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.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
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.
There are rumours that the latest missile launch from Iran was an ICBM test. Pic below.
That's not a missile, it's a bat-signal for the IDF Sperm Collection Force
@MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net please come tell us why actually this is like, a negamissile that will rebuild Israeli infrastructure so we can avoid getting our hopes up
Looks like a dawn or dusk launch of a two stage missile in the end. The user love yourself posted a nice video about the phenomenon. It's still boosting because it was a two stage missile, likely on a lofted trajectory, higher altitude.
Appears not to be an icbm
“ The Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirms that the missile launched was a Sejjil MRBM.”
https://t.me/ASSYRIA11/50678
Category 1 per marmite’s chart
Stats: https://t.me/NEWWORLDORDYR/36520
Okay that explains the photos and videos. A two stage missile.
Pls secretly have a nuke
What's up with that plume?
The exhaust pattern from a rocket / jet engine changes in relation to atmospheric pressure. At low altitude / about one atmosphere, the exhaust remains fairly linear, like the condensation trail from an airliner passing overhead. At very high altitude / approaching vacuum, the exhaust gas continues to expand long after it has left the motor, producing more of a cone shape than a line. This is related to the reason why rocket motors designed for use in the vacuum of space have large parabolic nozzles, vs. the motors used for lower altitude booster stages which have much shorter nozzles (though I don't think missile tech goes to the same extremes seen in space programs, because these large nozzles have other drawbacks, like increased mass, increased size, lower durability, and lower performance in atmosphere).
These large conical plumes indicate a loss of efficiency. When possible, you would want to either increase the size of the nozzle, or decrease the amount of pressure coming out of the motor, but if your objective is to go as fast as possible (vs. going as far as possible), you're not turning down the pressure, and the shape of the nozzle will always be a design compromise. It cannot be at peak performance across the whole range of atmospheric pressures, and missiles will apply the majority of their thrust in atmosphere. The efficiency of rocket engines at various altitudes / atmospheric pressures is a major factor in deciding how much thrust / burn time goes into each stage of a multi-stage rocket. When does this motor become dead weight? How high do we need to get until that other motor becomes viable? How far do we need to be going before it is even justified to add the mass of an whole extra rocket motor to the payload?
(image stolen from a hobby rocket manual lmao)
Higher altitude/larger payload, I think.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6256056
looks like how i would imagine a high supersonic wake to look like but you usually can't see wakes... maybe it is condensation
also the compression at the end is interesting, assuming its just getting pushed together by ambient pressure but ive never read anything about super far field effects like that (probably a solved problem/not interesting)