The U.S. military has struck Iranian missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz with “bunker-busting” GBU-72 bombs.
“US forces successfully employed multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions on hardened Iranian missile sites along Iran’s coastline near the Strait of Hormuz,” Central Command said in a statement on X.
“The Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles in these sites posed a risk to international shipping in the strait.”
Meanwhile, Israel said it had eliminated Ali Larijani, a key IRGC figure leading Iran since the death of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
IRGC confirmed in a statement that the “pure blood of this great martyr, like other dear martyrs, will be a source of honour, power and national awakening against the front of global arrogance and international Zionism”.
Iran will hold funerals on Wednesday for Larijani and another powerful figure, Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij paramilitary force, the Fars and Tasnim agencies reported.
Israel vowed also to target Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since the ruling clerics chose him to succeed his father.
“We don’t know about Mojtaba Khamenei, we don’t hear him, we don’t see him, but I can tell you one thing: we will track him down, find him, and neutralise him,” Brigadier General Effie Defrin told reporters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again called for the end of the Islamic Republic, although he and Trump have stopped short of saying that is their goal. The overthrow of Iran’s authorities by the people “will not happen all at once, it will not happen easily. But if we persist in this — we will give them a chance to take their fate into their own hands,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement.
In contrast to Mojtaba Khamenei, Larijani, 68, had walked openly with crowds at a pro-government rally in Tehran last week.
“He has effectively been the figure in charge of the regime’s survival, its regional policy and its defence strategy,” David Khalfa, co-founder of the Atlantic Middle East Forum, told AFP.
“It’s the supreme leader who gives the order, but he is the one who carries it out. He is the right-hand man.”
GBU-72
The GBU-72 Advanced 5K Penetrator, which costs approximately $288,000, is less powerful than the 30,000-pound GBU-57 MOP dropped by the U.S. against Iranian nuclear sites last year.
The GBU-72, officially designated as the Guided Bomb Unit-72 (GBU-72), is a 5,000-pound-class weapon that bridges the gap between smaller tactical penetrators and the massive GBU-57 MOPs.
According to the USAF, “The GBU-72 was developed to overcome hardened, deeply buried target challenges and designed for both fighter and bomber aircraft. Lethality is expected to be substantially higher compared to similar legacy weapons like the GBU-28.”
Applied Research Associates played a key role in its design, leveraging advanced modeling and simulation techniques to optimize performance before physical prototyping.
The U.S. Air Force completed the initial testing phase for the GBU-72 in late 2021, resulting in its first successful aerial release from an F-15E Strike Eagle on October 7, 2021, at Eglin Air Force Base. Afterwards, integration and operational testing progressed, and initial operational capability was achieved around mid-2024.
The weapon is now certified for carriage and employment on fighter platforms such as the F-15E Strike Eagle (and potentially the Israeli F-15I variant), as well as bombers, including the B-1B Lancer. Reports have also indicated potential future integration on the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers.
The GBU-72/B looks like the GBU-31/B JDAM (joint direct attack munition) precision-guided bomb, which carries a bunker-busting warhead like the BLU-109/B or the more advanced BLU-137/B.
The major visible difference between the two bombs is that the newer one has a pair of long fins on each side at the bottom, while on the GBU-31/B, they are attached to the center. The development of the bomb involved substantial use of simulation and modeling to test its lethality.
“This helps us bring our operational test partners in sooner with eyes-on, hands-on participation, validating our design and procedures sooner while including input that improves the weapon,” James Culliton, GBU-72 Program Manager, earlier said in a statement.
The GBU-28 was hurriedly developed during the 1991 Gulf War to be used against Iraqi command and control bunkers located deep underground after concerns that BLU-109/B, the buster-busting bomb in service at that time, could not reach these targets.
It could go as deep as up to 150 feet underground or break through 15 feet of reinforced concrete before exploding.
Around 100 units of this bomb were exported to Israel in 2005-06 and also to South Korea. After the Gulf War, the USAF used GBU-28/B in the 1999 war in Serbia and then during the wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
The GBU-72/B gives the air force added flexibility to strike targets that are too strong for GBU-31/B bombs but do not require the massive power of the GBU-57.
The advantage the GBU-72/B has over the laser-guided GBU-28/B is that it uses a combination of GPS and INS, which, unlike laser, is not affected by weather, dense cloud cover, dust storms, smoke, etc.
The deployment of the GBU-72 in these strikes accentuates its key operational advantage: unlike the much heavier GBU-57 MOP, which requires strategic bombers such as the B-2 Spirit, the GBU-72 is fully compatible with F-15E Strike Eagle and can be deployed quickly and easily.
By ET Online Desk with AFP Inputs
