June 23, 2025 • 11 mins
Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg Pentagon Reporter discusses how the US hit Iran, possible retaliation tactics, and next steps from the US to deter further conflict.
Iran pledged to respond “proportionately and decisively” to US strikes at the weekend and Qatar suspended traffic over its airspace, amid signs American bases there could be targeted as the conflict between the Islamic Republic and Israel showed signs of boiling over.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran was moving missile launchers for a possible attack on American forces, citing US officials. Axios reported that missiles had been launched toward US bases in Qatar. The White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Well on Saturday afternoon, when news broke that B two
bombers these are the only jets that are capable of
deploying those thirty thousand pounds bunker busting munitions. We're heading
(00:23):
west from their base in Missouri across the Pacific. I
spoke to my dad on the phone. He's an aviation enthusiast,
he grew up on Air Force bases, and we're both
kind of puzzled, like, why would bombers be heading west
in order to mobilize for a strike on iron. It
seemed like, h hm, the wrong way. Well, it turns out,
as we know now, these were decoy B two bombers.
(00:44):
Well those planes got all the attention. Another group of
B twos flew east, literally under the radar. For more
on the operation, we bring in Tony Capasio, Bloomberg News,
Pentagon and National Security reporter. He writes about the thirty
seven hour operation so called Midnight. He joins us from
our Washington DC bureau, We're gonna get to the operation
(01:04):
details in a second, and the planes, the aircraft that
were use, the submarine, the ordnance in a minute. But
I want to get to what the President said on
True Social a couple hours ago. He said, the sites
that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed. And everyone
knows that only the fake news would say anything different
in order to try and demean as much as possible.
(01:27):
Is that what our reporting tells us that the sites
that were hit in Iran were totally destroyed. Do we
know that yet?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, we don't know that yet. Battle damage assessment takes
sometimes weeks for a measured, informed analysis. He was shooting
from the hip. There's no way he would have known that.
General Kane, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, sound excuse me,
was pretty measured in that in his assessment. The President
(01:58):
was exaggerating. There's no way he know that totally obliterated.
It's just off the charts wrong at this point and
maybe in two weeks from now. But he was blowing smoke,
and you know, it takes a shot at the fake media.
But some of us remember the Iraq War going in
the reasons why and all the intelligence was kind of
leaning in George Bush's favor. Maybe possibly could be they
(02:23):
have it. It turns out they didn't. So there's always
a measure of skepticism when somebody claims battle damage assessments
were spectacular, Like an hour or two after the operations.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I was watching the press conference yesterday live Tony on
Bloomberg Television, our special coverage, and I think I saw
you in the audience at the Pentagon. Were you there?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I was there. I had a off purple shirt in
the front row next to Jennifer Griffin of Fox.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
So you heard it straight from the horse's mouth essentially
about the battle damage assessment, right.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It's very nascent though it was like hours after the
operation he was measured. I thought his answers were good.
I thought Defense Secretary hexit while he gave an advertisement
for Trump early on, he did a good job of
stage managing and fielding questions.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
So to be fair, right, like, I always wondering, like
how good is really our intelligence in terms of where
things are where they are on the ground. And I
also do think about Tony what's going on behind the scenes,
because nobody wants nuclear material floating out in the atmosphere,
and so I just wonder again going to kind of
(03:37):
the orchestration of the moves that we are seeing this
fine dance, you know, Israel, Iran, the US Iran back
and cutter. So, I don't know, how are you looking
at how all of this has kind of been carried out.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, it's been carried out moderate, fairly flawlessly in terms
of the mechanic of command and control and a combined operation.
