Pickaxe Mountain next? New activity at US bunker-buster test site fuels speculation

Construction work at an obscure underground weapons test site in New Mexico is drawing fresh attention, with CNN reporting the activity may be tied to planning for a potential future strike on Iran's toughest nuclear facility, Pickaxe Mountain, a site the US and Israel have notably left untouched through multiple rounds of strikes so far.The link traces back to February 27, the day before the initial wave of US-Israeli strikes on Iran, when the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) quietly awarded a sole-source contract to Pate Construction for work at the Alternate Seismic Hardrock in Situ Test (ALT-SHIST) site, tucked inside the sprawling White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico's Jornada del Muerto desert. DTRA, a relatively low-profile agency, leads US military efforts on countering weapons of mass destruction.