Twelve MOPs reported deployed at Fordow. Two clusters of 3 bores each (6 total) are visible in widely distributed Maxar images and presumed to be the result of dual MOP strikes, i.e., two GBU-57s per single bore, with the second chasing the pilot bore. But alternatives remain…
The publicly disclosed penetration capacity of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator in 2007 was 60 meters through 5,000 psi reinforced concrete. Since then, high-energetics research has advanced considerably. Even based on those older figures, the GBU-57 can penetrate up to 200 meters through loose soil and rock overburden—far exceeding the depth of Fordow’s hardened subterranean enrichment halls which are widely assessed to lie beneath ~80–90 meters of mountain overburden with reinforced internal structures.
The GBU-57s appear to have exploited preexisting ventilation shaft openings or legacy shafts (shown in the 2009 plate below).
According to reporting, twelve of these munitions were deployed. The prevailing assumption is that six penetrations were executed in two clusters of three strike points—visible in Maxar post-strike satellite imagery widely circulated on social media—i.e., dual deployment in each of the three bores, visible in the two clusters on the north-south ridgeline axis of Kuh-e Dagh Ghui. However, alternative scenarios remain.
For example, it is possible that a lighter bunker-busting ordnance such as the GBU-72 Advanced 5K Penetrator—a 5,000-pound-class precision-guided munition developed as an evolution of the legacy GBU-28—was used to probe for vulnerability points prior to GBU-57 release. If that was the case, what we may wind up seeing is two shallow craters and one bore in each cluster. In that case, it’s possible that 6 GBU-57 MOPs were deployed and timed to detonate at depth through a single pilot bore in each cluster.
Once the outer shell of the target is breached, the munitions would strike enriched radiological material, dispersing it like a dirty bomb and contaminating the facility. The full extent of such contamination remains to be determined, and may have been constrained by the facility’s compartmented design.
Still, the real constraint in a strike of this nature is not depth, but accuracy. Given the architectural schematics exfiltrated by Israeli intelligence in 2018, as well as IAEA monitoring since 2011, the probability of strike success depends primarily on the accuracy of intelligence regarding the internal layout and precise coordinates of Fordow’s subterranean infrastructure.
The IAEA’s November 2015 safeguards report publicly identified two underground units at the facility, including sixteen cascade pits and the IR-1 inventory, which were monitored by surveillance cameras. A snap inspection conducted on 21 January 2023 confirmed the reconfiguration of two IR-6 cascades for 60% enrichment, documenting their specific hall coordinates and associated pipework routed through the facility’s ventilation vestibules. Inspectors directly observed centrifuge mounting pads, pipe conduits, vacuum lines, and installation status.
Based on this, it is likely that DIA and U.S. Air Force planners possessed precise intelligence on the location of Fordow’s ventilation shafts and the positions of the enrichment halls beneath Kuh-e Dagh Ghui’s ridgeline.
Although IAEA inspections were not intrusive with respect to the site’s full geotechnical profile—leaving open the possibility that Iran constructed auxiliary, inaccessible, or decoy features—once camera footage, inspector logs, and access documentation were obtained, those same architectural details could be exploited by targeting models for deep penetration strikes.
Any Iranian post-monitoring denial efforts—such as decoy shafts, dummy adits, false ventilation corridors, or mirrored tunnels—were likely anticipated and neutralized by contingency strategies developed by U.S. Air Force and DIA mission planners.
The full extent of the damage remains uncertain. A preliminary “low-confidence” DIA assessment and based on just a single day of intelligence collection was leaked. Commenting on this leaked DIA report, former weapons inspector David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security assessed that “Iran has likely lost close to 20,000 centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow, creating a major bottleneck in any reconstitution effort. Moreover, there has been considerable damage to Iran’s ability to build the nuclear weapon itself.”
(See: x.com/davidhalbright…)
Axios, citing an Israeli official with direct access to intelligence on Iran, reported that intercepted SIGINT suggests Iranian military officials have been delivering false situation reports to the country’s political leadership—deliberately downplaying the extent of the damage.
The Maxar frame now in circulation offers only a surface-level snapshot. However, post-strike airborne sampling platforms—such as the WC-135 Constant Phoenix and U-2 Dragon Lady—likely loitered downwind to detect trace aerosols of uranium hexafluoride or fluorine-bearing byproducts, which would have been released had the UF₆ feed system been breached.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard echoed this assessment, posting: “New intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians choose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do.” She criticized media outlets for deploying “their usual tactic: selectively release portions of illegally leaked classified intelligence assessments (intentionally leaving out the fact that the assessment was written with ‘low confidence’).”
