with a situation like Saddam after the first Gulf War, where aircraft (Israeli, or USA) roam the skies at will and occasionally take out this or that site.
But Netanyahu has obviously rolled the dice for a situation where the USA is now impelled to get involved, forcing America’s hand. After all, nothing says “build a bomb, ASAP” like your enemy thinking they can randomly carpet-bomb your country.
If the lesson of Iraq after Gulf II is lost on assorted leaders, you will likely see the same dynamic; America will have to do the occupying, Israel does not have the troops or equipment for a country that size; but in the minds of most Iranians, they will not be liberators but the puppets of their enemy Israel.
Which is why it is even more imperative in Israel’s plans that Frodo not survive…
… and there’s another one…
::: psst! It’s FORdo, not Frodo ::::
The question is, what does it take to “configure” an aircraft to drop this bomb? As has been pointed out above, at least one B-52 was modified enough to do this once in testing, but how extensive were those modifications? Did that particular plane keep those modifications?
If no current B-52s are configured to drop this bomb, making the modifications may not be a trivial exercise. It’s well known that making major alterations to aircraft is a complicated process, and it takes lots of time and money to make sure the plane doesn’t fall out of the sky because you missed something.
So it may be that a B-2 is the only viable option because it would take too long to modify a B-52, just for one particular mission.
Not to mention the tiny detail of not sharing a land border with Iran. There is almost no chance of the US launching a large scale land invasion of Iran. There is zero chance of Israel doing so. It’s as plausible as them launching a ground invasion of Mars
This. It is one thing to put together a one-off modification used for testing in a benign controlled environment, it is another thing to develop a fully qualified delivery system for combat deployment.
Even if a kludged modification would be acceptable to the Israelis, an Israeli crew would need to be trained to fly a B-52. Ground crew would also need to be trained. Plus gifting Israel a long-range strategic bomber would likely rankle large chunks of the the international community.
The only way to get the MOP onto the bunker anytime real soon is for the US to do it with a B2 bomber.
Though what evidence is there that the Israelis don’t have a similar (or even more effective) weapon available to them? Big fast heavy ground penetrating bombs are not super complicated to make (the one used on saddams deep bunkers in the Gulf War was famously thrown together at short notice from a howitzer barrel)
They have clearly been planning how to destroy this specific facility for a long time (and have ample intelligence about it, they have even been able to blow up the specific scientists that work there in their beds)
The fact that the facility continues to exist is, I think, evidence that the Israeli government does not have an effective weapon. Surely they would have destroyed it already had they the means to do so.
They don’t have a combat aircraft capable of carrying a bomb weighing 30,000lbs. You’d need a strategic bomber to be capable of carrying a single bomb weighing that much, which limits the field to the US, Russia and China.
The F-15EI, which has the largest ordnance capacity in the Israeli Air Force, has a rated capacity of 29,500lbs spread out over 23 hardpoints. I’d be very surprised if it could lift any individual weapon weighing even 6,000lbs.
Or that they have designed it sufficiently well to survive ground penetrating bombs. Both sides have been competing to beat the other, Iran has been designing it’s facilities to survive ground penetrating bombs, Israel and the US have been designing their bombs to destroy whatever the Iranians build
Whatever happened to the facility has happened far below ground so we don’t know what damage has been inflicted
In a hole in the ground there lived a fuel enrichment plant.
Just doesn’t have the same zing.
Netanyahu has suggested that his government might use non military measures to end the enrichment program. Perhaps something like the Stuxnet malware?
Check out Dewey’s link. The latest bunker buster penetrates much further into the earth than previous versions. 130-200 feet vs 25 feet. Go to the wiki link to see the extended development period. Yes, I’m guessing a middle level power could develop such a weapon, but that doesn’t mean they did. As it is, it is thought that the US will need more than one of these bombs to destroy the complex, which is 260 feet or more underground.
(Also, as this would be the weapon’s first use in combat, we can’t be certain that it will work as advertised.)
Th reason I didn’t ask if it could do it at all was because I obviously knew the answer to that question: Of course it can, because all aircraft can fly a zero-g parabolic arc. The question is just how long it can sustain that flight pattern.
Even if the facility is sufficiently hardened to survive the MOP or something similar, does Israel know that? How confident are they in that fact? I think it’s pretty safe to say that, if Israel had something comparable to the MOP, they would already have tried it, and if they had tried it, the world would know.