Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran’s leadership must - if they haven’t already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
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The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Curious question, if the Israeli jets fly higher than the altitude range of the Iranian air defence on the ground, what options does Iran have to defend against / destroy Israeli jets?
I’m assuming missiles fired from the ground might not work because of the speed the jet is moving…does this mean Iran would have to engage these jets with their own jets? My understanding is that they don’t have many fighter planes like the US/Israel. I also wonder how they downed the F35s that have been claimed, hopefully they can do more of that.
They should buy those extremely long range air to air missiles Russia has. Or buy/make more long range air defence
Not marmite but I’ll answer nonetheless.
Modern air defense systems like S-300s can absolutely hit those aircrafts even at their maximum altitude, however if they have been suppressed or neutralized, the short range air defenses and AAs can still operate but they won’t be able to hit the higher targets.
In Ukraine, the Ukrainian pilots had to fly their planes at barely above ground altitude to avoid radar detection because they could not eliminate the Russian air defense network, but that also meant that those planes have to fly closer to their targets to release their payloads, and made vulnerable to short range/portable air defenses like MANPADS.
So, if Iran wants to hit Israeli jets, or deny air superiority entirely, they need to have a more robust networked long-range air defense systems complemented by a diverse range of medium and short range defenses to maximize coverage. This is how Russia has been able to keep out NATO air forces, not surprising considering that Russia is the global leader in air defense systems.
not doubting this since they have the soviet base to build off of (plus seems to me have plenty of field testing), but how far behind do you think China is, since they have a way better industrial and research base?
I think that while Russia is the leader in air defence against aerodynamic targets and aircraft, at ballistic missile defence, the US and Israel is currently the global leader. For ballistic missile defence, the S-400 and S-350 uses a similar setup against ballistic missiles to the Patriot PAC-3 and MEADS, and the S-300V and S-500 systems are similar in concept (150kg warhead to shred a re entry vehicle) to the Israeli Arrow 2 and the Sprint missile concept. The long range Russian ballistic missile defence systems, like A-135 and the longer range parts of A-235, use nuclear warheads to eliminate incoming re entry vehicles, not exactly the kind of thing you can deploy on a conventional battlefield. S-500/550 was supposed to be a Russian THAAD equivalent, but that’s currently not how it functions. I don’t think Russia has a conventional (not nuclear) equivalent to SM-3 and Arrow 3.
China has the HQ-19, their equivalent to THAAD, capable of intercepting ballistic targets both outside and inside the atmosphere, up to 200km altitude. HQ-26, an experimental system currently under testing, is the Chinese SM-3 and Arrow 3 equivalent. And HQ-29, a system with very little public information as well, is their S-300V or Arrow 2 equivalent. So China is definitely trying to set up a multi layered ballistic missile defence system in a similar fashion to Israel and the United States, with a mix of Western and Russian inspired hardware. The few public photographs of the HQ-29 look very similar to the S-300V.
Against aerodynamic targets and aircraft, China has the HQ-9, based on the S-300PMU-2 but with western radars and electronics, and China also purchased some S-400 systems, as Russia is the global leader in this field.
I think China are ahead on radar detection technology but the Russian AD launchers themselves are better. Possibly oversimplifying somewhat but I don’t think Russia are able to detect F35s while China have publicly demonstrated telling an F35 to piss off when it should have been hidden from detection. With that said, it’s sort of hard to judge China’s ones as there are almost no examples of actual use to compare it with the Russian ones.
thank you so much, you’re literally so invaluable to this site i swear. anyways, based off this how many years do you think china is behind in this field then? i understand this will be speculation, but from what you’ve said they dont seem that far behind either of them? like, is this one of those situations where it’s just super hard like developing commercial jet engines and it kind of takes years before you realize if you’ve fucked up on forging the turbines or something else?
Exoatmospheric interception requires achieving a kinetic hit to kill, which means highly specialised and sophisticated altitude control systems, like the variable throttle 10 solid rocket motor altitude control system on the SM-3 Block IB, so you can hit the incoming warhead at a closing speed over 20 times the speed of sound. Just look up how much one of these interceptors costs. Arrow 3 is significantly cheaper, but the altitude control system is not as sophisticated. Russia is obviously struggling with this considering what’s happening with the S-500. I don’t have an idea really on exactly how far China is behind, but they’re making attempts to catch up fast.
i think money obviously is no object for china, i guess i was moreso wondering what the timeline on iterating is. it sounds very hard to test but also if you were willing to build the ballistic missiles and what not seems like it wouldnt take nearly as long to discover flaws like with turbines
Honestly no idea. Also you might notice that I almost never talk about Chinese military stuff haha. Not that I am privy to any sensitive information, but better safe than sorry.
lol yeah you really do try to play your personally identifying info as close to your chess as possible lol, still cant believe we fell for the xiahongshu2 account
@MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net you’re my other option here, what do you think lol
Yeah exactly this. With a lot of the longer range air defence systems like S-300, Bavar-373, Khordad series, etc, being neutralised, Israeli aircraft attack outside of the range of shorter range systems like HAWK, or fly above the altitude ceiling of systems like Pantsir and Tor, and above the altitude ceiling of MANPADS and AA guns. (Pantsir S1 has a 15km altitude ceiling on paper, the reality is different).