Middle East Defence & Security

[personaldesas]

That will be political gamble too much, considering his campaign and political standing on election toward reducing US boots in the volatile regions. He has pull back from Afghanistan, now want to put boots in Iran ? That's too much gamble toward mid term election.

I honestly don’t think breaking campaign promises, by itself, moves the needle that much with voters. Memories are short.

That said, sending actual boots on the ground would be deeply unpopular regardless of what was promised during the campaign. I don’t see much appetite for another ground involvement, and I’d be very surprised if he committed ground troops in any meaningful numbers.

 

[John Fedup]

Boots on the ground a year ago might have worked but not now. GOP members would consider now as political suicide.

 

[35LMOS]

Please folow the forum rules.

Bring numbers backed up by sources what was the strike rate before compared to now to base your assumption on real facts.

Mod edit: Temp ban instituted to allow for discussion by the Mod team. Asking someone (never mind a member of the Mod team) to follow the forum rules without articulating which rule or rules you feel have been violated and without using the Report Post feature is a potential sign of trolling behavior. Wanting or expecting someone to post strike data that's likely classified and not publicly available during a period of active conflict is not only unreasonable, it's also rather ridiculuous.
-Preceptor

so Feanor can demand Beltrami provide proof, but if Beltrami asks the same of Feanor, Beltrami gets banned? Is Fox News and the MAGA cult running this show?

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

so Feanor can demand Beltrami provide proof, but if Beltrami asks the same of Feanor, Beltrami gets banned? Is Fox News and the MAGA cult running this show?

Welcome to Defencetalk, new member!
What a coincidence, you are also from Spain and became member in the same period as Beltrami.

 

[Ananda]

Feanor can demand Beltrami provide proof, but if Beltrami asks the same of Feanor, Beltrami gets banned? Is Fox News and the MAGA cult running this show?

Beltrami ask proves when he does not like the source of prove that Feanor bring. He only believe the way his thinking the right way, and anyone else is false. It is simply contemptual condescending attitude, that he shown continously in his posts. He also not shown reliable proves on his own and replied mostly with idiotic 'lol' when can not providing more reliable prove.

His behaviour is not on having discussion but more on condescending 'trust me bro' common on X or Reddit or other social media bantering. Seems he is more suited in there with his style of 'discussion'.

Btw Maga and Fox cult should be more fit Beltrami style.

 

[uguduwa]

My guess is that the outcome of this war would be similar to what happened in Iraq after the 1st Gulf War. Iran would be significantly weaker and Israel would have a free reign in bombing it whenever necessary.

 

[35LMOS]

Not saying I like the guy, but it seems one sided. I am not from Spain, but keep a place there. No longer like cold weather.

Mod edit: Poster banned. Trying to troll the Mod team is a surefire way to earn one. As is ignoring Red Text comments from members of the Mod team on why certain things have been done. For the general membership at large, there is a very large difference between a poster stating their opinion on something, and a poster making statements and claims, or even asserting that something is factual. An opinion is just that, an opinion although posters can provide supporting links and information which support their opinion or what caused them to reach it. Something which is stated as being a fact is either true or false and can be subject to factchecking and requests for proof. It is not "one-sided" to take action against a poster who demands another poster prove their opinion, implying that the poster wasn't following the forum rules by not proving their opinion.
-Preceptor

 

[KipPotapych]

Imagine Pahlavi’s face when Trump says that he is a nice guy, but someone from the current regime would be more appropriate to run the country. Iranians have to be stoked too. Merz saying he is on the same page in terms of getting the terrible regime away though (“Unless something had changed” (c) Tusk).

Also:
- Iran was going to attack the US, we forced Israel’s hand, they didn’t force ours;
- Spain is terrible and I instructed to cut all dealings with them;
- It all happened too quickly, so no evacuation plan for the embassies/citizens (months of prep, yet still no plan);
- People we had in mind (to take over in Iran) are dead; the second choices are probably dead too, according to reports; the third wave is coming in; soon we will not know anyone; but Venezuela was so incredible!
- and so on.

It’s like listening to a demented person who was never overly bright to begin with. Also reminds me of someone heading into the end of February in 2022 thinking “Crimea was incredible!”

Edit: at least the dude didn’t have a Peace Prize to give away before being ran over, am I right?

 

[personaldesas]

- People we had in mind (to take over in Iran) are dead;

My favorite development of this war so far. "People we had in mind to take over are dead. Cause we killed them."

 

[KipPotapych]

Lol. Exactly. Except Colby earlier today said that that was all Israel’s doing and US is only involved in degrading Iranian capabilities. Need as much distance as possible for the internal consumption.

