This headline has been circulating but it's "technically correct but entirely wrong".
You don't destroy a facility by bombing through concrete and exploding it. This isn't an action movie.
You overpressure the structure with a shockwave.
By targeting the vents, we've produced a 200m crater showing that the shockwave did violate the facilities containment. That place is gone.
This is the same sort of silly as "but they didn't blow up the reactors!" No, they intentionally avoided them to avoid throwing radiological material into civilian areas.
We can detect a pencil size rod of uranium from satellite and plane - because we've informed countries when they have had radiological leaks. If Iran moved any meaningful material (doubtful, uranium is hard to transport when enriched..) then the US knows where.
I don’t think people realize this is going to escalate the conflict. There are other bunker busters that can do the job, but they are all nuclear.
Been saying that since before the bombing.
You can inherently dig deeper than you can bomb. Mines go miles down. The odds are not in your favour unless you know it’s shallow and soft - and administration is giving more yolo vibes than knowing vibes
The HTML title is a better description of the article:
> Why the Strongest Bombs Can’t Crack [High] Performance Military Concrete
The Iranian state is playing the long game by letting Israel and the US celebrate their victories while they carry on with their plans. They will let the big boys bust a few rocks here and there if that's what it takes.
> You can damage the entrances, take out the aerials, and cut off communication to a command bunker with hits in the right places. In military terms, it might as well be a crater, even if the occupants are unharmed.
This seems like nonsense. Rebuilding an entire facility from a crater is so much work that you may just as well build it elsewhere.
Fixing entrances and aerials seems trivial in comparison.
> Hypersonics are missiles which travel through the atmosphere at speeds in excess of Mach 5. Equipped with tungsten penetrators, they could act as “rods from God,” punching through layered concrete like an armor-piercing bullet. With no explosive warhead, such weapons do damage through kinetic energy alone.
Then what, though? Underground installations are not like bodies; you can't just expect to take one out by shooting through the brain, heart or lungs (which is hard enough to do as it is). Unless you're launching 100 non-explosive hypersonic missiles, you're probably not going to do much damage.
Maybe the hypersonic missile can be used to create a path for a normal warhead to penetrate to where the explosive can do the required amount of damage. That's going to require some pretty precise needle-threading, though.
Alternatively, the hypersonic missiles could have a core of extremely radioactive material.
Related:
Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites
I heard mention somewhere that 40 large trucks were at the site weeks before.
Was this attack just all for show, did they move everything?
Given the extremely vibration sensitive nature of centrifuges, significant damage may still have been caused without the bombs penetrating the concrete. Although based on the latest report from the Pentagon it may only have set program back by months.
Interesting discussion on concrete. I wonder whether additive manufacturing could help create stronger concrete structures.
Everything is signalling.
It's important to add that it isn't just concrete -- but the relevant installation was under ~100m of granite.