Inside Operation Midnight Hammer: How America pulled off the unthinkable
With the eyes of the world awaiting its response in Iran, the US was not only able to eliminate its targets - but do it completely undetected.
President Donald Trump had spent weeks pursuing a diplomatic path to replace the nuclear deal with Tehran that he tore up during his first term in 2018.
But he ultimately decided to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program, which had already been bombarded in a more than week-long Israeli campaign that has also targeted Tehran’s top military brass.
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This is what we know about the US strikes on Iran - an operation dubbed “Midnight Hammer”.
How the US pulled off Operation Midnight Hammer
Top US military officer, General Dan Caine, told journalists the strikes involved more than 125 US aircraft including B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, fighters, aerial refuelling tankers, a guided missile submarine and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.
“This mission demonstrates the unmatched reach, co-ordination and capability of the United States military,” the general said. “No other military in the world could have done this.”
Caine said it was “too early” to comment on what remains of Iran’s nuclear program, but that “initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
What they flew
The US employed seven B-2s in the strikes - aircraft that can fly 9600 nautical kilometres without refuelling and which are designed to “penetrate an enemy’s most sophisticated defences and threaten its most valued, and heavily defended, targets,” according to the US military.
“This was the largest B-2 operational strike in US history and the second-longest B-2 mission ever flown,” according to Caine.
Several B-2s proceeded west over the Pacific as a decoy while the bombers that would take part in the strikes headed east - a “deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders,” the general said.
“Iran’s fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran’s surface-to-air missile systems did not see us. Throughout the mission, we retained the element of surprise,” Caine said.
The United States used the B-2 in operations against Serbian forces in the 1990s, flying non-stop from Missouri to Kosovo and back, and the bombers were subsequently employed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the 2000s.
What they dropped
Caine said the B-2s dropped 14 bombs known as the GBU-57 or Massive Ordnance Penetrator - a powerful 13,600kg bunker-busting weapon that made its combat debut in the Iran operation.
The bombs - which are designed to penetrate up to 60m underground before exploding - were needed to hit deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities.
Testing of the weapons began in 2004 and Boeing was in 2009 awarded a contract to complete the integration of GBU-57 with aircraft.
In addition to the bombers, a US guided missile submarine in the Middle East launched more than two dozen missiles at unspecified “surface infrastructure targets” at Isfahan, one of three nuclear sites struck in the operation, Caine said.
The missiles are “designed to fly at extremely low altitudes at high subsonic speeds, and are piloted over an evasive route by several mission tailored guidance systems” and were first used in 1991 against Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm, according to the US military.
What it’s like for the pilots
The B-2 stealth bombers used to attack the Fordow nuclear enrichment plant are equipped with toilets, microwaves and usually a cooler for snacks to make life more comfortable for the pilots who were stuck in the cockpit for the 37-hour trip from Missouri to Iran and back.
The fleet of advanced American bombers — originally designed to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union — took off from the Whiteman Air Force Base outside Kansas City on Friday for an 18 hour ride across the world, refuelling several times in mid-air, officials said.
For such long trips to be bearable, the high-tech bombers have their cockpits outfitted with mini refrigerators and a microwave oven to keep its crew fed an alert.
And just like any plane equipped for long-haul flights, the B-2 Spirit has a toilet, too.
There’s also enough room for one pilot to lay down and rest while the other flies the batwing jet.
The B-2 first entered service 1997 and each one costs more than $2 billion; the US Air Force has a fleet of 19 — after losing one in a crash in 2008.
The seven B-2 bombers deployed for operation “Midnight Hammer” flew in near complete radio silence, with their two-man crews taking turns to sleep during the tense night, The Telegraph reported.
Pilots for these types of aircraft are trained to endure long, gruelling flights, with past crews bringing cots aboard or even full camping pads, according to The Atlantic.
Why they did it
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told journalists the strikes were launched to “neutralise the threats to our national interests posed by the Iranian nuclear program and the collective self-defence of our troops and our allies.”
“This mission was not, has not been, about regime change,” Hegseth told journalists.
A number of key figures in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement have vocally opposed US strikes on Iran, and his promise to extract the United States from its “forever wars” in the Middle East played a role in his 2016 and 2024 election wins.
What comes next?
Trump has called on Iran to “agree to end this war,” saying that “now is the time for peace.” But it remains to be seen whether the strikes will push Tehran to de-escalate the conflict, or to widen it further.
Iran on Sunday threatened US bases in the Middle East.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said bases used by US forces could be attacked in retaliation.
“Any country in the region or elsewhere that is used by American forces to strike Iran will be considered a legitimate target for our armed forces,” he said in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency.
“America has attacked the heart of the Islamic world and must await irreparable consequences.”
- with AFP, New York Post
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