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Comment on In a First, America Dropped 30,000-Pound Bunker-Busters—But Iran’s Concrete May Be Unbreakable, Scientists Say

Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Holy nothing burger, Batman!

First off, this article is from 2022, re-released to farm clicks from the current hype cycle.

Secondly, this is conjecture on top of conjecture. They discuss that we can’t know the current damage from satellite, and Iran down plays the damage. Then they go on to say “concrete is strong and can be stronger”.

Articles like this annoy me. It’s all based on lots of unsubstantiated claims, and then one guy’s theoretical research. We don’t know the strength of the bombs. We don’t know the strength of Iran’s bunkers. We don’t know how much damage was done. None of this has changed. I doubt we’ll ever really know. But throw whatever political spin on it you want, and now you’ve got a click worthy news article.

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tyler@programming.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I thought we do know the depth of the bunkers though. And that American bombs can’t go that deep, even multiple of them

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- Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I can’t speak to that aspect. But I firmly believe that if our military planned and carried out this strike, then we had very good evidence that their bunkers were at a depth these ordinance could reach.
  
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  - Saleh@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The US intelligence community kept asserting that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon as late as Spring 2025.
    
    Nothing of this was based on consistent intelligence.
    
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  - surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Why would we bother with that level of analysis just to distract people from ICE raids?
    
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  - Coyote_sly@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Consider who actually makes this decision, in this case. It’s highly likely our intelligence assessment here is very accurate; it’s also highly likely to be ignored by the dipshits actually making the call if it’s not what they want to hear.
    
    Like they did publicly. On this conflict. To the press.
    
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Buelldozer@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There’s also the fact that the majority of Iran’s nuclear facilities were built before UHPC was available!

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- Saleh@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  In the late 2000s, for instance, rumors circulated about a bunker in Iran struck by a bunker-buster bomb. The bomb had failed to penetrate—and remained embedded in—the surface of the bunker, presumably until the occupants called in a bomb-disposal team. Rather than smashing through the concrete, the bomb had been unexpectedly stopped dead. The reason was not hard to guess: Iran was a leader in the new technology of Ultra High Performance Concrete, or UHPC, and its latest concrete advancements were evidently too much for standard bunker busters.
  
  en.wikipedia.org/…/Fordow_Fuel_Enrichment_Plant
  
  Construction on the facility started in 2006, but the existence of the enrichment plant was only disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by Iran on 21 September 2009,[6][7] after the site became known to Western intelligence services. Western officials strongly condemned Iran for not disclosing the site earlier;
  
  Seems to fall into the same timeframe.
  
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- Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I was suspicious of that as well, but I’m not knowledgeable enough on that subject to speak on it, so didn’t include it. But I doubt any country can build that extensive of a nuclear factory in so few years.
  
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