Strikes on GCC have not stopped and IAF aircraft are still over Iran.

You just know Nasrallah and Soleimani are cooking the shit out of Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld rn.

Oman receiving revenue for doing nothing

I am going to go out on a limb and say that there's no way any of the parties are fully agreeing to the Iranian 10-point deal without massive final changes. Just to start, $2M per ship to cross the Hormuz Strait would mean nearly $70-80B in revenue for the Iranians per year.

As I understand the situation, 1.) Trump says they agreed to his terms 2.) Iran said he agreed to their different set of terms 3.) Both sides are shameless liars whose self-preservation instincts and hardons for violence are constantly battling one another so who knows?

IMO everyone is tapped out. The Israelis won the most out of this. The strait being closed is a double-edged sword, the Iranians haven't had any of their ships cross in enough numbers to be relevant, same goes for the rest of the GCC. Iran doesn't have a choke hold on the strait anymore than the GCC

F-15E was brought down by a regular MANPAD. We saw some of the IRGC guys in the area where it was shot down carrying Iranian MANPADs.

There are a bunch of comments saying "Well that's because we used so many long-range systems" which misses the fact that most of the weapons we see on aircraft and on the ground are JDAM/LJDAMs. These are not stand-off weapons.

These numbers seem sus. The delivery schedule for USAF in 2025 was 525+ JASSM-ERs, which would have brought the total inventory to 2935~ JASSM-ERs delivered by Jan 2026 (so pre-war inv in reality is 635 higher). The delivery plan for 2026 is 600~ JASSM-ERs and 150~ LRASMs.

$7B for Space-based AMTI. I hope Congress slashes it to $500M.

>$30B for Army missile procurement >a $20B+ increase >check inside >$11B for 857 THAAD missiles >$12B for 2,798 PAC-3 MSE missiles

Feast your eyes

And the USAF FY27 plans for the E-7 are.......nothing

While this is true, and the Israelis are probably very low on interceptors (which is what prompted the mods to DS), it still doesn't matter much on the scheme of Iran striking useful targets in Israel. It has been memory holded but the April and October 2024 attacks involved 330+ missiles.

That's some odd framing on the part of the author I think, because this stuff is fully briefed up fwiw this particular incident wasn't 358s but EO/IR cuing of bona fide SAMs (you wouldn't need to pull many Gs to get away from a 358 in a fighter)

The confirmed pre-2024 inventory of MRBM launchers was around 470. Between June 2025 and now, more than 200+ launchers are visually confirmed to have been struck, many while loaded. Nonetheless, many more are likely buried (in tunnels) and cant be used.

Well we now know why Operation Rough Rider kept having so many close-call leaks to the media. The whole thing started with a disastrous command change. A Navy seal overseeing air operations done by the USAF over an active war zone.

Look at my boy go

The cost of neutrality on paper even is that the Finns were counting on nobody and the events of a full-scale war would have probably unfolded much like the opening days of prior conflicts where there are last minute attempts of support for them but nothing would ultimately show up.

Some afternoon reading on the CIA reading room. This afternoon, we are looking at some reports released in the mid-1980s assessing forces around Europe. This one is on the Nordic forces. To start some really nice maps on where everyone is: File over at: www.cia.gov/readingroom/...

Between the SOUTHCOM, SOCOM, and CENTCOM shit all of this year and last year. If there isn't going be a purge of the mid to senior ranks when a new Admin rolls in, then the DoD is truly fucked for good.

I highly recommend @tonystark.bsky.social et al and the latest Second Breakfast with Frank Kendall on this. He literally walks the dog on the role industry plays in responding to requirements, not evading them or inventing their own for profit. Solid thread from you too Zach.

Don't get me wrong. The defense industry needs to be under fire for a whole variety of reasons from IP/TDP issues where they claim work developed under taxpayer money to overcharging/heavy restrictions on right to repair and a ton of other shit that comes with being a multi-billion dollar company.

The argument or the claim from Congress/WH for why this is a good idea is because it will force companies to invest in R&D/production rather than "make big profits and do nothing", but companies invest based on signals from Congress/DoD. If the vibe from either is rancid then why invest?

why don't they build the entire plane out of SOF?

The US has been at the forefront of innovation on UAS and using drones to support manned craft since the 1960s.

