Decoy warplanes, Tomahawk missiles: How US hammered Iran’s nuke sites

While Trump says Iran’s key nuclear sites have been ‘totally obliterated’, independent analysts are yet to verify that claim, and the strikes may have created a new challenge to work out what’s left of the Islamic Republic’s atomic facilities. Here’s how ‘Op Midnight Hammer’ unfolded

A package of US B-2 stealth bombers — the only jets capable of deploying 30,000-pound bunker-buster munitions with a shot at breaching the mountains shrouding Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility — flew west across the Pacific Ocean on June 21 night. When those planes were spotted on flight-tracker data, they were seen as being deployed as a way to strong-arm the Islamic Republic into negotiations, Bloomsberg reports.
But in reality, they were decoys meant to maintain tactical surprise, according to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. While those planes got all the attention, another group of B-2s flew east — literally under the radar.