Thirdly, there is a very real risk that Israel and the USA will lose this war, as will the UK, as a result of its collateral involvement. Iran has been preparing for war for a very long period of time. It has a very large stockpile of admittedly low-grade missiles available to it, plus an enormous capacity to manufacture drones. Israeli and Western defence forces have not reacted in the way that the precedent in Ukraine should have suggested to be necessary, which is to create cheap anti-drone defence mechanisms. The consequence is that Israel and the USA are much more likely to run out of weapons than Iran is, leaving Iran with the potential capability of controlling this region militarily, which is just about the last thing that anyone would wish, given the nature of the regime in that country and its apparent indifference to imposing suffering through loss of human life.
This is all possible. The established arms suppliers have a vested interest in maintaining sales of their current, expensive product lines. Israel, the US, Uncle Tom Cobley and All could do with the kind of cheap drone interceptors that Ukraine has been forced to develop.
But so what? Everything Spud says is nowhere near as bad as raving, suicidal towelheads with nukes. This has needed dealing with for decades, and finally those boorish, unsophisticated, contemptible Trumpians are doing it. And the Yids are making sure it’s done right.
The US is using repurposed Iranian drone technology to attack Iran – a military expert explains why
Evidently the Yanks are as smart as Spud. So they’ve copied the Iranian drones.
Saw that, and thought it was hilarious. The Yanks, and probably Israel, have startup defence companies like Anduril doing cheap stuff that will eventually eat Lockheed’s lunch, as SpaceX is doing to Raytheon and Boeing.
But Spud’s point stands: everyone knows Iran had shitloads of Shaheds and taking them down with interceptors that cost orders of magnitude more than a Shahed can’t continue for long.
Good point. That’s why Israel doesn’t fire up Iron Dome for every incoming missile. They plot its trajectory and if the rocket is going to land in the middle of a field, say, then they ignore it.
More importantly, though, since last December Israel has Iron Beam. That’s a 100-kilowatt laser-based system that costs only $2.00-$3.50 a time to fire. It’s ideal for high-volume threats such as drones.
The Iranian drones are already copies. But anyway the tech is little more than a RC model aircraft with GPS. Anybody could do it. The regular posters here could do it. There are also now cheap missiles, like Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System with a cheap laser homer on a standard 70mm rocket, or the RN’s Martlet which will be deployed in the theatre as soon as the Wildcats can drag their arses over there. Believe it or not, western militaries are considering the drone threat. The UK has stuff in the field in Ukraine that we don’t have in our own forces.
“The regular posters here could do it.“
Not me, I still have a standard lamp in a box that I can’t manage to put together even with an instructional video! And my one attempt at flying a drone (albeit a liny indoor one, an unwise Christmas gift) saw it carom off a wall, impact with the dining room ceiling and drop to the floor to be pounced on by the cat, who must have thought he’d caught the mother of all bluebottles!
Tut, women drivers eh.
I’ll get me coat………
From watching vidoes of people using drones, the fiddliest part is taking off, just as with setting off in a car. The going from no motion to motion has a “lump” that you need to get over before you can control the motion.
You need to be moving before you can control the motion, but you can’t control the motion until you are moving. You need more “revs” to actually get moving than to move, so you go from stationery to too fast to control as you set off and have to quickly reduce the thrust to get control.
You can’t set off in a car going 1mph, then 2mph, then 3mph, the engine just dannae do it, you jump from zero to 5+. You can’t thrust a drone from “hovering” at zero cm above the floor to 1cm above the floor, then 2cm above the floor, then 3cm above the floor, as soon as you have the thrust it’s enough to shoot six feet or more, and then you have to quickly reduce the thrust to go back to hovering.
It’s the hosepipe problem. You can’t aim until it’s flowing, but until it’s flowing you don’t know where you’re aiming.
..and then you find you’ve pissed down your leg.
Rather like a boat with a rudder. A rudder doesn’t work unless there’s a flow past it.
It does help with assembly when they actually ship all the correct parts in the box. Are you sure this is the case?
More to the point, it would appear that the USA and Israel are reported to have started to use “energy weapons”… If this becomes a norm, the days of using $1million defence missiles to knock out “$10,000 drones are numbered. I don’t doubt that the technology exists, certainly in the USA – it will be derived from the “star wars” research in Reagan’s time – and lasers designed to hit ICBMs at distance would make mincemeat of “slow” drones at short range – and all for the cost of a couple of dollars’ in electricity.
