International events

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I wouldn't gamble on the Iranian government being overthrown. At least not anytime soon. The younger generations will probably moderate it a bit, but only by a nudge and that's probably the best anyone can hope for. 

[Altherion]

On the one hand, the interceptors appear to have worked exactly as advertised and the damage is relatively modest. On the other, this is a massive escalation relative to the attack on the consulate and the figures I've seen for the cost to Israel are on the order of one billion dollars (the interceptors are much more expensive than the ballistic missiles and drones that they're intercepting). It's also worth noting that the shielding has never been tested on this scale and Iran could not have possibly known that it would work so well -- had this not been the case, they could easily have killed hundreds of people with this attack.

The upshot of all this is that the US has work to do. In the very short term, we need to give Israel money and weapons to replenish the interceptor stockpiles and thereby convince them not to escalate further. In the longer term, we need to accelerate work on cheaper anti-drone and anti-missile defenses -- the current approach works, but it is unsustainable and does not scale. We're already working on this a variety of approaches to this, but something complete needs to be here sooner because these hordes of drones are already here.

[Liffguard]

I think the leadership of Israel and its backers should think very very hard about whether they want to live in a world where diplomatic offices are considered valid military targets, especially in situations where two countries aren't formally at war.

[Fez]

5 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

I think the leadership of Israel and its backers should think very very hard about whether they want to live in a world where diplomatic offices are considered valid military targets, especially in situations where two countries aren't formally at war.

They already do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_against_Israeli_embassies_and_diplomats

[kissdbyfire]

15 minutes ago, Altherion said:

On the other, this is a massive escalation relative to the attack on the consulate

Do you mean the attack on the consulate that killed ~ 50 people vs last night's that killed... how many? None? I've heard reports of some injuries but no deaths. So I'm not sure how that maths works other than worthy victims vs unworthy victims, and that, to me, is a repulsive notion. 

Edited April 14 by kissdbyfire

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

ran played a significant role in the October 7th attacks.

Um, that's not what has been reported.  The word about Iran and Hamas used is 'supported the group.' -- as the US supports the IDF. Iran didn't plan or attack Israel. The US didn't plan or attack Gaza.

[Werthead]

38 minutes ago, Altherion said:

On the one hand, the interceptors appear to have worked exactly as advertised and the damage is relatively modest. On the other, this is a massive escalation relative to the attack on the consulate and the figures I've seen for the cost to Israel are on the order of one billion dollars (the interceptors are much more expensive than the ballistic missiles and drones that they're intercepting). It's also worth noting that the shielding has never been tested on this scale and Iran could not have possibly known that it would work so well -- had this not been the case, they could easily have killed hundreds of people with this attack.

The upshot of all this is that the US has work to do. In the very short term, we need to give Israel money and weapons to replenish the interceptor stockpiles and thereby convince them not to escalate further. In the longer term, we need to accelerate work on cheaper anti-drone and anti-missile defenses -- the current approach works, but it is unsustainable and does not scale. We're already working on this a variety of approaches to this, but something complete needs to be here sooner because these hordes of drones are already here.

This is something Ukraine has been working on with cheap air defences for defeating drones.

Given that Ukraine has been full-throttled in its support for Israel - rather more than can be said in reverse at times - I wouldn't be surprised if there was some exchange of ideas going on there behind the scenes. Ukraine will likely be hustling to get the Shahed factories onto a list of possible targets Israel is considering for retaliatory strikes.

The UK's DragonFire laser interception system seems to have been unexpectedly successful, rather more than I think was expected, and possibly superior to the laser-Arrow and laser-Patriot variants both Israel and the US have been working on, both of which seem to be some time away from launching at scale. If the UK system is much closer to mass production (as hinted by the idea of field-testing it this year in Ukraine), that could be very promising.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Um, that's not what has been reported.  The word about Iran and Hamas used is 'supported the group.' -- as the US supports the IDF. Iran didn't plan or attack Israel. The US didn't plan or attack Gaza.

