MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]

This implies Iran needs to strike immediately, because not all the defenses are up yet

Strike what right now? Empty hangars and pavement? US military assets aren’t in place yet, Iran could cause a lot of damage with a pre emptive strike to US military bases, kill a lot of people potentially, but ultimately they wont be taking out the planes that would fly into Iran, because those planes are still in the United States currently. Or in the South China Sea onboard an aircraft carrier.

What’s the plan here by publishing this?

These kind of movements are impossible to hide, and news organisations always want a scoop, even if it’s only a few hours or days before the movements are evident.

the resources to handle the… counter-attack

A big part of that usually involves left of launch defeat, striking ballistic missile storage facilities, launchers, command and control, before the missiles launch, to reduce the amount of incoming fire air defence systems have to deal with. (The cliche about the best defence being offense applies here). It’s not the Gulf War anymore, left of launch defeat can be done to some degree. While modern cruise missiles have two way datalinks and can hit relocatable targets and/or act as loitering munitions, doing left of launch defeat just with cruise missiles would be incredibly difficult. If left of launch defeat requires overflying Iranian airspace, that requires large scale offensive counter air operations, which requires the large military build-up.

Both the New York Times and Fox News are now reporting that we will see a large military build-up against Iran in the Middle East in the coming weeks, including a an aircraft carrier strike group (NYT states the USS Abraham Lincoln), air defence systems, fighter aircraft, strike aircraft, and mid air refueling aircraft. Similar to the previous build-up against Iran and the build-up against Venezuela.

If this does end up happening, if the US strikes, and if the US does not strike well before the build-up is complete, it would mean that the US has decided an only cruise missile strike with no overflights into Iranian airspace is insufficient, and that any planned operation requires flying into Iranian airspace with large scale offensive counter air operations (suppressing air defences, fighter escort and sweep, stand in attacks). Lots of “ifs”.

The USS Abraham Lincoln air wing does operate a Marine squadron of F-35Cs and a Navy Squadron of EA-18Gs with NGJ pods (not all US aircraft carriers operate this), in fact the air wing of this particular aircraft carrier was the first to deploy the F-35 and EA-18G NGJ combination in combat, against Ansarallah/Houthuis in Yemen in 2024. It was also the first combat operation of both the F-35C variant and NGJ pods independently. These are what the US military uses to suppress and destroy advanced air defence systems, also referred to as double digit SA systems, based off of the NATO codenames for these systems (examples: S-300PS= SA-10, Buk M1 = SA-11, S-300V = SA-12, Buk M2 = SA-17, S-300PMU-1/2 = SA-20, S-400/S-300PMU-3 = SA-21, S-300V4/VM = SA-23, Buk M3 = SA-27). Iran does operate systems in this class, domestically made or from Russia.

For fighter escort and sweep, the US usually uses F-22 Raptors, and because they are the most expensive fighter aircraft for the US to operate, they only deploy right before US military action, a day or two before last year’s Iranian strikes, and hours before the strikes on Venezuela. If F-22 Raptors deploy, that’s usually a big signal.

Other aircraft that are usually involved are the EC-130H Compass Call, one of them deployed days before the Iranian and Venezuelan strikes.

Additional F-35As and F-35Bs, and F-16CJs for more AGM-88E AARGM shooters, are often deployed.

So over the horizon radars that operate below 30Mhz, like Sepehr/Ghadir? Yes that would probably be the best thing Iran has to detect an incoming attack. Israel did destroy a few of them in previous attacks, but Iran should still have some sites functioning.

Interesting page on those, with recordings

I don’t think the US has any stealth aircraft in the region right now, just F-15s and A-10s. Venezuela also had these VHF/UHF radars in the P-12/P-18 Spoon Rest series, and more advanced ones like the Chinese JY-27A Wide Mat, I don’t know how much early warning they gave Venezuela but it didn’t seem like much, if any.

While these VHF/UHF radars could give some advanced warning of an incoming attack, basing a ground controlled intercept strategy around them as the key sensor would require a technological miracle to work against modern stealth jets. The F-35 is not the F-117. But at the same time, this is very different to how China plans to use these VHF/UHF radars. For China, they are just one sensor in a swarm of sensors, China’s air defence strategy is very much a “system of systems”, with high levels of integration being the goal.

I’m not writing off anything, just commenting on tonight’s situation. The US did many such psyche outs with regards to Venezuela.

I’d think we’d see Iranian missiles flying towards Qatar if that was the case…

Isn’t this a poor sign for US hegemony? They have so many resources and so many avenues of intelligence gathering, and they are relying on psyche-outs?

Not really, the US did it many times over Venezuela. If you want to see how a nation is going to react when under the threat of attack, the threat has to actually be real, or perceived to be real by said nation at some point. It’s also a golden opportunity for intelligence gathering as said nation is forced to reveal their hand, Iran can’t bet on there being no incoming attack and let their guard down. Neither could Venezuela, which is why they forward deployed their Buks/SA-17 air defence systems months before, systems that the US meticulously tracked and destroyed months later. They have to actually prepare to defend against an incoming US attack, and the US will be watching that closely.