“DragonFire is the UK’s primary Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW), designed to destroy drones, missiles, and other threats with high precision for less than £10 per shot. Developed by a consortium led by MBDA, it will be installed on Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers by 2027 and has been tested on British Army vehicles. The system is capable of hitting a £1 coin from a kilometer away.”
From google AI. We’ll be ready next year, or sometime.
“it will be installed on Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers by 2027”
Call me cynical, but I’d bet my house that timescale will not be met or, if it is, it will fry the destroyer, not the target
This is all possible.
Well, no. As long as the US chooses to fight, it can’t lose.
Well, that’s the worry. The US may choose to make a deal.
That has been a real problem in the past, but I don’t think we need to worry about that with President Trump.
At some point, the US will choose not to fight anymore.
I believe the goal of the US is to crush all Iranian military assets to where they are no threat to anyone, and to usher in a regime that won’t support worldwide terror. These are good goals, worth fighting for. Fealty to the West not required.
Once accomplished (in a few days? In a few weeks?) US will pack up and leave, but leave a note saying, “We’ll be watching you. You start up nuke weapons program, fund terrorist action, sell missiles to Hezbollah, or ANYTHING ELSE WE DON’T LIKE, and we’ll be back with a vengeance.”
So, PJF, that could be called a deal. But more of a “declare victory and leave.”
The problem is, that “we’ll be back” assumes a consistent foreign policy. But everyone knows, not least America’s enemies, that there is little consistency. Sit quiet through the rest of Trump and they can start again under President Newsom or some other treasonous cunt.
That’s precisely what the Venezualan regime (left in place virtually intact by Trump’s deal) is doing. The American people will choose stupid sooner or later.
[similar conversation below, btw]
Looks like Venezuala was to collapse Cuba and, along with Iran, oil-throttle Xi. Both can take good effect before Trump leaves office, and anyway there’ll be time after sorting out Iran to look again at Venezuela and do more if needed.
The US won’t keep it going for long, and especially as more dead Americans start to come home.
The thing with war is always that quote from Apocalypse Now “Charlie didn’t get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death, or victory.”
Bob in Ohio never really gave that much of a shit about what was going on in Hanoi. The troops that went out to Vietnam did so because they had to, or had nothing better to do. None of them gave 2 shits about who ran Vietnam. Stay alive, get some pussy, some weed, get home in one piece. Same as how the average Russian conscript didn’t give a shit about Afghanistan.
And when you are fighting Viet Minh or Mujhadeen guys who really do give a shit, they’re going to fight dirtier and harder than you will.
Nation-building, which is what everything from Vietnam on seems to have been, doesn’t work.
All you have to do as a guerrilla is keep alive and keep doing something, anything. If you do that, it doesn’t really matter if you lose ten men for every one the Americans do. The media will portray the Americans as losers, because that means more money for them.
Which is why the Americans should not be putting boots on the ground. Their sole aim should be to change the regime to something that doesn’t sponsor groups outside its borders. Everything else is up to the Iranians.
Actually attempting nation-building in Iran would mean the swamp gets contracts and money to do it. Which is the the real enemy, the swamp. And to be avoided.
It’s unfortunate (for Ukraine, Israel, and the Gulf States at least – for Russia and Iran change that to “fortunate”) that ballistic missile defence remains so technically challenging.
It’s now relatively cheap to down one-way attack drones, even the more advanced ones (jets rather than scooter engines) that are basically low-end cruise missiles at this point. At the high end the Israelis and soon most of the West have directed energy weapons that are expensive to purchase but “ammunition” is cheap. At the low end, the Ukrainians have rapidly developed interceptor drones (which have also had to get faster and more autonomous, so increasingly resemble conventional air defence systems – just cheaper) which they should find many overseas buyers for.
But ballistic missiles are too high and too fast for those solutions, and counter-missile interceptors for systems like THAAD remain eye-wateringly expensive. Worse, there are limited stockpiles and slow production. The only bright side I can see is that at least it’s easier to destroy Iranian ballistic missile production and launch sites from the air than it is to prevent them launching drones.
Hence the need for complete air superiority, which has been achieved. Now the USA can stooge B52s with iron bombs all over the place and finish things off.
Even the iron bombs have changed.
JDAM bombs can be programmed with coordinates, and will strike within a meter of target. Note that is within the size of a tank. Park your tanks overnight, and an entire division can be wiped out by a single B-52.
So even though they can carry a huge load, they aren’t just for carpet bombing anymore.
