The USAF's distraction to send its B-2 Spirit bombers to Iran by surprise

On Saturday night, the United States Air Force (USAF) carried out an airstrike against three targets of Iran's nuclear program.

The design, interior and operation of the B-2 Spirit, the most expensive aircraft in the world
The Israeli fighter jets of the Operation Am Kalavi against Iran's nuclear program

This attack, codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, came eight days after the start of Israeli airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program on Friday, June 13. The USAF has benefited from the destruction of Iran's air defenses by the Israeli Air Force (IAF), which has destroyed the Iranian dictatorship's surface-to-air missile sites and also a portion of its fighter jets, which have proven inoperable in recent days.

Despite this advantage, the USAF conducted a diversionary operation to protect its most expensive aircraft, the B-2 Spirit bombers, from any still-intact Iranian air defenses, even in the unlikely event that they were able to detect a stealth aircraft with a very low radar signature. The USAF said the strike force flew over the Atlantic Ocean, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and over North Africa and the Mediterranean, eventually passing over Israel, Jordan, and Iraq, entering Iran to the west.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Dan Caine, has acknowledged that they used a diversionary operation to send their B-2s to Iran, because it was a "complex and high-risk" mission and only known to a few people. A classic distraction is to make the enemy think that you are in a different place than where the attack is going to take place. This was one of the keys to the famous Operation Copperhead carried out by the Allies in World War II to make the Germans think that the invasion of France would take place through the Pas de Calais, and not through Normandy.

In this case, The United States sent several B-2 bombers to the island of Guam, in the Pacific Ocean, a flight that was echoed by some media outlets and by some Twitter accounts specialized in military issues, which detected the flight of the B-2s from Whiteman AFB, in Missouri, to Guam, thanks to the planes' transponders. tankers that refueled them during that long journey. Previously, the USAF deployed F-22, F-35 and F-16 fighters in the Middle East, raising concerns about Iran targeting an attack with those aircraft.

Finally, the attack relied on the element of surprise, the stealth that makes the B-2 almost undetectable, and a devastating weapon, which was developed 18 years ago with Iran and the underground bunkers of its nuclear program in mind. That weapon is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), one of the largest conventional bombs in the USAF arsenals, weighing 30,000 pounds (13,608 kg). You can see it exiting the weapons bay of a B-2 in this video posted today by Fly By Wire Aviation:

To give you an idea of ​​the GBU-57 MOP's destructive power, it is heavier than the famous Grand Slam, the seismic bomb used by the British in World War II and the largest conventional bomb used in that war. The Grand Slam weighed 22,000 pounds (10,000 kg), with a 4,144 kg explosive warhead made of Torpex, an explosive developed for torpedoes.

The GBU-57 MOP is 8,000 pounds (3,608 kg) heavier than the Grand Slam, although its warhead is lighter. The MOP carries 2,423 kg (5,000 lb) of two types of explosive: 2,082 kg (4,000 lb) of AFX-757 (a polymer-bonded high explosive used in other guided bombs such as the GBU-39 and the AGM-158 JASSM cruise missile) and 341 kg (750 lb) of PBXN-114, which contains 78% HMX high explosive and 10% aluminum. The bomb is designed to penetrate deep-lying bunkers.

Caine noted that This is the first operational use of the GBU-57 MOP. In total, according to the USAF, 14 MOP bombs hit the designated USAF targets. Considering that a B-2 can carry up to two of these bombs, the attacking force must have consisted of at least seven Spirit bombers. In addition, the US Navy also launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets in Isfahan. The US has confirmed that the Iranian fighters did not take off and their surface-to-air missiles were not fired, which may indicate that Iranian forces did not even detect the attack or that they no longer had the resources to repel it.

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Photos: U.S. Air Force / U.S. Air National Guard.