[Bigiron] Aviation Week :: How Israel Paved The Way In Iran For The Largest U.S. B-2 Strike To Date

Fri Jun 27 13:20:03 PDT 2025

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Subject: Aviation Week :: How Israel Paved The Way In Iran For The Largest U.S. B-2 Strike To Date

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How Israel Paved The Way In Iran For The Largest U.S. B-2 Strike To Date
Steve Trimble<https://aviationweek.com/author/steve-trimble> Brian Everstine<https://aviationweek.com/author/brian-everstine> Robert Wall<https://aviationweek.com/author/robert-wall> June 27, 2025
[Night vision view of B-21 bomber]

The U.S. conducted the largest B-2 raid when bombers took off from Whiteman AFB, Missouri, to strike Iran before returning home in their nonstop mission.
Credit: U.S. Air Force

Air superiority is back. After more than three years of fighting in which Russia failed to win control of the skies over Ukraine, the Israel Defense Forces’ 12-day operation against Iran provided something of a master class in gaining control of an adversary’s airspace—and, with help from the U.S., showed what could be done afterward.

The culmination: the largest B-2 bomber raid to date using the U.S. Air Force’s biggest conventional bomb to go after Iran’s hardest-to-reach nuclear infrastructure.

Seven Northrop B-2s flew east over the Atlantic, through Iraqi airspace and eventually into Iran late June 21 to deliver 14 Boeing GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP), more than half the total known to have been produced, in what was called Operation Midnight Hammer.

  *   The U.S. employed a B-2 diversion to set the stage for Iran raid
  *   "The campaign against Iran is not over,” the IDF chief of staff says
  *   Israel debuted air and missile defense capabilities

The lead B-2 dropped its two 30,000-lb.-class MOP on the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, hitting the first of several aimpoints. The rest of the bombers followed.

As a diversion, several B-2s launched from their home base of Whiteman AFB in Missouri earlier on June 21, heading west with refueling tankers lined up to support their trip. That flight was purposefully trackable as a decoy. The actual strike package involved 125 aircraft, including fighters, tankers and other support aircraft. The operation used 75 precision-guided munitions, including the MOP, Tomahawk attack missiles and suppression of enemy air defense weapons, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters June 22.

Iran responded in a well-telegraphed and calibrated manner on June 23, firing a volley of 14 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles at Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East. Doha said that its air defenses intercepted the missiles, and no one was hurt. The U.S. also helped intercept incoming threats. Caine said on June 26 that two U.S. Patriot batteries had defended the base in what the U.S. believes was the largest single engagement using the missile defense system. Qatari Patriot crews also participated.

Iranian state media posted a video shortly after the attack showing it had targeted the base and saying that the mission, called Promise of Victory, included about the same number of missiles U.S. forces had dropped on Iran. The attack appeared to have been limited in scope, potentially in an effort by Tehran to show it would respond but trying to avoid potential escalation with Washington.
[Satellite photo of damage at Natanz nuclear facility]Satellite imagery captured bomb damage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility on June 22, hours after the U.S. struck. Credit: Planet

Qatar and other countries in the region had closed their airspace, diverting or halting commercial air traffic that in many cases had been rerouted already by the fighting. Since the start of hostilities, major Gulf and international carriers have canceled flights to Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria and neighboring countries.

While U.S. President Donald Trump initially asserted that the strike wiped out Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, intelligence reports suggested that was not clear. In remarks on June 25 during the NATO Summit, Trump acknowledged that the leaked intelligence assessment could be correct but then restated his certainty that the targets were destroyed. The performance of penetrator munitions against underground targets is notoriously difficult to assess from a distance.

If the GBU-57s penetrated deep enough into the main target at Fordow, the impact could have damaged the centrifuges used to enrich uranium. These devices are highly sensitive to small vibrations, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said at an emergency meeting of the organization’s board of governors on June 25.

After the B-2 strike, immediate hostilities largely ceased June 24 through the efforts of Qatari intermediaries with U.S. backing as well as the public badgering of Israel and Iran by Trump.

Israel laid the groundwork for the U.S. strike, commencing the attack on Iran June 13. However, preparation for such an operation goes back years. Israel’s development of such weapons as its air-launched ballistic missiles in recent years has been driven largely by one objective: the ability to degrade, if not eliminate, Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
[Israeli Air Force F-16s on ground at nighttime]The Israeli Air Force maintained a high pace of operations during the opening days of attacks on Iran. Credit: Israel Defense Forces

That objective also has spurred advances in military communications that enabled elite Israeli troops to operate within Iran in the run-up to and the first day of the operation to destroy or disrupt Iranian surface-to-air equipment. Those actions in turn facilitated wave after wave of airstrikes on Iran’s air defenses, nuclear sites, scientists and military leaders.

“We have been preparing this operation for a long time,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said on June 13.

While Israel has released few details of how it carried out and sustained the pace of operations over multiple days, the country clearly stockpiled weapons and spare parts in advance to keep pressure on Iran. As a result, within a mere three days of fighting, Israel declared that it had achieved air superiority over Iran—something Russia has failed to do in Ukraine in more than three years of full-scale war.