Exactly. And a JDAM kit is cheaper than a Shahed, The USA has enough of these to plug every rabbit hole in Iran. B52s are probably the cheapest delivery method.
Are JDAMs not awfully awfully similar to the FAB bombs the west was chortling at the Russians for using?
The Russians have a tactical game changer with their development of the JDAM concept. Some of their augmented dumb bombs (augmented with guidance, wings and booster jets for extra stand off) are three tonners. That’s a city block gone from hundreds of miles away. Currently no defense by Ukraine.
No. JDAM is a guidance package that can be put on any bomb.
FAB are fuel-air bombs and are a specific type of explosive.
I don’t know who in the West was chortling at the Russians – the US has a decent stock of them and we use these types of warheads all the time. They are excellent if you want to make a really large boom (the most power non-nuclear explosive) or if you want your boom to take out a whole underground complex in one go rather than just blow up a room at a time.
JDAM is a guidance package. FAB is a payload. You can mix and match.
I’ve heard one sensible discussion consider a strategy of of first obtaining air superiority then they can concentrate of taking out the nuclear and other bunkers with cheaper munitions, keeping the expensive stand-off stuff in reserve.
That makes sense when you consider the replenishment timescales.
I think the establishment of air superiority has been the top priority ever since WWII, hasn’t it? Once you have that you can move on the ground with relative impunity, and use efficient rather than expensive aerial toys. B52s dropping JDAMs is probably the cheapest accurate high explosive delivery method the USA has, and there’s no JDAM shortage.
I’ve just on X that the USA is refuelling planes over Iran, a clear sign they’ve achieved air superiority.
Attacks on the regime and its infrastructure will now be relentless.
A large reason why the Russia-Ukraine war has gone on so long is that neither side has air superiority, and as far as I can tell there’s no way to get it.
You don’t get trench warfare when you have air superiority.
Possible, yes. Or Trump’s armada will find and destroy the drone stockpiles and factories.
That’s not a bad analysis. The Potatolator may be smarter than believed.
US boots on the ground in Ukraine are politically impossible, or the war would have been over in months. The same applies to Iran. The question becomes whether arming large numbers of Iranian conscripts would be a smart move.
The Potatolator may be smarter than believed.
Even stopped clocks are right twice a day…
And Spud will have had his “trained” AI do his ‘thinking’ for him…
“Myself I think I’d prefer cheaper yet volatile.”
This is fine until your heat stops working in the middle of the winter.
But then maybe that’s why you’re currently not in England. Are you still in the winterkill zone?
.
Ritchie in the bunker planning the final victory…
Starmer’s divisions will save Ely……..
What the actual fuck is he on about? They have been doing exactly this.
“Iran has been preparing for war for a very long period of time. It has a very large stockpile of admittedly low-grade missiles available to it, plus an enormous capacity to manufacture drones.”
&
“leaving Iran with the potential capability of controlling this region militarily, which is just about the last thing that anyone would wish, given the nature of the regime in that country and its apparent indifference to imposing suffering through loss of human life.”
How can the above be an argument not to fight Iran now? Sounds like the alternative would be to wait for them to fight us when they are ready to win.
Firstly, this war in which we are now engaged makes no sense. There was no legal justification for starting it. There is no justification for pursuing it. And there is no known goal, and so, as a strategic mission, this is a profound mistake.
‘Supremacy of international law’ arguments aside (which Iran has consistently violated through Proxies across the Middle East BTW) we have been engaged in a ‘de facto’ war against this theocracy for 4 decades. They are determined to overthrow the West and establish a Shia caliphate. I’d agree that doesn’t mean there’s a coherent endgame but to say we are ‘unjustified’ in at least considering the option of military action is bs.
Secondly, there is no precedent for such a mission succeeding, and no reason to think this one will. Regime change from the air has not worked and will not work on this occasion, and there is no way in which a combined operational force that can take on Iran on the ground can be assembled without massive cost, financially and militarily, neither of which anyone is willing to incur.
I’d say he is on stronger ground here – Regime change is a challenge given the presence of a strong base of support and the memory of the Iraq-Iran war (As well as the recent attacks from Israel) to draw on. Degrading the regime’s capability is certainly possible however.
Thirdly, there is a very real risk that Israel and the USA will lose this war, as will the UK, as a result of its collateral involvement. Iran has been preparing for war for a very long period of time.
