Will Trump’s bunker buster bombs punch through Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain?
This article examines the technical capabilities of the US GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) in the context of potential strikes against Iranian underground nuclear facilities. It explains the physics of kinetic energy and bunker-busting technology.
Why it matters
It provides technical context for the ongoing military tensions between the US and Iran, specifically regarding the effectiveness of conventional weaponry against hardened targets.
Conventional bombs explode on or near a target surface, with the explosion and fragments, e.g. shrapnel, rendering the bomb’s damage. But when a target is buried deep under a mountain, the soil and rock mass surrounding it can absorb enough of the blast’s energy to keep the target from being damaged too much.
This is the situation facing the Donald Trump administration as it mulls plans to bomb Pickaxe Mountain in Iran, where The Wall Street Journal has reported Israel believes Tehran has moved several centrifuges — the machines that purify uranium to make an a-bomb.
The need to bomb targets under a thick layer of earth led scientists to invent bunker buster bombs. Instead of exploding when they come in contact with the earth, these bombs are designed to penetrate soil, rock, and even reinforced concrete before detonating.
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