Iran wants a proxy so it can have plausible deniability, but there's little doubt they had some influence at the very least in the attack. To what degree will probably never be known. 

[Gorn]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Iran can escalate massively beyond this. Iran used a tiny percentage fraction of its total missile stockpile, which exceeds 3,000 ballistic missiles alone in twenty-fire classes with the range to hit Israel. Five of those classes can reach Europe and one can reach the UK. None can reach the United States, but dozens of US bases in the region are in range. Iran also has twenty-one distinct types of cruise missile, with an inventory believed in the range of 2,000-4,000 (by some counts, more than the US and even more than China).

The one thing it did use a lot of was Shaheds, and whilst they have a couple thousand more in stock, they don't have much more than that because they've sent them to Russia. But Shaheds are also easier to build than cruise missiles or ballistic missiles.

If Iran went all-out, it could easily launch a thousand to two thousand missiles in a single wave, which would likely completely overwhelm Israel's missile defences and cause widespread devastation and damage in a single strike, followed by vast numbers of drones.

Iran is also believed to have contingency plans to deploy enormous numbers of troops to Syria, crossing Iraq (likely with a token complaint by the Iraqi government but nothing done to stop them), where they could muster on the border with Israel, for an operation to retake the Golan Heights. That is very much an improbable military outcome and Iranian forces would be exposed to air attack all the way, but it is doable (though they are more likely to send smaller forces to coordinate with Syrian and Lebanese ground forces in a coordinated invasion of northern Israel).

Obviously if Iran was going to take action on that scale, it would probably trigger Israel's existential failsafe and all of Iran's major cities would cease to exist in short order, and obviously we're all then waking up in a very different world the next day.

But even granted that Iran doesn't want that, it could easily have mustered a considerably more challenging attack than last night. It could have kept up the same kind of sustained pressure continuously for 2-3 days in a row; Israel would have likely continued to shoot down the drones but it would have used up a lot more of their AA stocks and pushed maintenance of CAPs around Israel's orders for its allies. It could have fired twice the number of missiles and drones in the same period. It could have launched heavier ballistic missiles, perhaps to detonate in empty areas of the Negev as a greater demonstration of force. It could have coordinated a much heavier attack by Hezbollah and the Houthis, and launched attacks on US forces in Iraq, even if just "spoiler" attacks designed to irritate and tie up forces.

Don't get me wrong, Iran's military strength is sometimes overplayed (especially by Russia) and it would lose any serious all-out conflict with Israel alone, let alone Israel plus allies, but it would cause immense damage in the process. It would not be Iraq 2003. And it could have done much more than it did last night.

Having thousands of missiles in warehouses is not the same thing as being able to launch thousands of missiles at once. This is limited by the number of bases, launch platforms, trained personnel, and in case of guided missiles and drones, data links used for real-time control.

What we saw last night was probably Iran's maximum capacity for a one-time launch. And let's not be mistaken, that was a massive attack and escalation. 160 (or 210, depending on the source) missiles is a fuckton of missiles. Even Russia struggles to launch that many in a single wave.

Iran did everything in its power to turn Israel into a pile of rubble and to cause major casualties. The value of missiles they spent is a major part of their military budget. They failed not because of their "restraint", but because of quality of Israel's air defences.

[Gorn]

3 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Do you mean the attack on the consulate that killed ~ 50 people vs last night's that killed... how many? None? I've heard reports of some injuries but no deaths. So I'm not sure how that maths works other than worthy victims vs unworthy victims, and that, to me, is a repulsive notion. 

How many people would have Iran's missiles and drones killed in a thickly populated area such as Israel, had they managed to penetrate the defences? Let's say 50 people per missile and 10 people per drone, times 160 missiles and 130 drones. Care to do the math?

There were fortunately no deaths last night, but not for lack of trying on Iran's part.

