BDAs not looking good

| June 25, 2025 | 61 Comments

I saw BennSue and SFC D’s comments about us not covering the Iran strikes – I think if you check TAH on 6 B’2s  I think you’ll find that our trusty commenters did their usual great job of commentary.

Been interesting since then – Iran lobbed some missiles at Israel, some more at our facilities in Qatar, and Israel launched air attacks back at Iran.

Explosions were heard in Qatar, multiple news agencies reported, and photos showed missiles over Qatar’s capital city, Doha. U.S. and Qatari authorities said the missiles were intercepted and no one was injured.

President Trump has indicated that the U.S. was given prior warning of the Iranian strike.  CBS News

No injuries or major damage was reported, which suggests that the Qatar attacks were pretty much a ‘pro forma ya know I gotta do this, right?’ sort of thing.

Now, Trump has managed to broker a tenuous cease-fire between Iran and Israel. Then…

Qatar’s prime minister secured Iran’s agreement to the U.S.-proposed ceasefire after Iran’s limited strikes on America’s Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Both Israel and Iran fired missiles at one another following the imposition of a ceasefire on Monday night.

“I’m not happy with Israel. You know, when I say, okay, now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either, but I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning,” Trump said.Fox News

Trump sounded impatient with both parties. Iran was alleged to have fired a few missiles at Israel, Israel was counterstriking – yeah, obviously they both know how to conduct a cease-fire. Some cease-fires strive to achieve peace, some merely allow the combatants to rearm. I think both those I-countries view this ceasefire as the latter.

But everyone was relieved that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been bombed with bunker-busters and turned to underground rubble, right? Not so fast…

The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by four people briefed on it.

There’s those “those not supposed to blab spilling info” thing again. They say that according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)’s assessments:

The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

Tell that to the defenders of Saipan?

Israel had been carrying out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities for days leading up to the US military operation but claimed to need the US’ 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs to finish the job. While US B-2 bombers dropped over a dozen of the bombs on two of the nuclear facilities, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment plant and the Natanz Enrichment Complex, the bombs did not fully eliminate the sites’ centrifuges and highly enriched uranium, according to the people familiar with the assessment.

Instead, the impact to all three sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — was largely restricted to aboveground structures, which were severely damaged, the sources said. That includes the sites’ power infrastructure and some of the aboveground facilities used to turn uranium into metal for bomb-making.

Jeffrey Lewis, a weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who has closely reviewed commercial satellite imagery of the strike sites, agreed with the assessment that the attacks do not appear to have ended Iran’s nuclear program.

“The ceasefire came without either Israel or the United States being able to destroy several key underground nuclear facilities, including near Natanz, Isfahan and Parchin,” Lewis said, referring to the ceasefire between Israel and Iran that Trump announced on Monday. Parchin is a separate nuclear complex near Tehran.

“These facilities could serve as the basis for the rapid reconstitution of Iran’s nuclear program.”  CNN

It’s ‘way too early to really know. Different three-letter folks will no doubt be doing their own assessments, and we don’t know if DIA is an outlier or whether everyone is on the same less-optimistic assessment page.

Category: Iran, Israel, Trump!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
2000


61 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Peter the Bubblehead

I tend to discount any report that starts with “Anonymous sources state…”

Odie

Anonymous sources = made up shit.

Hack Stone

Some Anonymous sources do have credible information. Such as “Anonymous sources reveal that Phil Monkress works balls.”

SFC D

It ain’t anonymous if everyone knows it.

ChipNASA

Fucker…I laughed way harder at this than I expected…NOW that being said….I’m also considering stealing this for many other things….

” Anonymous sources….It ain’t anonymous if everyone knows it.”

Such as… Anonymous sources say AOC is a big tittied, buck toofed, shit for brains that should only be used as a hate fuck, flaming cum dumpster and Jasmine Crockett is dumber than ten meters of dirt road. As Dumb as a bag of flour. Did her parents have any children that lived?? She makes Forrest Gump look like Stephen Hawking.

SFC D

Steal away, and you may fire when ready!

hh475

The very fact that it was leaked makes it less credible. I’ve written reports to support a policy position and to help decision making for operational decisions. Everybody has a viewpoint, and the idea that these reports are completely objective is naive. Sometimes you’ll get reports from different people who look at that same data and provide completely different assessments. And that’s a good thing, because you take bias into account.

Many years ago I was involved in a project. I spent a lot of effort and monies on pilot studies. When the project was given the green light, my colleague screwed me over and cut me out in order to funnel the money elsewhere. I was furious.

A couple of years later, I was asked by a three letter agency to be on a review panel for the project. I told the project manager what happened, that I despised the project leader, and that I be very hard pressed to view the work objectively.

