The US has begun laying minefields from the air near Iranian missile cities in Iran, in an attempt to complicate/deny movement around the missile cities, and cut them off from nearby supply lines and villages (people underground need food, water and medicine once stockpiles run low). This involves laying mines in the villages itself, and on the outskirts.
Photos have emerged of BLU-91/B anti tank/heavy vehicle mines in Kafari, Shiraz, Iran, about 2 kilometres away from the underground Shiraz missile city. These are magnetically activated airdropped mines that arm contact with the ground, and set off when the magnetic signature of a heavy vehicle is above them, blasting straight up. They may also go off if disturbed or moved.
This is part of the GATOR airdropped mining system, which makes use of cluster munitions dispensers which can be launched by US tactical fighter aircraft and strategic bombers.
The CBU-89/B is the most likely culprit, as it can be fitted with a Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD) tail kit, allowing for high altitude launch with INS guidance with minimal drift due to the launch aircraft's GPS updating it's position just before launch, a CEP (Circular Error Probable, also known as mean error radius) of 26m/86ft for the cluster munitions dispenser. The CBU-89/B becomes the CBU-104/B when fitted with a WCMD. This allows for a range of 15 miles when dropped from altitudes of 40 000ft, instead of having to fly directly over the target at very low altitudes without the WCMD. A single CBU-104B can be equipped with 72x BLU-91/B anti tank mines, and 22x BLU-92/B anti personel mines (not seen yet), with 4x tripwires each, very nasty, they explode horizontally. An F-15E can be equipped with up to 18x CBU-89/CBU-104, though a loadout of 10x is more realistic with two external fuel tanks taking up the pylons on the wings. This allows a single F-15E to realistically disperse close to 940 land mines per sortie with high altitude bombing. The CBU-89/104 is designed to disperse mines over an area of 200mx650m, to create a minefield of that size with a single bomb.
BLU-92/B:
The self-destruct feature of the mines can be set for 4 hours, 48 hours, or 15 days, and any that fail to self destruct should be disarmed after 40 days, due to the batteries running out of energy. However, this still leaves the potential of unexploded ordnance scattered around cities. Even a single percentage dud rate can lead to dozens of unexploded landmines. And cluster munitions aren't known for low dud rates.
If anyone here is in Iran and sees this, stop moving immediately, you are in the middle of a minefield, surrounded by dozens, potentially more landmines.
The US Air Force is deploying 18x A-10C aircraft for close air support to the Middle East for close air support for whatever ground operations thry have planned in Iran.
Source on flight tracking
This is really going to happen, isn't it?