Edited April 14 by Gorn

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Do you mean the attack on the consulate that killed ~ 50 people vs last night's that killed... how many? None? I've heard reports of some injuries but no deaths. So I'm not sure how that maths works other than worthy victims vs unworthy victims, and that, to me, is a repulsive notion. 

First, I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from. The largest number I can find is on Wikipedia which cites some Syrian Observatory for Human Rights for the following:

Quote

Sixteen were killed in total, including seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) soldiers, five Iran-backed militiamen, one Hezbollah fighter, one Iranian advisor, and two civilians.

Every news source I've found gives numbers smaller than 16 so it's not clear where you get ~50.

Furthermore, it's not really a question of victims. In response to the bombing of a single building, Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at a variety of sites all over Israel. The fact that Israel and its allies managed to mostly neutralize the attack does not make the attack any less of an escalation.

[Jace, Extat]

24 minutes ago, Gorn said:

.

Iran did everything in its power to turn Israel into a pile of rubble and to cause major casualties. The value of missiles they spent is a major part of their military budget. They failed not because of their "restraint", but because of quality of Israel's air defences.

Yeah, I don't know about this whole "It was designed to be defeated" rationale for the attack. Iran took the best shot they're capable of and violated the airspace of at least two countries in the process.

Thank God for Israeli and Allied defense capabilities, not for supposed Iranian restraint.

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, Gorn said:

 

There were fortunately no deaths last night, but not for lack of trying on Iran's part.

The 10 year old girl who was hit by debris last night died today.

[kissdbyfire]

17 minutes ago, Gorn said:

How many people would have Iran's missiles and drones killed in a thickly populated area such as Israel, had they managed to penetrate the defences? Let's say 50 people per missile and 10 people per drone, times 160 missiles and 130 drones. Care to do the math?

There were fortunately no deaths last night, but not for lack of trying on Iran's part.

I see. Condemn for what could have happened, Minority Report style. Yeah, sounds dystopian enough for these times.

Also, all analysts I have seen speaking on the topic - and I mean americans, brits, one swiss and a couple others all unanimously said what @Werthead said here. Not only that, but what actually happened fits exactly & perfectly with analysis I saw more than a week ago, predicting Iran’s response would be precisely what it was. 
 

[Tears of Lys]

6 minutes ago, Jace, Extat said:

The 10 year old girl who was hit by debris last night died today.

Was she one of the Israeli Bedouin?  Poor kid - wrong place, wrong time.   

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

I see. Condemn for what could have happened, Minority Report style. Yeah, sounds dystopian enough for these times.

I guess attempted murder is no longer a crime then?

[kissdbyfire]

@Altherion I don’t know where I got the 49 from, I was sure I had seen it somewhere but apparently that’s way off. Looking it up now I’m getting 16. It’s still 16 x 1.

Edited April 14 by kissdbyfire

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, Tears of Lys said:

Was she one of the Israeli Bedouin?  Poor kid - wrong place, wrong time.   

Yes, according to what I saw last night. That's a sick twist of fate right there.

[kissdbyfire]

3 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

I guess attempted murder is no longer a crime then?

I guess. Apparently no crime is a crime anymore,

[Werthead]

The UK has confirmed aircraft operating over Syria engaged several Iranian targets.

A Iranian Emad missile fell short of Israel, instead landing west of the Jordanian city of Karek, close to the Dead Sea, failing to cause damage.

The US Navy has confirmed that the USS Carney and USS Arleigh Burke engaged and destroyed four Iranian medium range ballistic missiles. Apparently this was the first combat deployment of the new SM-3 antiballistic missile.

USAF F-15E Strike Eagles from the 494th and 335th fighter squadrons downed 70 Iranian drones between them, mostly over Syrian and Iraqi territory but some intercepts over Jordanian territory.

An Israeli Sa-ar 6-class corvette engaged Iranian targets over Eilat Bay using C-dome interceptors. Unclear if these were Iranian drones or Houthi ones flying north from Yemen.

The damage at Nevatim Airbase appears to be risibly tiny:

 

Edited April 14 by Werthead