(See: x.com/dnigabbard/sta…)
Detection of such signatures may have informed the new military intelligence assessments the DNI references, indicating that the site was structurally compromised or fully destroyed.
The north cluster, west of the ridge line of Kuh-e Dagh Ghui shown below:
The publicly disclosed penetration capacity of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator in 2007 was 60 meters through 5,000 psi reinforced concrete. Since then, high-energetics research has advanced considerably. Even based on those older figures, the GBU-57 can penetrate up to 200 meters through loose soil and rock overburden—far exceeding the depth of Fordow’s hardened subterranean enrichment halls which are widely assessed to lie beneath ~80–90 meters of mountain overburden with reinforced internal structures.
The GBU-57s appear to have exploited preexisting ventilation shaft openings or legacy shafts (shown in the 2009 plate below).
According to reporting, twelve of these munitions were deployed. The prevailing assumption is that six penetrations were executed in two clusters of three strike points—visible in Maxar post-strike satellite imagery widely circulated on social media—i.e., dual deployment in each of the three bores, visible in the two clusters on the north-south ridgeline axis of Kuh-e Dagh Ghui. However, alternative scenarios remain.
For example, it is possible that a lighter bunker-busting ordnance such as the GBU-72 Advanced 5K Penetrator—a 5,000-pound-class precision-guided munition developed as an evolution of the legacy GBU-28—was used to probe for vulnerability points prior to GBU-57 release. If that was the case, what we may wind up seeing is two shallow craters and one bore in each cluster. In that case, it’s possible that 6 GBU-57 MOPs were deployed and timed to detonate at depth through a single pilot bore in each cluster.
Once the outer shell of the target is breached, the munitions would strike enriched radiological material, dispersing it like a dirty bomb and contaminating the facility. The full extent of such contamination remains to be determined, and may have been constrained by the facility’s compartmented design.
Still, the real constraint in a strike of this nature is not depth, but accuracy. Given the architectural schematics exfiltrated by Israeli intelligence in 2018, as well as IAEA monitoring since 2011, the probability of strike success depends primarily on the accuracy of intelligence regarding the internal layout and precise coordinates of Fordow’s subterranean infrastructure.
The IAEA’s November 2015 safeguards report publicly identified two underground units at the facility, including sixteen cascade pits and the IR-1 inventory, which were monitored by surveillance cameras. A snap inspection conducted on 21 January 2023 confirmed the reconfiguration of two IR-6 cascades for 60% enrichment, documenting their specific hall coordinates and associated pipework routed through the facility’s ventilation vestibules. Inspectors directly observed centrifuge mounting pads, pipe conduits, vacuum lines, and installation status.
Based on this, it is likely that DIA and U.S. Air Force planners possessed precise intelligence on the location of Fordow’s ventilation shafts and the positions of the enrichment halls beneath Kuh-e Dagh Ghui’s ridgeline.
Although IAEA inspections were not intrusive with respect to the site’s full geotechnical profile—leaving open the possibility that Iran constructed auxiliary, inaccessible, or decoy features—once camera footage, inspector logs, and access documentation were obtained, those same architectural details could be exploited by targeting models for deep penetration strikes.
Any Iranian post-monitoring denial efforts—such as decoy shafts, dummy adits, false ventilation corridors, or mirrored tunnels—were likely anticipated and neutralized by contingency strategies developed by U.S. Air Force and DIA mission planners.
The full extent of the damage remains uncertain. A preliminary “low-confidence” DIA assessment and based on just a single day of intelligence collection was leaked. Commenting on this leaked DIA report, former weapons inspector David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security assessed that “Iran has likely lost close to 20,000 centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow, creating a major bottleneck in any reconstitution effort. Moreover, there has been considerable damage to Iran’s ability to build the nuclear weapon itself.”
(See: x.com/davidhalbright…)
Axios, citing an Israeli official with direct access to intelligence on Iran, reported that intercepted SIGINT suggests Iranian military officials have been delivering false situation reports to the country’s political leadership—deliberately downplaying the extent of the damage.
The Maxar frame now in circulation offers only a surface-level snapshot. However, post-strike airborne sampling platforms—such as the WC-135 Constant Phoenix and U-2 Dragon Lady—likely loitered downwind to detect trace aerosols of uranium hexafluoride or fluorine-bearing byproducts, which would have been released had the UF₆ feed system been breached.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard echoed this assessment, posting: “New intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians choose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do.” She criticized media outlets for deploying “their usual tactic: selectively release portions of illegally leaked classified intelligence assessments (intentionally leaving out the fact that the assessment was written with ‘low confidence’).”