The project manager laughed and said he knew, and that was why he wanted me. He said that since I had an axe to grind he knew that I would look the hardest to find weaknesses and I wouldn’t let things slide on the basis of assuming goodwill. Since he knew my bias and I was open about it, he could take that into account. There were plenty of people cheering the project on, but very few who could be critical and would look under rocks.

So, if someone is so upset by this policy that they are leaking the results of their study to the press, that is itself an indication of bias and decreases the credibility of the study. They had an axe to grind, and they moved from providing intel and assessment to acting as an advocate. I guarantee there are other reports that say other things in such a situation.

MustangCryppie

Maybe yes, maybe no. I’ll wait for more definitive BDA.

Oh, and I hope they track down the fucker who leaked the report and skin him or her alive. I had a TS/SCI for close to 40 years and never, ever would have thought of disclosing classified to unauthorized persons. Never.

LC

The challenge now is that the asshole who leaked this fucked the process — in this politicized environment, it casts doubt on any subsequent BDAs by other agencies since POTUS has now expressed his desired opinion, and castigated the DIA for theirs.

SFC D

Fucking the process may have been the point.

rgr769

Well, then you need to go over and inspect the ground yourself. That is how we did them in the Viet of the Nam. I look forward to your BDA report.

rgr769

On a serous note, our intel satellites will be able to see if the Iranians start excavating any portions of these three sites.

MustangCryppie

Sure! Let’s go! When do we leave? I’m always up for a little TAD.

HT3

The assessment damage proved Trump right to keep the operation known to only but a few. Dems would have gladly lost all the aircraft and had the crews killed or captured to try harm Trump. During his first term, what ever was discussed in the Congressional SCIF in the morning was on the Lame Stream media by lunch with blabber-mouths Adam Schitt err Schiff on the Intel Committee. The true damage told will only be learned through time. Its not the physical damage done to the facilities that’s in the Mullah’s mind. Its those bombers came and went and Iran’s defense force saw nothing. Only the echoes of the blasts let them know the bombers were ever there.

Hack Stone

Good luck with Iran trying to recruit nuclear scientists to work on their program. Not many rocket surgeons willing to go five miles deep into the ground for a day’s wages, only to come out to the parking lot after their shift to find a pile of scrap where their cars once were. Maybe the Ayatollahs should post on Indeed.

5JC

IDK, what if it were a mid 80s Jaguar?

Hack Stone

Psul of The Ballsack recently flipped his house. Actually, the local Giant Grocery store had a flat bed tow truck remove an abandoned 1989’s vintage Jaguar abandoned in the parking lot, and once it was on the bed of the truck, Psul woke up, started the car and it fell off the truck. Since he now resides in the Jaguar, that qualifies as house flipping.

TopGoz

I’m skeptical not only of the source of this information, but also of any evaluation made from commercial satellite imagery. These penetrating munitions aren’t intended to knock down buildings on the surface – they destroy things below the surface, so aside from a hole in the ground (call it the entry wound), there may not be a whole lot to see from commercial satellites.

Odie

Maybe something like this should have been sent as well.

comment image

26Limabeans

It’s like that deep cut on top of my hand that goes all the
way to the bone and has gone through at least a hundred
bandaids over the past week as I await a scab to form.
We will just have to wait and see….

5JC

Given Trump’s active involvement in the bombing and the political tar baby the whole thing is I don’t really expect an honest reading. I will say that the idea that Iran was only set back months given the totality of damage between the US and Israeli strikes defies reason. People on both sides of the aisle will be chomping at the bit to firstly prove Trump wrong and secondly goad him into some kind of insane invasion for regime change.

With the elimination of a dozen scientists, major damage to all facilities and the decapitated regime it feels more like they would suffer a serious loss of morale and will be stuck trying to figure out of a way forward. But who knows, maybe they hid bomb components in an easy to assemble Lego like way in some super duper secret facility that nobody knows about?

I will point out that Israel and various other leaders have been saying that Iran has been “months”, or “1-2 years” away from developing a bomb since at least 2002. So they will continue to support more action against Iran as well as writing their intelligence reports to support this. Truly everyone (including Trump) has reason to lie here. What the truth really is, may not be known for some time.

Last edited 14 days ago by 5JC
Sailorcurt

It’s ‘way too early to really know.”

You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble and just said that from the jump.

That’s the only sentence in your entire post that has any actual relevance.

Old tanker

It’s hard to trust anything anymore from sources that are likely to be trying to undermine Trump. The media especially. Given that no one, including the Israelis, have put their boots on the ground to really assess the BDA, it’s all guess work based on looking at pictures from space.

Skivvy Stacker

When you consider that these BDAs are coming from such Special Operations commands as ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NPR…and so on, alphabetically…
You can be absolutely sure that what THEY have to say about it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing BUTT the truth, so help them GOB.

MIRanger

I think MSNBC comes before NBC alphabetically Skivvy…but otherwise I agree with your assessment.

Skivvy Stacker

So sorry, I been drinking.
[snort] heheheheheheheeee….