The only thing I agree with here is that the UK has lost – but that has F$%^ all to do with its dithering around Trump. We have the worst government in human history, have been colonized by thousands of ISIS terrorists and have millions of fifth columnists working day and night to destroy the country. This has nothing to do with our attitude to the conflagration which frankly is no more consequential than that of Palau or Nauru.Israel has proven highly adaptable and will continue to adapt. If it doesn’t – it is dead. A powerful motivator!
It has a very large stockpile of admittedly low-grade missiles available to it, plus an enormous capacity to manufacture drones. Israeli and Western defence forces have not reacted in the way that the precedent in Ukraine should have suggested to be necessary, which is to create cheap anti-drone defence mechanisms.
I’m fairly sure in Northern Israel they have secondary anti defence mechanisms. I am not sure Iran has balllistic drone capability than can hit the US mainland
The consequence is that Israel and the USA are much more likely to run out of weapons than Iran is, leaving Iran with the potential capability of controlling this region militarily, which is just about the last thing that anyone would wish, given the nature of the regime in that country and its apparent indifference to imposing suffering through loss of human life.
Strange thing to write about the regime that is indirectly paying for your lifestyle (it funds the Green party and much of the UK public sector)
My suggestion is that we should share their fear. The West has let fascism govern its agenda because that is what Trump and Netanyahu are pursuing. Too many countries, including the UK, have obsequiously fallen in line behind these staggeringly incompetent leaders. We might pay an enormous price for this.
I’d say we might – albeit the only thing that could make it worse was the embrace of left wing agendas and the politics of care which would see us reduced to an economic level below North Korea, and by a substantial margin.
The need for a new political order in the West has never been greater. What those leading that new order might need to consider is just where countries like the UK stand within the new hierarchy of power that might well emerge very soon if, as now seems possible, US military hegemony ceases to be effective in international political economy. I am not sure that thinking has been done.
Again actually a paragraph worth consideration. At this point the UK is almost certainly cooked and indeed it would not surprise me if a ‘second front’ opened up with Shia extremists openly beginning to foment unrest in the UK,
The need for a new political order in the West has never been greater.
On current form, that’ll be the tower of strength Spain’s defiant Pedro Sanchez then. He’ll have the mighty quivering in their boots.
not sure Iran has balllistic drone capability
A container shipment overland to, say, Pakistan then by sea to Port of New York and New Jersey. Not exactly ballistic but it should work.
After all that, what function does the drone perform? I.e., just put a bomb where you want it to go off.
If you want an explosion to go off over a line of aircraft, into the bridge of a carrier or a meeting of high government officials, it’s not so easy to just plant a bomb.
See Operation Spiderweb in which Ukraine destroyed a good chuck of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet by smuggling FPV drones deep inside Russia in modified containers on the backs of Russian trucks.
He does inadvertently make some good points:
A succession of retired former generals and security chiefs, including a British former deputy chief of NATO and the former head of MI6, have been appearing in interviews that can be found on their X channel, all of them saying the same thing, […]
Firstly, this war in which we are now engaged makes no sense. There was no legal justification for starting it. There is no justification for pursuing it.
The kind of people who become British generals and “security chiefs” these days are limp dicked losers who can’t be trusted with your defence.
You could dismiss all of this except for the quality of the people involved. These are serious talking heads with a massive amount of experience between them, all of whom appear to be scared witless by what is going on,
The confident bluffers are scared, because being frauds they couldn’t see the obvious direction the dominoes were falling after October 7th.
Thirdly, there is a very real risk that Israel and the USA will lose this war
There is a zero percent risk that the US and Israel will lose, they have already won.
For Iran’s regime, “victory” would mean clinging on like Saddam post 1991, a humiliated regime with severely diminished capabilities, which Israeli and US jets can strike at any time of their pleasing.
But for Israel and the US, there’s no downside here. If Iran’s regime falls, gravy (I expect it will). If it doesn’t, they’ve severely crippled Shelob and put a hard stop to Iran’s enrichment escalation. Hezbollah is history.
No, the United States are Israel aren’t going to run out of missiles before the Iranians do. No, Iran conceivably being able to build more shitty drones with lawnmower engines to invite massive retaliation from US or Israeli in future is not a serious danger to the West.
This is not a war. This is a policing action. Iran thought it would be funny to enrich Uranium to 60%, and now their entire government is dead. Ritchie probably thought Road Runner was in desperate danger from Wily E Coyote. But there’s nothing but losing in Iran’s future if they keep struggling against Israel and the US. A big boy just handed them their teeth, and there’s nothing they can do about it except flail more whilst receiving a kicking.