Your question is a good one, but I think the
weapon earring was informed greatly by Israeli intelligence in terms
of their assessment of what their weapons could do and
how deeply buried the hardcore nuclear enriched uranium material was,
(04:18):
and that had to all be factored into the way
the US calibrated its our bomb drops in terms of
the GPS coordinates, the aim points, how deep they were
going to go. I mean, the science of weaponearing. While
it's a black art, it's pretty precise. Within the Pentagon,
this is one thing they do pretty well at least
knowing where their weapons go, Thank goodness for GPS.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, absolutely right. What I wonder is how much was
the US military possibly willing to take the risk that
they might hit a nuclear facility and that there might
be you know, uranium or you know, nuclear you know
it unleashed into the atmosphere. Like, I'm just curious how
(05:02):
good the intel was that they knew exactly what they
were doing.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
In this case, I think the intel was pretty good.
I mean, one indication the Istefan facility was not hit
by massive ordinance penetrators. It apparently has more sensitive nuclear
materials in there. And I'm not going to act like
I'm a total expert on this, but it was struck
by Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the Arabian Sea from
(05:26):
the submarine with the Kyle Vincent group. Those don't penetrate deeply,
but my assessment is that they at least followed damage
caused by Israeli weapons and they didn't go as deep,
but they caused damage at that facility that could have
been more significant in terms of a release of nuclear materials. Again,
I don't want to overplay what I know, but that's
(05:47):
my impression.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Okay, Tony. The GBU fifty seven's the massive ordnance penetrator
bombs that have the first time they've ever been used
in combat that were dropped on four to H and
other areas. Fourteen of them. Do you know how many
of the US actually has of these. I've seen reporting
that indicate that only twenty of these existed. But I
(06:11):
understand this stuff is obviously classified.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
What do we know, Yeah, it's a handful in the twenties,
maybe mid twenties. I've been writing about this bomb for
quite a number of years, and it's very very classified.
In fact, I've got some of the emails that were
leaked to me about people not wanting to talk to
me about the bomb. But interesting enough, there's a base.
There's an ammunition facility in Oklahoma, michae Alister Ammunition Base.
(06:35):
They make Army one five five rounds. Well, they're being
retooled this year to help build more of these mops
at a more rapid pace so that we can build
up our inventories. So deep in the heart of Oklahoma,
I'm sure they're working over time to pull together the
barrels that will be filled by Boeing in the coming
months to replenish the supply.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
What is considered a fully replenished supply.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I'm thinking in the twenties there at twenties, thirties. Okay,
there's not like hundreds of these things.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Hey, you know one thing that was puzzling to me.
Also was why the B twos were or are right
now based in Missouri rather than at Diego Garcia. The
trips wouldn't have been as long. And why why didn't
they land at Diego Garcia. Why did they go all
the way back to Missouri.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The whole landing sequence there. They would have been spotted
there at Diego Garcia. The whole point of this was
the show along at the long arm of the United
States landing. They could have done that, but then there
would have been there would have been pictures of it,
there would have been more operational security issues. I think
the brilliance of this one and this aspect of it
(07:39):
was the faint to the west, while those the B
twos that actually actually hit Aran, they took off it
like midnight Saturday morning. The stories about the B twos
going west start breaking about eleven thirty am Eastern time Saturday.
So this was the their verse in the Air Force's
version of while Operation mince Meat in the Sky, you
(08:02):
guys are off Broadway, so you know the play.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Well, how do you how do you fly six or
twelve of these from white men in Missouri at midnight
without people around the airport plane spotters realizing this is happening.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
There's no planes. This is not a this is an
isolated base. They're not like sitting in their cars waiting
for these things to fly off. This is this is
our chound old bomber.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And online, and they can't be tracked online because they
don't use the they don't send out the signal that
is being tracked. That's right, irrespective.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Of the radar. The point here is that these plane trackers,
they were fulled the plan. The crews on those bombers
going west were talking. They wanted to be spotted, they
wanted to be detected. That's all part of the mince
meat groose in this case. Going east, the bombers were
doing their thing. They're being radio silent and so nobody
could pick them up. And maybe it's a pretty smart
(08:59):
move on the air forces.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Part, you know, I don't know whether it's a I'm
just thinking a lot about the US military, the military
parade the President Trump had on his birthday, and I'm
just thinking about what just happened over the weekend. What
is it that kind of I think US citizens need
to understand about US military and our capabilities.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, the capabilities that you spend like one hundred and
sixty billion dollars a year on procurement often work. While
the optics of the president and his parade are disheartening,
the many many the weapons, the weapons that we have
actually have been working pretty well in the last few
years all over the last you know, you can fight
about the war, you could argue about the war the cause,
(09:39):
but the hardware has been working well. The B two,
you may remember twenty some aid years ago, it was
reviled on the myth that it can't fly in the rain,
it can't do an operation in the rain. Well, the
Air Force debunked that, you know, so two billion dollar bomber.