With its air force roaming Iranian skies and special operations teams deep in the Islamic Republic’s territory, Israel used a shocking degree of operational freedom to hunt down ballistic missile launchers, including systems that appeared to be preparing to launch. The attack also destroyed key elements of Iran’s air force on the ground, including some of its more than 40-year-old Grumman F-14s and Northrop F-5s, as well as Bell AH-1 attack helicopters.

Israel’s campaign was not entirely free of setbacks—it lost at least one drone.

Such largely unfettered access to the Iranian interior may have seemed far-fetched only two years ago, but a series of developments helped pave the way for the Israeli operation.

A stockpile of thousands of Iranian ballistic missiles stashed away with Hezbollah in Lebanon once posed a huge retaliatory strike threat to Israel. The IDF largely neutralized that problem with a monthlong offensive in September that targeted the missile storage sites and paralyzed the group.
[Image of aftermath of Israeli strike on Iranian military infrastructure]Israel embarked on a campaign to take out Iranian ballistic missile launchers and support infrastructure. Credit: Israel Defense Forces

In addition to the curtailment of Hezbollah, the Syrian government, once a powerful Iranian ally, collapsed in December. Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which previously received Russian military support, fell to a rebel group shortly after the Russia-Ukraine war forced Moscow to reduce its military presence in Syria.

No longer facing strong northern adversaries along the path to Tehran, the Israeli Air Force struck Iranian nuclear sites for the first time during a multiwave air raid early on June 13 and then went after other facilities. The IDF said it employed over 200 aircraft in the opening phase of what it calls Operation Rising Lion, striking more than 100 targets across Iran with some 330 munitions. The IDF added that it took out Russian-made S-300 missile systems and Iranian-made air defense equipment. The strikes were conducted by, among other assets, Lockheed Martin F-35s and F-16s and Boeing<https://aviationweek.com/term/boeing> F-15s, according to images released by the IDF. The Israeli Air Force appears to have used a mix of GPS-guided bombs and air-to-ground and air-launched ballistic missiles.

Israel’s military action came hours after the International Atomic Energy Agency published a report accusing Iran of not fulfilling its obligation to be transparent about its nuclear program. Talks between Iranian diplomats and a U.S. envoy stalled in mid-June, elevating concerns about Tehran’s nuclear efforts.

The Israeli strikes killed some top military leaders of Iran’s armed forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Israelis also targeted Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in Natanz, Arak and Isfahan but lacked a MOP-like weapon to go after the most deeply buried targets. The operation built on past Israeli strikes against an Iranian air defense battery at a nuclear site with one missile on April 13, 2024, and a wider attack on Oct. 26 that targeted nonnuclear military sites throughout Iran. The IDF has also previously struck Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs.

Iran responded with waves of drone and ballistic missile attacks against Israel, which was able to intercept many of them, but some weapons made it through, causing fatalities and injuries.

The Israeli Air Force maintained a high pace of operations over the following days, bringing in attack helicopters and more than 600 refueling missions. On June 15, the service launched a raid on an Iranian tanker aircraft at Mashhad Shahid Hasheminejad International Airport in eastern Iran, about 2,300 km (1,429 mi.) from Israel, in a sign of its freedom to operate in that airspace with impunity.

The next day, the IDF said that overnight it had taken out more than 120 Iranian surface-to-surface missile launchers, which it said was one-third of Iran’s inventory.

To help counter continued Iranian drone and missile attacks, as well as smaller numbers from Yemen, Israel said it used the Barak Magen naval air defense system, featuring a long-range air defense interceptor, for the first time in combat. The equipment, also known as the Barak MX, is installed on Israeli Navy Sa’ar 6-class missile ships. Israel also debuted the ability of the Rafael David’s Sling system to intercept a ballistic missile fired by Iran.

“We have concluded a significant phase, but the campaign against Iran is not over,” Zamir declared June 25. “We’ve set Iran’s nuclear project back by years and the same applies to its missile program.” Still, he noted: “We must keep our feet on the ground. Many challenges lie ahead.”

—With Tony Osborne in London
[https://aviationweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/author_thumbnail/public/authors/Trimble_Steve_sized_0.jpg?itok=e31Tv8Ow]
Steve Trimble<https://aviationweek.com/author/steve-trimble>

Steve covers military aviation, missiles and space for the Aviation Week Network, based in Washington DC.
[https://aviationweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/author_thumbnail/public/2021-11/Brian%20Everstine%205x7_1.jpg?itok=wafr1QlB]
Brian Everstine<https://aviationweek.com/author/brian-everstine>

Brian Everstine is the Pentagon Editor for Aviation Week, based in Washington, D.C.
[https://aviationweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/author_thumbnail/public/2024-05/robert_wall_aviation_week_network.png?h=6c83441f&itok=oo31yqwf]
Robert Wall<https://aviationweek.com/author/robert-wall>

Robert Wall is Executive Editor for Defense and Space. Based in London, he directs a team of military and space journalists across the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific.

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