ANCRN

Well, considering the CINC’s tendency to exagerate, and the media’s tendency to take liberties with the truth, and US intelligence agencies propensity to get stuff wrong, I am going to say, yep. Shit happened.

Graybeard

One commentary on that leak noted that the report was marked “low confidence”

So yeah, normal (D)emon-rat Media demonstrating their TDS symptoms again is my current take on that.

5JC

A minor detail, easily overlooked. The story that led will be the one that is most remembered. I always find it funny when people ask me why liberals mostly become conservative late in life. It’s because they figure out they have been lied to their whole life.

LC

You attribute this to Democrats seizing on a perceived failure, and I tend to think it’s just that it’s the first assessment by an intelligence agency. The IAEA said they expect that the strikes caused very significant damage, but have no first-hand knowledge outside of radiological detection capabilities.

And ‘low-confidence’ simply means they don’t have a lot of information yet. They were asked to give an assessment, and they did – let’s not fault the DIA folks aside from the fucker who leaked it.

KoB

The only thing that we know for sure is that our Bombers made some holes in the ground and returned safely. And at the end of the day…that’s what’s important.

Eggs

Stolen from a friend (I know, the pilots are more than likely over 20 yrs of age, but a good point).

IMG_1185
5JC

Your B2 pilot is likely over 30.

Odie

True, but the sentiment remains the same.

5JC

Yeah fuq that “nation building” bullshit. They would rather blow it all to hell than acknowledge any charity from the West.

Eggs

30 is the new 20??

Or was it 40. Hard to keep up with these things 😎

Last edited 14 days ago by Eggs
SFC D

I’m 62. Is that the new 40?

Eggs

No, this is the new 40

IMG_1189
SFC D

Works for me! Drank a metric shit-ton of that in college.

Eggs

In my younger daze it was The Bull!

IMG_1190
11B-Mailclerk

Colt 45

SFC D

Yeahhhhh drank wayyyy to much of that, too!

Odie

It is until you try to do what you used to at 40, and your body says… you just wait until morning.

LC

The big question which nobody I know has answers on is that the MOPs dropped on Fordow are, per US specification, capable of penetrating about 200 feet of ‘unspecified material’, and Janes says 200 feet of earth, and 60 feet of concrete.

Given that Fordow is estimated to be 270-290 feet below the surface, and it’s not clear whether it has concrete reinforcement at the top, it seems reasonable to be a bit skeptical of what the result might be there. How does a shockwave from the explosion propagate through the earth there? How would it be impacted by a reinforced structure? And what would the effects be on people inside? All of that is unclear.

Sure, the entrance was destroyed, but I think ‘total obliteration’ is a tad optimistic.

5JC

The bombs dropped nowhere near the entrance. The Iranians had already collapsed the entrance tunnels to prevent cruise missile attacks.

So far as the capabilities of the bomb, the tests are of course classified and we aren’t likely to see that data. That would just tell a potential adversary how deep to dig. So unclear? Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?

Sam

There were 3 holes in each of the 2 sites where they hit, instead of just 1; which would seem to indicate the did not penetrate as deep as they could have.

Sam

Sorry, I can’t count. 2 down each hole is 12 altogether.

11B-Mailclerk

And that is how they dig deep. Dropped in pairs, the first kicks in the door and excavates a hole. The second goes down the same hole, and thus goes -way- deeper before exploding.

SFC D

Unless somebody digs down into the nuclear enrichment facility formerly known as Fordow, how can you really know just how damaged it is? My understanding is that it’s pretty fragile equipment and doesn’t have to be explosively disassembled to be considered destroyed. It’s all now inaccessible and unrepairable, so I’d call it a call it a win. And the White House needs to start publically prosecuting leakers. I don’t care if it’s the chairman of the joint chiefs or the janitor.

Prior Service (RET)

Accurate BDA is always hard to get, about any strike. Let alone an underground target.

However, what we have seen here is an expressed willingness to attack Iranian facilities. If we didn’t get them this time, okay. Highly likely there will be a next time, unlike any of the previous administrations. That’s a game changer in the Iranians’ strategic calculus. Look for them to put future facilities in high concentrations of people.

Graybeard

Considering that we have 3.5-ish years left in the Trump Presidency, I’d say that there is a reasonable chance that if he needs to repeat himself, he will.

Anonymous

F*ck…

BlueCord Dad

Check number 5 under Trending

Peter the Bubblehead

Link no longer works.

Hack Stone

WMAL just had some asshole named Hack from Bethesda on the air discussing the career opportunities for nuclear scientists in Iran. The guy should stick to selling software.

11B-Mailclerk

Unless and until we cut the head off the fucking snake, folks are going to get bit.

BennSue

I think everyone (well, almost everyone…everyone should know whom I’m referencing) here does a good job and posts interesting and important articles. I just thought an update or new post would have highlighted the bombing more.