It was criticized at the time every operation that's been
involved in though it's pretty darn effective.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
It's perhaps going to be continue to be in service
until the twenty thirties, but it's supposed to be replaced
by the B twenty one raidar, which had its first
flight in November of twenty twenty three. How close is
this to replacing the capabilities of the B two, and
what are the differences?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
The main difference with the B twenty one, it's going
to be able to control drones. Basically, it's going to
have wingman. It's going to be able to have unmanned wingman.
That's a big difference. It's stealthier. I mean, the B
two is decades old. Its skin has to be highly
(10:41):
touched up. It has a lot of problems with skins,
with the blisters, and stealthy materials, low observable materials. Maintaining
that the B twenty ones is quantumly better than that,
and it's going to be able to carry a more
ordinance than the B two, But it's going to be
a quarterback in the sky. So the Air Force says,
(11:02):
we don't know much about it because it's highly classified.
Every little twist of this thing they keep secret, except
the some of the broad cost figures and some of
the very measured of pictures they come out of eight
flight tests.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
We love getting inside your brain. Man, Come on anytime,
Tony Capacio. He is Pentagon and National Security reporter at
Bloomberg News. He's there in our DC bureau. Do you
want to mention a headline crossing the Bloomberg? A divided
US Supreme Court lifted a judge's order that required President
Trump's administration to give people ten days notice and a
chance to object before they are deported to a so
(11:38):
called third country over three descents. The High Court granted
an emergency request from the administration, which said, the order
from a Massachusetts federal judge you serve presidential authority and
interfered with diplomatic efforts. Again, that is a win for
the Trump administration.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Well on Saturday afternoon, when news broke that B two
bombers these are the only jets that are capable of
deploying those thirty thousand pounds bunker busting munitions. We're heading
(00:23):
west from their base in Missouri across the Pacific. I
spoke to my dad on the phone. He's an aviation enthusiast,
he grew up on Air Force bases, and we're both
kind of puzzled, like, why would bombers be heading west
in order to mobilize for a strike on iron. It
seemed like, h hm, the wrong way. Well, it turns out,
as we know now, these were decoy B two bombers.
(00:44):
Well those planes got all the attention. Another group of
B twos flew east, literally under the radar. For more
on the operation, we bring in Tony Capasio, Bloomberg News,
Pentagon and National Security reporter. He writes about the thirty
seven hour operation so called Midnight. He joins us from
our Washington DC bureau, We're gonna get to the operation
(01:04):
details in a second, and the planes, the aircraft that
were use, the submarine, the ordnance in a minute. But
I want to get to what the President said on
True Social a couple hours ago. He said, the sites
that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed. And everyone
knows that only the fake news would say anything different
in order to try and demean as much as possible.
(01:27):
Is that what our reporting tells us that the sites
that were hit in Iran were totally destroyed. Do we
know that yet?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, we don't know that yet. Battle damage assessment takes
sometimes weeks for a measured, informed analysis. He was shooting
from the hip. There's no way he would have known that.
General Kane, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, sound excuse me,
was pretty measured in that in his assessment. The President
(01:58):
was exaggerating. There's no way he know that totally obliterated.
It's just off the charts wrong at this point and
maybe in two weeks from now. But he was blowing smoke,
and you know, it takes a shot at the fake media.
