Space and Defense
Abstract
For the past twenty years, the stealth regime defined military thinking, prioritizing technologies and tactics designed to evade enemy defense systems. Ensuring radar invisibility and maintaining information dominance have been the keys to survival and strategic advantage. On June 21-22, 2025, the United States conducted "Operation Midnight Hammer" against Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The principal strike package included seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, whose crews flew approximately 18 hours to reach the target area and roughly 36 hours and 13,000 miles round trip. The B-2s dropped 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Fordow and Natanz, marking the weapon’s first operational use, while a guided-missile submarine launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles against surface infrastructure at Isfahan. U.S. officials reported that the weapons functioned as designed and inflicted severe damage on all three sites. The bottom line: stealth technology like the B-2 bomber is designed to neutralize targets after deceiving classical radar detection systems by minimizing platform radar cross-section. However, the emergence of quantum sensing technologies threatens to render such aircraft vulnerable to detection.
DOI
10.32873/uno.dc.sd.17.01.1342
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Cheatham, Lily
(2026)
"Death of Battlefield Hide-and-Seek,"
Space and Defense: Vol. 17:
No.
1, Article 11.
DOI: 10.32873/uno.dc.sd.17.01.1342
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/spaceanddefense/vol17/iss1/11
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