Israel and Iran

Maduro out - disrupts flow of oil to China
Bombing Iran - disrupts flow of oil to China

China Getting Less Oil - disrupts flow of various chips and boards flowing to Iran
China Getting Less Oil - disrupts flow of various chips and boards flowing to Russia
Bombing Iran - disrupts flow of drones to Russia

And we wanting him to end the War in Ukraine?

Well idk, seems like a lot of positives.

Unlike the Palestinians who have been brainwashed since gestation. There is a significant portion of the Iranian population that doesn't hate the Unite States. Whether or not we will do enough to keep pressure on the Theocratic Government for a sustained period to lead to a regime change is one thing and I'm even sure that's the goal.

What I know is the enemies of our nation are being degraded and that is a good thing. Just as Joe Scarborough told Chuck Schumer.
 
Not a response to anything anyone else has said, just my own musings.

Like many of us, I'm not entirely convinced that this "Chinese national planting a bomb at MacDill" has any connection to the government of China. China has far better ways of hurting us--or demonstrating the ability to hurt us than some clown-shoes attempted with a bomb that didn't even go off. If they were Uighurs or some other flavor of Chinese Muslim, I could see that. But this is a chump move. "OH NO YOU PUT A BOMB--THAT DIDN'T GO OFF--IN A PLACE WHERE LITERALLY ANYONE COULD PUT A BOMB THAT DIDN'T GO OFF!!!" China is more subtle and more powerful than that.
 
It's important to note that Iran is not as monolithic as a lot of individual have commonly assumed. Only around 61% of Iran is Persian. Part of the reason the IRGC is so good at asymmetric warfare is that is also has to, frequently, police within its own borders to prevent Afghanistan levels of tribalism. For-instance, According to some sources, around 90% of those killed in the 2022 protests were minorities within Iran.

The issue going forward is, even if the Persian minority also hates the Mullah's and would like to return to a more western country, how do they view the almost 40% of the country who are not Persian and would like more autonomy? I think that is a critical question for deciding what to do moving forward.
 
757 said:
It's important to note that Iran is not as monolithic as a lot of individual have commonly assumed. Only around 61% of Iran is Persian. Part of the reason the IRGC is so good at asymmetric warfare is that is also has to, frequently, police within its own borders to prevent Afghanistan levels of tribalism. For-instance, According to some sources, around 90% of those killed in the 2022 protests were minorities within Iran.

The issue going forward is, even if the Persian minority also hates the Mullah's and would like to return to a more western country, how do they view the almost 40% of the country who are not Persian and would like more autonomy? I think that is a critical question for deciding what to do moving forward.
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Additional wrinkle here- Iran's Mosaic Plan. 31 separate military organizations operating without decentralized control across a wide swath of capabilities, desired end states, and willingness to continue the fight.

Makes negotiation nearly impossible, 1 province could negotiate for peace while the province next door sends missiles at the Gulf partners, while 1 province mines the strait and blows up oil tankers.
 
DA SWO said:
Pissed me off.
2-3 years ago, Congress asked if we needed hardened shelters and CSAF said no.
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2020, my new CC or select, I don't think he was even at Dhafra, was at a commander's call, conference, whatever at Shaw. AFCENT CC walked up to him and by way of introduction said "Get it moved. Now!" or words to that effect, talking about KINGPIN. (726 ACS, AFCENT's C2 node, it's all over af.mil and the like).

Why? Pretty obvious to you and the like, AFCENT's C2 node is a 3-5 minute flight away for Iranian cruise missiles. TBM's? We had Patriots, but those have limitations and the Pats are there to protect? KINGPIN. Move your C2 and you can move the Pats.

May 2021, KINGPIN is out of Dhafra. We knew we could not protect a one-of-a-kind C2 node and its predecessor building at the Deid was already torn down. There's no backup.

And that same AF didn't want to protect the E-3's? The same AF that originally killed (walked back as you predicted) the E-7 purchase even if it currently is in much smaller numbers. The same airframe we're sending to the Boneyard because they are too much to maintain and fly.

Shacked by a $30k drone we've known about for years.

Our AF does amazing things in spite of itself. We have the world's best at basically everything led by potatoes and politicians. Our guys and gals deserve better.
 
Nobody is really talking about these hits that have been going on all over Iraq for the past month now. In addition to the more secretive use of airspace which it looks like nobody is talking about. A little background, Iraq used "Popular Mobilization Forces" (militias) to help fight ISIS back in 2014-2016 and the original plan was to fold them into the Iraqi army. Some of these groups are part of the Islamic Resistance of Iraq ( IRI, jihad Iranian backed). Khataib Hezbollah and Suraiya Al-Dem or Company of the Blood are a couple of the big ones. Same groups that shoot drones and rockets at U.S. bases. Some shot missiles at Israel since Oct. 7. Not all of the PMF forces take part in that. Most just man checkpoints etc.

"We" the U.S. have been taking out IRI commanders at facilities almost daily. Local news has shown a few funerals. Some of the stories claim "Iraqi military" have been targeted but it's pretty clear that these are the Iranian backed militias being targeted.

A-10 fans can find some brrrrrrrrrrrtt videos all over Insta. Seems to be the weapon of choice against these IRI guys.

