Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: EternalHope

Global security has all the data you'd wish for, including step by step overheads for Natanz.

I'm too tired to look it up right now, but 67 feet rings strong bells in the old memory banks. of course, different failities are at different depths, but if ever I saw a centrifuge hall, Natanz is it.

One of them anyway, there are rumors of identical facilities under mountains north of Tehran, we'd either have to leverage the human ancilliary facilities to render them inop, or put boots on the ground there.

Or...well we don't do things like that, do we?


1,793 posted on 08/09/2006 10:29:32 PM PDT by jeffers
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1741 | View Replies ]


To: jeffers
One of them anyway, there are rumors of identical facilities under mountains north of Tehran, we'd either have to leverage the human ancilliary facilities to render them inop, or put boots on the ground there.

Or...well we don't do things like that, do we?

I actually read an article on proposed new conventional bunker buster designs, with 250 feet of penetration explicitly listed as a design parameter. The reason cited was that this was the depth needed to take out certain Iranian nuclear facilities. I have no idea if any of these have actually been built, or if they could really get that deep. Nor am I sure it really matters.

I don't know where the key facilities are, but putting things in valleys with steep sides is a time honored way to make it more difficult for air strikes to take something out. Tunneling into the side of a cliff is extraordinarily effective if you have multiple ways for the people inside to get out (landslides can seal the entrance, even if it is impossible to collapse the caves and/or tunnels inside).

Caves are another easy way to get bomb proof facilities. They can be very deep and are essentially impossible to collapse. They may have multiple entrances, and more can be created. An added bonus is that the entrances may be very hard to hit from the air. If you don't have a cave, mineshafts will do. They are not hard to build.

All in all, I strongly suspect Iran has been able to put at least some of their nuclear facilities in places we could not take out with air strikes alone. We could certainly suppress the surrounding defenses with air power, but people would have to be inserted to actually take out the facilities. And even with boots on the ground, taking out a hardened and defended facility could be nearly impossible to do unless the commando teams had complete surprise, or a lot of time to work with.

In other words, I am not one of the people who think we could take out all of Iran's nuclear facilities with air power alone. Nor do I think we could do it with hit and run commando raids. Reinforcements would be too likely to arrive before we could penetrate a hardened and defended facility, especially if we had a lot of locations to take out.

So I suspect we have something else planned for Iran. It will have to be relatively large scale, and will probably not be quick or surgical.

I do not think we will use nukes unless weapons of mass destruction have been used against us first. However, I suspect Iran has at least one nuke, and they will use it if they do. If so, I expect to see nukes used to take out Iran's nuclear program. Not only would that solve the facilities problem, it would send a message that would need to be sent.

1,821 posted on 08/09/2006 11:10:24 PM PDT by EternalHope (Boycott everything French forever. Including their vassal nations.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1793 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson