Historic Mission

Related: President Trump’s Great Military Deception Strategy: Took Out Iran’s Nukes, Avoided World War III, and Not One American Died

Inside Operation Midnight Hammer: US dropped 14 bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow nuke site in biggest ever B-2 raid

By: NY Post, June 22, 2025

The US strike on Iranian nuclear sites — dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer” — was the biggest ever attack by B-2 stealth bombers, and the longest flight the aircraft have made since 2001.

It also marked the first time that the US used the massive, 15-ton GBU-57 bunker buster bombs in a military attack — and the US used 14 of them.

The highly coordinated strike took Tehran by utter surprise Saturday night, with the terrorist state not launching any attacks at incoming American military personnel, according to Chief of the Joint Staff Gen. Dan Caine.

“We are currently unaware of any shots fired at the US strike package on the way in,” he said during a press conference with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon Sunday. “… We are unaware of any shots fired at the package on the way out.”

“Iran’s fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran’s surface to air missile systems did not see us throughout the mission. We retained the element of surprise,” he added.

The 25-minute operation inside Iran began at 6:40 p.m. ET, with a lead American B-2 bomber dropped two GBU-57 “bunker buster” munitions on the “first of several aim points at Fordow,” Caine said.
“The remaining bombers then hit their targets, as well, with a total of 14 MOPs (Massive Ordnance Penetrators) dropped against two nuclear target areas,” he said.

Bunker busters: Everything to know about the $500M bombs

A 15-ton “bunker buster” bomb was likely needed to destroy the last untouched nuclear facility in Iran, and only the US had one.

Such a powerful weapon — the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal — was needed because the target, the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, is built some 300 feet inside a mountain near the city of Qom, two hours south of Tehran.

The heavyweight explosive is known as a GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator and was designed by Boeing for the United States Air Force.

Its huge weight means it can only be delivered with a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber — a jet that Israel’s air force does not possess.

“The United States controls the bomber and the bomb,” John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point military academy, recently told The Post.