I agree with you Steve. Iran can lash out locally but that isn’t winning them any friends. Regime falls or doesn’t is not the main concern. Stop being a fucking pain in the arse is the message.
A bit of pedantry though, Shelob was crippled by Sam Gamgee 🙂
Damn autocorrect, I meant to say pendantry.
I’ll have to differ here. I think it’s vital that this regime of medieval priests is utterly destroyed in this action and any new Iranian government is made up of other people sympathetic to modern civilisation.
Both Israel and the United States are highly susceptable to lurching to the batshit left and falling back in line with all the other hand-wringing self-loathers of the west. If the mullahs have hung on instead of being hanged, then they can – and will – start it all up again with lessons learned (and more pallets of cash).
Finish the fuckers now. It is my fear that Trump doesn’t understand this and will imagine that making a “deal” with the seventh century is possible. There are hints already.
I’m not so sure. Don’t forget they tried to assassinate him. This time it’s personal. “Deal” is Trump’s taqiyya.
I think it’s vital that this regime of medieval priests is utterly destroyed in this action and any new Iranian government is made up of other people sympathetic to modern civilisation.
But it isn’t vital. Not all problems can be fixed.
If the mullahs have hung on instead of being hanged, then they can – and will – start it all up again with lessons learned (and more pallets of cash).
Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom.
Trump doesn’t understand this and will imagine that making a “deal” with the seventh century is possible.
What, like the Abraham Accords?
Iran hasn’t always been ruled by a millenarian death cult. There’s no reason why their rule should be permanent. The deal doesn’t have to be that Iran becomes Secular Woke Progressive, just that they give up nukes and sponsoring terrorism to Wipe Israel Away. If they persist in this they’ll get clobbered again.
Yes, political fashions change in the West, and also in Israel, but the latter have good reason to keep their eye on the ball.
It’s a part of President Trump’s indirect strategy against China. I posted a link to this article in January after the Venezuela business, which was another part of the anti-China policy:
His entire framework is built on the premise that preventing Chinese regional hegemony in Asia is the non-negotiable core interest of U.S. strategy. Ceding Asia to China is not burden-sharing. It is strategic suicide. You do not hand over the most economically consequential region on earth to your principal competitor.
Here’s the article in question:
https://medium.com/@mcnai002/the-bridge-at-the-center-of-the-pentagon-d104b4cf3248
The man is a moron. A typical defence stack against drones
Electronic warfare
Spoofing and cyber disruption
Cheap anti-air guns or autocannon
Short-range interceptors
High-end missile interceptors
It’s only the last that is expensive in the way Murphy imagines.
Firing Sidewinders from UK F35Bs against Shaheds isn’t particularly cheap, either.
Better off with Spitfires. Or Camels for the slower drones. Or the rather nice turbine trainers that fly out of Cranwell, given some armament.
Come to think of it, there’s a hangar full of Spitfires and Hurricanes over at Coningsby. And the RN could probably get the Victory to sea before the Dragon.
I reckon it’s more likely the Mary Rose could be refloated before the Dragon does anything useful.
The other defence is that you use your spy satellites to backtrack to see where they were launched then bomb the launcher, the launch crew and the store they came from. Then wind back further and bomb the site where they were made and the component supplies they used. Total air superiority over the supply chain area and massive satellite reconnaissance capability whilst far from perfect make it a very dangerous business to engage in.
Yup, the US is certainly going to run out of missiles. Yup, Iran is certainly going to run out of missile-launchers.
Why do people believe these yarns? None of us, including probably the Pentagon, know the real state of affairs. ‘cos there’s a war on.
Fog of war + Smokescreen of war => ignorance and confusion.
Yup, the US is certainly going to run out of missiles.
“Nah, we’ll just make more.” — Ronald Wilson Reagan
> Iran has been preparing for war for a very long period of time. It has a very large stockpile of admittedly low-grade missiles available to it, plus an enormous capacity to manufacture drones.
Oh, I didn’t realise Murphy was a Reform Party fan.
“…as will the UK”
So, the UK is at war? So where are all the recruiting campaigns? I was at a job fair last week and was talking to an RAF recruitment stand “Fuck off, you’re too old” they said (well, not exactly).
If they consistantly turn down volunteers, will they start conscripting non-volunteers? It’s exactly the same as employers refusing to employ locals and then screaming demands for immigrants.