(See: x.com/dnigabbard/sta…)
Detection of such signatures may have informed the new military intelligence assessments the DNI references, indicating that the site was structurally compromised or fully destroyed.
The north cluster, west of the ridge line of Kuh-e Dagh Ghui shown below:
IAEA technical documents model how UF₆ releases disperse when exposed to atmospheric moisture. Their studies find that uranium, in the form of UO₂F₂ aerosols, behaves like a passive gas cloud under low-wind conditions and travels downwind for kilometers before deposition, depending on particle size and atmospheric mixing. It confirms that fluorine-bearing aerosols form quickly, persist in suspension, and settle slowly.
Specifically, Uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) sublimes at approximately 56.5 °C and reacts vigorously with atmospheric moisture to form uranyl fluoride (UO₂F₂) and hydrofluoric acid (HF) aerosols. These reaction products form respirable particulates typically in the 0.1–5 µm size range, which can remain airborne for moderate distances before settling. Aerosol particulate fallout rates depend on size but typically settle at ~0.005 m/s—suggesting many particles travel several kilometers before descending.
Note that UF6 is not a high-emission gamma source. If there was any venting of UF6 or fluorine-bearing compounds it occurred from the high-altitude exit point on the Kuh-e Dagh Ghui ridgeline—not the valley floor or adjacent civilian zones. Israeli airstrikes reportedly destroyed access roads and targeted at least one convoy en route to the site. In any case, civilian radiation detectors are generally tuned for gamma-emitting isotopes (e.g., iodine-131, cesium-137), not low-activity uranium aerosols. The specific activity of natural UF₆ is about 17 kBq/g (~12.4 Bq/g from ²³⁸U, 80 Bq/g from ²³⁵U). Concentration traces would therefore fall below typical civilian detection thresholds, especially once diluted.
Reading
AF.mil WC-135 Constant Phoenix Fact Sheet af.mil/About-Us/Fact-…
INIS IAEA PDF: “Model performance evaluations … fluohydric acid and the uranium (in the form of UO₂F₂ aerosols) disperse like passive gases.”
inis.iaea.org/records/068n7-…
INIS. IAEA. (2025). Sampling, characterization, and remote sensing of aerosols formed from uranium hexafluoride release [PDF]. International Nuclear Information System.
inis.iaea.org/records/3n3wb-…
Specifically, Uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) sublimes at approximately 56.5 °C and reacts vigorously with atmospheric moisture to form uranyl fluoride (UO₂F₂) and hydrofluoric acid (HF) aerosols. These reaction products form respirable particulates typically in the 0.1–5 µm size range, which can remain airborne for moderate distances before settling. Aerosol particulate fallout rates depend on size but typically settle at ~0.005 m/s—suggesting many particles travel several kilometers before descending.
Note that UF6 is not a high-emission gamma source. If there was any venting of UF6 or fluorine-bearing compounds it occurred from the high-altitude exit point on the Kuh-e Dagh Ghui ridgeline—not the valley floor or adjacent civilian zones. Israeli airstrikes reportedly destroyed access roads and targeted at least one convoy en route to the site. In any case, civilian radiation detectors are generally tuned for gamma-emitting isotopes (e.g., iodine-131, cesium-137), not low-activity uranium aerosols. The specific activity of natural UF₆ is about 17 kBq/g (~12.4 Bq/g from ²³⁸U, 80 Bq/g from ²³⁵U). Concentration traces would therefore fall below typical civilian detection thresholds, especially once diluted.
Reading
AF.mil WC-135 Constant Phoenix Fact Sheet af.mil/About-Us/Fact-…
INIS IAEA PDF: “Model performance evaluations … fluohydric acid and the uranium (in the form of UO₂F₂ aerosols) disperse like passive gases.”
inis.iaea.org/records/068n7-…
INIS. IAEA. (2025). Sampling, characterization, and remote sensing of aerosols formed from uranium hexafluoride release [PDF]. International Nuclear Information System.
inis.iaea.org/records/3n3wb-…
Overpressure modeling using Weibull’s confined-space overpressure formula, GBU-57 TNT equivalence and Fordow facility dimension estimates and confinement assumptions.
https://x.com/danlinnaeus/status/1938015187321205227
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