The real bet on the upcoming budget

Whether or not the recent E-3 loss completely fucks over longterm USAF AWACS plans comes down to what the FY27 budget shows (which comes out next week) and what Congress does in response. The USAF will get two E-7 prototypes next year. But longterm procurement has been stalled by the OSD.

This is just more gizmo cult shit In big boy war against an opponent with missiles you lose planes on the ground, this is why you don't do dumb big boy wars of choice against opponents with missiles, but there's nothing you can do to avoid it and really only a couple things to somewhat mitigate it

This is the worst possible way to say "Yeah Ukraine is building a ton of drones, but our company is relevant because we will have the capacity of build hundreds of tanks. Which both Ukraine and Russia sorely want"

1965-1966 a total of 510 manned aircraft were lost in air operations against N. Vietnam. Of these 457 were combat losses. Only 40 or less than 10 percent of the losses were due to SAM attacks. MIGs accounted for 13 of the losses. Antiaircraft and GROUND FIRE accounted for 404 of the combat losses.

I think the losses in this war ofc need to be understood in a broader context of the past. The Iraqi AD did more damage to the allied coalition than Iran is doing here. The USAF also lost more aircraft in the ground to mortar attacks in Vietnam than you would imagine (more than to enemy fighters).

The real question wrt to the E-3 and more KC-135 losses is why these platforms are still parked at PSAB in the same area KC-135s were hit on the ground by fairly accurate Iranian SRBMs (vs the highly inaccurate MRBMs) prior.

One TLAM every hour type war.

850+ TLAMs in 4 weeks is insane. If true, this would mean about 23-24% of the Navy’s 3.9k TLAMs were fired in the last 4 weeks. On top of this, about a thousand Interceptors (PAC-2/3s & THAADs) were fired.

How to reduce sortie rates? Easy, kill the pilots at their homes.

Big Purchases only happen on Big Computer. This is the law, I will not explain.

The BMD reports on the early 2020s exchanges are going to have the hardest hitting photos ever. Pictured here, an Iranain maneuvering re-entry vehicle, released from a medium-range ballistic missile, heads for a town in Southern Israel.

Had to update some of my priors when it comes to the last part. The amount of strikes the GCC are withering is absolutely insane to me. It is way more than I expected.

Twitter now seems awash with scams centered around AI-driven situation monitoring "OSINT" apps/platforms. All of these are in some way tied to online gambling platforms as well or efforts aimed at monetizing OSINT stuff.

I'm not being funny, you on the American so-called left can do whatever you like, but as an Eastern European I am not obliged to not lay into Hasan for his pro-Russian positions, which I consider, to be quite frank, inherently a form of racism.

I have been (very busy) working on a video covering all things ballistic missile defense (but mostly on the surface level) going over what is what and what shiny thing do. I have been working through small animations these last few weeks. Here's a few of them:

For months now I have been using bsky mainly through the Firefox browser on my phone just to make it extra inconvenient to use. It has mostly worked at making me stay away because it logs me out everytime due to the extensions I use.

The US didn't give Ukraine 140 THAADs, 80 SM-3s, hundreds of SM-6s, SM-2s, JASSMs, thousands of JDAMs, SDBs, or PAC-3 MSEs. Under an ideal world it would have done so, but it didn't. So they aren't to blame for any of it. This is just lazy.

>it is the 1980s >the Russians are mired in a big war against a neighbor >there's a tanker war in the Hormuz strait >US ships are firing at Iran >the USN realizes it's MCM capabilities are completely inadequate after years of under investments >Trump is talking about taking Kharg Island

More TEL plinking at Isfahan north At least two more launchers caught out. One spilled propellant along a field, and the other left a large scorch mark on an interior road in the base. Thanks to our friends at Planet Labs for the imagery.

We just making shit up on main 🤷‍♀️

Reworked the SM-3 IA/IB from the ground up to be more accurate. Cable raceways for steering and control section added. Added SM-6 and reworked the PAC brothers. I'll be moving on to making some missile info cards and animating that later.

Losses are to be expected, but i don't think the US has enough C-UAS assets in theater. For a long time now, there has been a particular lack of passive defense planning by the US for its IAMD assets. I can't say this loss was totally unexpected, it was eventually bound to happen.

Probably first major US loss of the conflict when it comes to ballistic missile defense. One of TPY-2 radars belonging to the THAAD battery deployed to Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan seems to have been struck. The full radar set goes over $200M.