But some of us remember the Iraq War going in
the reasons why and all the intelligence was kind of
leaning in George Bush's favor. Maybe possibly could be they
(02:23):
have it. It turns out they didn't. So there's always
a measure of skepticism when somebody claims battle damage assessments
were spectacular, Like an hour or two after the operations.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I was watching the press conference yesterday live Tony on
Bloomberg Television, our special coverage, and I think I saw
you in the audience at the Pentagon. Were you there?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I was there. I had a off purple shirt in
the front row next to Jennifer Griffin of Fox.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
So you heard it straight from the horse's mouth essentially
about the battle damage assessment, right.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It's very nascent though it was like hours after the
operation he was measured. I thought his answers were good.
I thought Defense Secretary hexit while he gave an advertisement
for Trump early on, he did a good job of
stage managing and fielding questions.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
So to be fair, right, like, I always wondering, like
how good is really our intelligence in terms of where
things are where they are on the ground. And I
also do think about Tony what's going on behind the scenes,
because nobody wants nuclear material floating out in the atmosphere,
and so I just wonder again going to kind of
(03:37):
the orchestration of the moves that we are seeing this
fine dance, you know, Israel, Iran, the US Iran back
and cutter. So, I don't know, how are you looking
at how all of this has kind of been carried out.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, it's been carried out moderate, fairly flawlessly in terms
of the mechanic of command and control and a combined operation.
Your question is a good one, but I think the
weapon earring was informed greatly by Israeli intelligence in terms
of their assessment of what their weapons could do and
how deeply buried the hardcore nuclear enriched uranium material was,
(04:18):
and that had to all be factored into the way
the US calibrated its our bomb drops in terms of
the GPS coordinates, the aim points, how deep they were
going to go. I mean, the science of weaponearing. While
it's a black art, it's pretty precise. Within the Pentagon,
this is one thing they do pretty well at least
knowing where their weapons go, Thank goodness for GPS.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, absolutely right. What I wonder is how much was
the US military possibly willing to take the risk that
they might hit a nuclear facility and that there might
be you know, uranium or you know, nuclear you know
it unleashed into the atmosphere. Like, I'm just curious how
(05:02):
good the intel was that they knew exactly what they
were doing.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
In this case, I think the intel was pretty good.
I mean, one indication the Istefan facility was not hit
by massive ordinance penetrators. It apparently has more sensitive nuclear
materials in there. And I'm not going to act like
I'm a total expert on this, but it was struck
by Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the Arabian Sea from
(05:26):
the submarine with the Kyle Vincent group. Those don't penetrate deeply,
but my assessment is that they at least followed damage
caused by Israeli weapons and they didn't go as deep,
but they caused damage at that facility that could have
been more significant in terms of a release of nuclear materials. Again,
I don't want to overplay what I know, but that's
(05:47):
my impression.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Okay, Tony. The GBU fifty seven's the massive ordnance penetrator
bombs that have the first time they've ever been used
in combat that were dropped on four to H and
other areas. Fourteen of them. Do you know how many
of the US actually has of these. I've seen reporting
that indicate that only twenty of these existed. But I
(06:11):
understand this stuff is obviously classified.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
What do we know, Yeah, it's a handful in the twenties,
maybe mid twenties. I've been writing about this bomb for
quite a number of years, and it's very very classified.
In fact, I've got some of the emails that were
leaked to me about people not wanting to talk to
me about the bomb. But interesting enough, there's a base.
There's an ammunition facility in Oklahoma, michae Alister Ammunition Base.
(06:35):
They make Army one five five rounds. Well, they're being
retooled this year to help build more of these mops
at a more rapid pace so that we can build
up our inventories. So deep in the heart of Oklahoma,
I'm sure they're working over time to pull together the
barrels that will be filled by Boeing in the coming
months to replenish the supply.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
What is considered a fully replenished supply.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I'm thinking in the twenties there at twenties, thirties. Okay,
there's not like hundreds of these things.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Hey, you know one thing that was puzzling to me.