“I love the poorly educated” because they are loyal and smart! (C) Trump.

Edit: Also,

 

[KipPotapych]

Hormuz:




Second thoughts on this:

Colby earlier today said that that was all Israel’s doing and US is only involved in degrading Iranian capabilities.

Along with Trump’s comments re someone from the regime taking over the reigns, probably a preparation for an exit:

 

[Feanor]

TBH it makes me suspect that neither the US ground forces and fixed installation, or Iran was really ready or expecting conflict to break out.

If US forces did not undertake steps to disperse and harden aircraft positions prior to the start of conflict, then it might be a case of orders to undertake strikes might not have also been issued appropriately to deal with potential counterstrikes.

These are lessons the US and other major actors should be taking to adapt to the shifting landscape. It's reminiscent of the Russian airforce refusing to build HAS or even hangars for aircraft for the past ~20 years, while everyone pointed out to the various problems, from quality of life issues, to maintenance difficulties, to OPSEC, to the physical protection of aircraft. It took losing aircraft on the ground to preventable strikes for ~2+ years for Russia to start. Now here's the US, who previously had a brief run-in with Iran earlier in this presidency, and is very likely to have another one, not adapting to these realities.

Have we seen anything resembling drone defense teams from US forces in the region? That can't be hard to organize. Some of the vehicles in the links above could play the role. They just have to not be parked in one place, empty. Sure there are some HMGs and optics available. On the other hand, the sad non-performance by the Iranian navy points to the exact same thing. All destroyed in port without even making an effort to do something. I guess it's really leaving me confused. The US was building up forces for quite some time before launching this war, and everyone was playing the guessing game about when the war would start in the run-up. Surely the US knew on some level that a war was a real possibility. And Iran had to know it was possible, if not imminent.

On the side of Iran, some of the organizational leadership might have been disrupted enough so that there is insufficient coordination and control to manage large drone swarms. A single launcher might be sufficient to get a number of drones aloft over time, and there might be sufficient flight time for this to happen and still have drones reach desired targets, but are there enough operators or controllers to handle a number of drones in a potential swarm?

Alternately, stupidity is unfortunately always a possibility as well.

Most Shaheds aren't manually controlled even with Russia's improvements to the platform. In fact manually controlled Shaheds, to the best of my knowledge, are fairly rare. In point of fact Russia only started adapting some Shaheds for manual control by piggy-backing off of Ukraine's cellular towers, well into the current war. At the end of the day, against US facilities that don't appear to have anything remotely resembling drone defense teams, you don't need a sophisticated approach. You just need to throw 20 (or 200) Shaheds instead of 2, and you'll do real damage.

But again the same question, Iran had to know something like this was if not imminent, at least likely. If not against the US, then against Israel. I also have yet to see any reports of "drone port" facilities in Iran, anything like what Russia does with their Gerber and Shahed launching facilities. It really seems like Iran just hasn't done anything to prepare for mass-employment of Shaheds.

 

[uguduwa]

Imagine Pahlavi’s face when Trump says that he is a nice guy, but someone from the current regime would be more appropriate to run the country. Iranians have to be stoked too. Merz saying he is on the same page in terms of getting the terrible regime away though (“Unless something had changed” (c) Tusk).

Also:
- Iran was going to attack the US, we forced Israel’s hand, they didn’t force ours;
- Spain is terrible and I instructed to cut all dealings with them;
- It all happened too quickly, so no evacuation plan for the embassies/citizens (months of prep, yet still no plan);
- People we had in mind (to take over in Iran) are dead; the second choices are probably dead too, according to reports; the third wave is coming in; soon we will not know anyone; but Venezuela was so incredible!
- and so on.

It’s like listening to a demented person who was never overly bright to begin with. Also reminds me of someone heading into the end of February in 2022 thinking “Crimea was incredible!”

Edit: at least the dude didn’t have a Peace Prize to give away before being ran over, am I right?

It‘s honestly beyond me how any Iranian could even entertain the idea of bringing back Pahlavi. As far as I know not a small number of them even want the monarchy back. It‘s like they haven‘t learned a thing from the past few decades. My impression of Iranians is that they are deeply delusional people who live thinking that it‘s still 500 BC. They think that they are Europeans which is the extent of the delusion at least within younger generstions.

Now abot Pahlavi, this guy lived almost all of his adult life in the US, has no political experience, has no contacts within the current administration. How is he supposed to come back and rebuild the country from grounds up, reestablish institutions etc. Then we look at his character, the man encouraged people to go out and protest which got thousands killed and he has no remorse whatsoever, not a peep about civilians being killed in the current conflict but went on to offer condolences for the 3 US service members who were killed.