Also, most institutions are simply not prepared to be fed conflicting information every minute while having little idea of what is actually happening. This can paralyse the decision making of both the USA’s allies and enemies, which could be a desirable outcome, for instance the US doesn’t want Israel involved, doesnt want Europe to leak information, and doesn’t want China and Russia to pass on information to Iran. The US can also observe how they react. Does Israel carry out simulated strikes on Iran? What do European nations do, do they evacuate their embassies and military equipment from the Middle East too? What moves do China and Russia make? Psyops can be very effective.

Iranian airspace is back open, the first few flights into and over Iran from foreign airlines are trickling in.

Looks like tonight was a big, co-ordinated psyche out/information and probing operation by the United States, with aircraft over Iraq, evacuating military bases of non essential equipment and personnel (which was also apparently paused at some point), contradictory statements from Trump himself, US government officials and “insider sources”, reports of the US beginning to move the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier to the Middle East, etc. It’s clear that the US knows exactly what the public can see online, and has a good indication of what other nations can see. With Iran having very few pre attack indicators, they closed their airspace out of an abundance of caution once those few indicators (evacuation of US bases and aircraft over Iraq) showed up. Strategic ambiguity at all times is the Trump strategy.

The question now is, what happens next? Does Iran continue to close it’s airspace at the first sign of an impending US attack? Is Iran closing it’s airspace potentially also probing by Iran, to see how the US would react (Iran could do this just before launching ballistic missiles). Will the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group actually arrive in the next week or two? If so, does the US strike before it arrives, as it arrives, or do they even strike at all?

That was about 8 hours ago I think.

His articles often contain no sources and usually comprise of what his “high ranking officials” friends told him.

I still remember when he said that Israel had planned to set off an EMP from a nuclear weapon carried at high altitude by an F-35 over Iran, but Russia shot it down. I stopped listening to Escobar after that.

Iran has extended the closure of it’s airspace for another 2 hours, up until 03:30 UTC:

There’s also a one click “fix” in the application to make Starlink use Starlink satellites to determine the position of the receiver, and not GPS. How well does this “fix” work, is unclear. But it is a setting that can be enabled. Iranians who own Starlink are probably not enabling it because they don’t know about it, and can’t find out because the internet is down. Mossad/CIA have their own lines of communication not available to civilians.

You already know the answer.

The whole point by Hasan is foolish because it requires both the USA and Iran to be something they are not. The USA is a global superpower that wants to exert its influence everywhere, especially in the Middle East and West Asia. Iran aspires to be a regional power, and to rid it’s region of US and Israeli influence, ultimately by removing Israel and US military installations from the region. JCPOA? There’s a reason why that collapsed, there is no going back to it, the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last year. Hasan’s argument is the “why can’t everyone hug it out and have fun” of geopolitics. It’s not possible in any real sense. Politics (especially geopolitics and military conflict) is often the art of the possible, the attainable, what can be realistically achieved, and the left often struggles with those concepts, with realism.

Underground 2 will always be my favourite. Carbon is good, but the map is average compared to Underground 2 and Most Wanted 2005, which have incredible maps. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2010 is also great, a crossover between Need For Speed and Burnout done right (Most Wanted 2012 is an example of it done wrong). The remastered version runs at 4K 60fps on the latest consoles and looks great, obviously on PC it runs at whatever you want. Burnout 3 is another great game, also Burnout Paradise.

I’m currently playing Unbound, the story is trash (almost all characters speak like a gen alpha kid, incredible amounts of cringe), but gameplay is alright, you can choose between the black box need for speed style grip handling or burnout/Criterion style tap to drift handling. Thankfully you can turn off the cartoonish effects for your own car, not the opponent’s cars though sadly. There is some absolutely bullshit map/level/track design with the checkpoints, you can’t hit the apex of a corner of the checkpoint doesn’t allow you to. Also barriers everywhere to catch you out. The music also sucks.

Iran does have earth imaging satellites, look up the Noor satellites, those were their first ones I think. Maybe he means that Iran doesn’t have GNSS satellites, which is true. Him talking about GPS interference hints at that.

Yes it’s wrong because of what the US can do with bombers, also the Ohio class SSGNs exist (the US has four of them), submarines that operate below the surface and can fire without surfacing, and are extremely difficult to track, and can be loaded with up to 154 Tomahawks each. That’s a very big naval asset. (This is also why the Trump class battleships make no sense).

As for bringing in an aircraft carrier, the US would need to bring in one with a flight wing that operates F-35Cs and EA-18Gs with NGJ pods to overfly Iran. Not all aircraft carriers operate this technology, for instance the USS Gerald Ford that deployed to Venezuela only had F/A-18E/Fs, and EA-18Gs with AN/ALQ-99 TJS pods. In that case, the F-35s and EA-18Gs with NGJ pods would need to be deployed seperate to the aircraft carrier (the US did with regards to Venezuela, with those aircraft operating out of Puerto Rico), and the aircraft carrier acts as a large amount of supplemental firepower with 4th generation aircraft.

Reports are coming in that the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) Nimitz class aircraft carrier is being deployed to the Middle East. This makes sense, as it operates an F-35C squadron and EA-18G Growler aircraft with NGJ pods.

That really depends. JASSM, from the first tests 24 years ago, was designed to be used in a GPS degraded environment and has received various upgrades since then to its anti jamming capability, both on the receivers on the missile itself, and US satellites have been upgraded (M code GPS). It also has an imaging infrared seeker in the nose.

Went to effect almost 40 minutes ago, in effect for another 97 minutes.