Also was why the B twos were or are right
now based in Missouri rather than at Diego Garcia. The
trips wouldn't have been as long. And why why didn't
they land at Diego Garcia. Why did they go all
the way back to Missouri.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The whole landing sequence there. They would have been spotted
there at Diego Garcia. The whole point of this was
the show along at the long arm of the United
States landing. They could have done that, but then there
would have been there would have been pictures of it,
there would have been more operational security issues. I think
the brilliance of this one and this aspect of it
(07:39):
was the faint to the west, while those the B
twos that actually actually hit Aran, they took off it
like midnight Saturday morning. The stories about the B twos
going west start breaking about eleven thirty am Eastern time Saturday.
So this was the their verse in the Air Force's
version of while Operation mince Meat in the Sky, you
(08:02):
guys are off Broadway, so you know the play.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Well, how do you how do you fly six or
twelve of these from white men in Missouri at midnight
without people around the airport plane spotters realizing this is happening.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
There's no planes. This is not a this is an
isolated base. They're not like sitting in their cars waiting
for these things to fly off. This is this is
our chound old bomber.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And online, and they can't be tracked online because they
don't use the they don't send out the signal that
is being tracked. That's right, irrespective.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Of the radar. The point here is that these plane trackers,
they were fulled the plan. The crews on those bombers
going west were talking. They wanted to be spotted, they
wanted to be detected. That's all part of the mince
meat groose in this case. Going east, the bombers were
doing their thing. They're being radio silent and so nobody
could pick them up. And maybe it's a pretty smart
(08:59):
move on the air forces.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Part, you know, I don't know whether it's a I'm
just thinking a lot about the US military, the military
parade the President Trump had on his birthday, and I'm
just thinking about what just happened over the weekend. What
is it that kind of I think US citizens need
to understand about US military and our capabilities.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, the capabilities that you spend like one hundred and
sixty billion dollars a year on procurement often work. While
the optics of the president and his parade are disheartening,
the many many the weapons, the weapons that we have
actually have been working pretty well in the last few
years all over the last you know, you can fight
about the war, you could argue about the war the cause,
(09:39):
but the hardware has been working well. The B two,
you may remember twenty some aid years ago, it was
reviled on the myth that it can't fly in the rain,
it can't do an operation in the rain. Well, the
Air Force debunked that, you know, so two billion dollar bomber.
It was criticized at the time every operation that's been
involved in though it's pretty darn effective.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
It's perhaps going to be continue to be in service
until the twenty thirties, but it's supposed to be replaced
by the B twenty one raidar, which had its first
flight in November of twenty twenty three. How close is
this to replacing the capabilities of the B two, and
what are the differences?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
The main difference with the B twenty one, it's going
to be able to control drones. Basically, it's going to
have wingman. It's going to be able to have unmanned wingman.
That's a big difference. It's stealthier. I mean, the B
two is decades old. Its skin has to be highly
(10:41):
touched up. It has a lot of problems with skins,
with the blisters, and stealthy materials, low observable materials. Maintaining
that the B twenty ones is quantumly better than that,
and it's going to be able to carry a more
ordinance than the B two, But it's going to be
a quarterback in the sky. So the Air Force says,
(11:02):
we don't know much about it because it's highly classified.
Every little twist of this thing they keep secret, except
the some of the broad cost figures and some of
the very measured of pictures they come out of eight
flight tests.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
We love getting inside your brain. Man, Come on anytime,
Tony Capacio. He is Pentagon and National Security reporter at
Bloomberg News. He's there in our DC bureau. Do you
want to mention a headline crossing the Bloomberg? A divided
US Supreme Court lifted a judge's order that required President
Trump's administration to give people ten days notice and a
chance to object before they are deported to a so
(11:38):
called third country over three descents. The High Court granted
an emergency request from the administration, which said, the order
from a Massachusetts federal judge you serve presidential authority and
interfered with diplomatic efforts. Again, that is a win for
the Trump administration.
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