In the end, it’s not Israel that did the dirty work (as Mr Mertz had put it), but against all odds the United States. And as a bonus, Iran’s unreachable nuclear facilities offered a superb real-life testbed for the B-2-GBU-57 tandem.
During the past two or three days, some media reported that a number of Northrop B-2 stealth bombers had been flown to Diego Garcia and Guam. Whether true or not, it really served as a deceptive move. Indeed, the B-2 bombers that dropped their GBU-57s on the three Iranian covert nuclear facilities deep south of Teheran actually flew in from the opposite direction, all the way from their Whiteman base in Missouri after an over 11,000km flight (this is a minimum assuming an unlikely straight-line route). Knowing that the B-2s are subsonic aircraft and that they actually flew back to their homebase says a lot in terms of crew determination, endurance and preparation, and logistics (particularly regarding air-refuelling operations).
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