Breaking: Airstrikes target PMF positions in northern Iraq - Iraqi News

Attacks in Iraq kill PMF fighters; Kurdish region president ‘targeted’
 
ThunderHorse said:
Have we ever used hardened shelters like our enemies have? Serious question as I don't know of US Airbases in the US with plane bunkers.
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In Europe during the cold war, I assume some bases still use them.

The Russian-Ukraine war has changed the dynamic, China buying land near all our airbases should be a clue. We need to start building semi-hardened shelters to counter the drone threat.
 
The Quartermaster said:
Thanks.

Serious question, does anyone know if the USAF has any AAA at all? And if not, WHY TF NOT!?
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Army owns ADA and has only invested in Patriots and SHORAD based on the Sidewinder missile I believe. C-RAM is controlled by artillery units and designed for counter rocket and mortar as the name states, but I’d presume can be used against aircraft. Or did they move those to ADA? I forget.

I’d hope this half-billion-ish dollar loss will cause some people to wake up and fix the problem. Seeing a head or two roll would be nice, but I don’t think we do the accountability thing these days.
 
AWP said:
Army owns ADA and has only invested in Patriots and SHORAD based on the Sidewinder missile I believe. C-RAM is controlled by artillery units and designed for counter rocket and mortar as the name states, but I’d presume can be used against aircraft. Or did they move those to ADA? I forget.

I’d hope this half-billion-ish dollar loss will cause some people to wake up and fix the problem. Seeing a head or two roll would be nice, but I don’t think we do the accountability thing these days.
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Is the Army owning ADA a sarcasm or an actual thing just like the USAF wanted Army Aviation limited in fixed wing and owns fixed wings themselves? Not sure otherwise how to respond to this. All I know is that the Avenger was band-aid fix over the never replaced M42 Duster that the SGT York was supposed to replace and also replaced the never replaced Chaparral as merger band aid slash stopgap.

They won't wake up. They've been asleep ever since the Cold War ended. And I would arguably say asleep even before that.

Hot take: The USAF needs rotations at NTC with trying to defend a forward deployed airfield. Put anyone not in ADA, Artillery, or Aviation to OC them so we can finally see a fair assessment of what went wrong and how to fix things without those three branches doing biased branch influenced BS.
 
The Quartermaster said:
Is the Army owning ADA a sarcasm or an actual thing just like the USAF wanted Army Aviation limited in fixed wing and owns fixed wings themselves?
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It's a real thing. Army owns all of the ground base air defense assets.
AWP said:
Army owns ADA and has only invested in Patriots and SHORAD based on the Sidewinder missile I believe. C-RAM is controlled by artillery units and designed for counter rocket and mortar as the name states, but I’d presume can be used against aircraft. Or did they move those to ADA? I forget.

I’d hope this half-billion-ish dollar loss will cause some people to wake up and fix the problem. Seeing a head or two roll would be nice, but I don’t think we do the accountability thing these days.
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I know the Avengers were mostly relegated to the ARNG, but there was talk a few years ago about bringing them back to the active duty side. Pretty sure they were developing a 25mm cannon version at some point, but decided to move forward with a "directed energy weapon" (laser) instead. IIRC, current models are stingers with an M3.


On my last deployment, I remember my BN CO telling us how he kept pushing the drone defense issue up to higher HQ. We'd (the unit) learned a ton from the Ukrainians and had been working additional counter measures, but he said people just assumed our current ADA could beat it. He said "that's like duck hunting with a 30.06. You'll miss the fuckers more than often than not."

I don't remember exactly when this conversation happened, but it was a few days before/after Tower 22 was attacked.
 
The Quartermaster said:
Is the Army owning ADA a sarcasm or an actual thing just like the USAF wanted Army Aviation limited in fixed wing and owns fixed wings themselves? Not sure otherwise how to respond to this. All I know is that the Avenger was band-aid fix over the never replaced M42 Duster that the SGT York was supposed to replace and also replaced the never replaced Chaparral as merger band aid slash stopgap.

They won't wake up. They've been asleep ever since the Cold War ended. And I would arguably say asleep even before that.

Hot take: The USAF needs rotations at NTC with trying to defend a forward deployed airfield. Put anyone not in ADA, Artillery, or Aviation to OC them so we can finally see a fair assessment of what went wrong and how to fix things without those three branches doing biased branch influenced BS.
Click to expand...

Based on a quick deep dive, I don't think the Air Force has had any air defense assets in decades. They had their own missiles in the 60s but seems scant since. I know that based on MOS, Air Defenders are the most deployed MOS in the Army. They're sent all over, some deployments are quite austere and some are in European or tropical paradises. I'm not certain this is purely because the Army owns Air Defense. Does the Army own Coastal Defense because we haven't had coastal artillery in decades.

The stick jockey service is run by fighter pilots so not surprising at the lack of air defense assets that are organic to their service. But you'd think that Security Forces might want to add an AFSC?
 
ThunderHorse said:
Does the Army own Coastal Defense because we haven't had coastal artillery in decades
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If we talk about actually artillery, we managed that until ~1950s. We also managed anti-air "coastal" sites until the late 1970s.

It all pretty much went away in the 80s when Regan started the Strategic Defense Initiative.
 

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