 

[John Fedup]

Now abot Pahlavi, this guy lived almost all of his adult life in the US, has no political experience, has no contacts within the current administration. How is he supposed to come back and rebuild the country from grounds up, reestablish institutions etc.

Well it is sort of like how to pick a Trump cabinet member.....hire a$$ kissers with SFA knowledge about their portfolios.

 

[uguduwa]

Well it is sort of like how to pick a Trump cabinet member.....hire a$$ kissers with SFA knowledge about their portfolios.

US is not a war torn country, has working institutions, has a backbone of professional bureaucrats so there is somewhat larger room for error. For a country like Iran, playing these games would be fatal. That even assuming their fantasies of bringing back Pahlavi come true.

 

[swerve]

I mean... yes and no. The environment has changed pretty drastically, and dispersion and concealment are core elements of mitigating the drone threat. The US marched cheerfully into a confrontation with the country where Russia got a lot of their drone tech, and didn't take those measures... It really makes me think that if US ground forces went to war against a drone operator as proficient as Ukraine or Russia, they would be in for a rude awakening. ...

I've seen it reported that in a recent NATO exercise (in Estonia?) some Ukrainian drone operators were present - & provided a nasty shock to other forces. I have no idea whether it was true.

 

[SinisterMinister]

These are lessons the US and other major actors should be taking to adapt to the shifting landscape. It's reminiscent of the Russian airforce refusing to build HAS or even hangars for aircraft for the past ~20 years, while everyone pointed out to the various problems, from quality of life issues, to maintenance difficulties, to OPSEC, to the physical protection of aircraft. It took losing aircraft on the ground to preventable strikes for ~2+ years for Russia to start. Now here's the US, who previously had a brief run-in with Iran earlier in this presidency, and is very likely to have another one, not adapting to these realities.

Have we seen anything resembling drone defense teams from US forces in the region? That can't be hard to organize. Some of the vehicles in the links above could play the role. They just have to not be parked in one place, empty. Sure there are some HMGs and optics available. On the other hand, the sad non-performance by the Iranian navy points to the exact same thing. All destroyed in port without even making an effort to do something. I guess it's really leaving me confused. The US was building up forces for quite some time before launching this war, and everyone was playing the guessing game about when the war would start in the run-up. Surely the US knew on some level that a war was a real possibility. And Iran had to know it was possible, if not imminent.



Most Shaheds aren't manually controlled even with Russia's improvements to the platform. In fact manually controlled Shaheds, to the best of my knowledge, are fairly rare. In point of fact Russia only started adapting some Shaheds for manual control by piggy-backing off of Ukraine's cellular towers, well into the current war. At the end of the day, against US facilities that don't appear to have anything remotely resembling drone defense teams, you don't need a sophisticated approach. You just need to throw 20 (or 200) Shaheds instead of 2, and you'll do real damage.

But again the same question, Iran had to know something like this was if not imminent, at least likely. If not against the US, then against Israel. I also have yet to see any reports of "drone port" facilities in Iran, anything like what Russia does with their Gerber and Shahed launching facilities. It really seems like Iran just hasn't done anything to prepare for mass-employment of Shaheds.

There are many confusing elements to be sure. The crackdown on footage is making it harder to decipher what is happening, but some things I wonder:

1. Why are so many Shaheds getting through in the Gulf? It would be one thing if we saw swarms saturating air defences, but I've yet to see footage of such swarms. Israel seems to do pretty well in keeping them out. You should be able to shoot down a Shahed with a simple AA gun; not sure how they are getting to medium/high value targets so early in the conflict

2. What happened to those F15s? 3 taken down by friendly fire is stretching credulity, not to mention all crew surviving hits from heavy SAMs is unlikely

3. What exactly is the nature of the airstrikes from the US/Israel? Seem to still be quite a high number of standoff munitions. Saw one bit of footage that purported to be from an F16 over Tehran. But we also now that as recently as yesterday, Iranian planes were still in the air. So if that is the case, did they actually send B2s and B1s without having air dominance? Or is that just a lie? Confusing.

4. What exactly is going on with the Iranian military? Some statements would make it seem command and control has been decentralized. Launches have presumable slowed down (though maybe some of this is the footage crackdown?). Is this intentional to wait out the most intense portion of the counterstrike campaign? Or have launchers and facilities been properly attritted? Would seem early for the latter.

 

[John Fedup]

2. What happened to those F15s? 3 taken down by friendly fire is stretching credulity, not to mention all crew surviving hits from heavy SAMs is unlikely

Haven't searched for details on these friendly fire events but I wonder where the shoot downs occurred? If they occurred near the take off sites shortly after take off then surprise may have been a factor that delayed any possible evasive action..