now let me next move to uh a walkth through of the GBU57 uh massive ordinance penetrator weapon and share a little bit about the planners who did this and their work on the weapon first let me set the stage for you there’s an organization in the US called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Ditra ditra does a lot of things for our nation but Ditra is the world’s leading expert on deeply buried underground targets in 2009 a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran for security purposes I’m not going to share his name he was shown some photos and some highly classified intelligence of what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran he was tasked to study this facility work with the intelligence community to understand it and he was soon joined by an additional teammate for more than 15 years this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target Ford a critical element of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program he studied the geology he watched the Iranians dig it out he watched the construction the weather the discard material the geology the construction materials where the materials came from he looked at the vent shaft the exhaust shaft the electrical systems the environmental control systems every nook every crater every piece of equipment going in and every piece of equipment going out they literally dreamed about this target at night when they slept they thought about it driving back and forth to work and they knew from the very first days what this was for you do not build a multi-layered underground bunker complex with centrifuges and other equipment in a mountain for any peaceful purpose they weren’t able to discuss this with their family their wives their kids their friends but they just kept grinding it out and along the way they realized we did not have a weapon that could adequately strike and kill this target so they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU57 they tested it over and over again tried different options tried more after that they accomplished hundreds of test shots and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose kill this target at the time and place of our nation’s choosing and then on a day in June of 2025 more than 15 years after they started their life’s work the phone rang and the president of the United States ordered the B2 force uh that you’ve supported to go strike and kill this Target
