this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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Bulletins and International News Discussion from March 22nd to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - The Empire In Zugzwang
(hexbear.net)
Image is one of many rallies in Iran in support of the government and the leadership.
short summary here, longish summary in spoiler tags below: Western standoff munition stockpiles now substantially depleted, therefore Western aircraft activity directly over Iran increasing (as is footage of attempted and actual hits against them) as the US attempts to transition more to using bombs dropped directly onto targets, Iran is increasingly in the driver's seat and controlling the conflict, world economy is fucked and yet could still get much worse very soon, if you require a car to live (especially if it's not electric) and cannot work from home then you have my sincere condolences
longish summary here
While I've seen several estimates on the current stockpiles of US and Zionist missiles and interceptors - somewhere in the realm of a third depleted, perhaps even up to half - it seems like we're reaching the point at which the US does not want to commit even more standoff munitions and is trying their luck against the Iranian air defense network directly.
We have already seen footage of Iran attempting to shoot down, and sometimes actually striking Western fifth generation planes like the F-35, and more footage along those lines is appearing for other plane models (with one side claiming that they evaded interception and the other claiming they hit it, etc etc, propaganda is everywhere, you know the drill). How much the US is willing to test their planes against Iranian air defense is a matter of debate. Strictly speaking, a few fighter jets and bombers shot down would be no catastrophic loss in the grand scheme of things, as the US has hundreds. However, the narrative of such a thing would be quite bad for the US - "You're telling me an OBLITERATED Iranian military can shoot down some of our most advanced equipment?? What are we gonna do against China?!" - and given Trump's deranged jingoistic rhetoric aimed to buoy markets, it's clear that he cares very deeply about narratives. Additionally, with Chinese exports of several critical metals to the US banned, the prospect of replacing these aircraft (and indeed the standoff munitions and the interceptors and the ground radars etc) is looking questionable.
All the while, Iran continues its strikes across the Middle East. Missile and drone strikes are reportedly on the uptick again, demonstrating that Iranian military capabilities have by no means been "destroyed" as Western propaganda claim, though it's impossible to sure there was ever a significant downtick due to Western censorship and outright fabrications. People around the world are gradually realizing the magnitude of the economic disaster that is occurring and may yet occur. Refineries and factories which deal with oil and gas directly are starting to slow down or stop production, and those who make products downstream of those are starting to follow them like dominoes. Outrage at gas station prices is rising, and many countries are considering limiting civilian driving and implementing work-from-home policies akin to the coronavirus pandemic. And now, threats are being made by Trump against both Kharg Island (where most Iranian oil is shipped from) and the Iranian electrical grid - which is highly decentralized and would require a prolonged bombing campaign to completely take out -and the promised Iranian reprisal would be apocalyptic to the Middle East. It would make oil prices rise to previously unfathomable heights as oil infrastructure turned off and remained off for months, perhaps years, and set in motion one of the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophes as the desalination necessary for tens of millions of people is shut down. It would also not be a symmetrical problem, as Iran does not rely on desalination for its water supply.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
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Munitions strain
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The B-52 can carry 20x JASSM, the B-1 - 24x. Bomber tracking, from https://hexbear.net/post/7856493/6979733, https://x.com/DefenceGeek, https://x.com/ArmchairAdml, and assuming full loads (which isn't always true, there have been some B-52s at least spotted carrying 10 JASSM externally rather than 12, and internal loadouts can't be known from photos, but for the simplicity of calculations I'll go for this)
So, what's the JASSM stockpile like? I found a 3500 figure in some places, but that seems a bit outdated, or it's perhaps counting something else, more on that in a bit. From https://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/Portals/84/documents/FY26/FY26%20Air%20Force%20Missile%20Procurement.pdf, pg. 79, we get 5569 as of June 2025 (at least that's what I assume the "Prior Years" number is for, the number as of when this document was published, but maybe it's for prior fiscal years? These documents get published some months before the fiscal year they concern actually starts), and another 144 budgeted for FY26 - however, note that this is a budgetary document, concerning procurement orders, not actual deliveries - for example, from https://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/Portals/84/documents/FY22/PROCUREMENT_/FY22%20DAF%20J-Book%20-%203020%20-%20Missile%20Proc.pdf, pg. 55, we get a 3654 figure for May 2021 (or pre-FY22 fiscal years, but either way it it won't line up with the next figure), while from https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Selected_Acquisition_Reports/FY_2021_SARS/22-F-0762_JASSM_ER_SAR_2021.pdf, pg. 5 we have 3329 actual deliveries of December 2021 :edgeworth-shrug:. But anyways, as for the 3.5k figure - this same document perhaps gives us an explanation, since it mentions that 2034 of those deliveries were of the baseline JASSM, and I think by this point production had fully switched to the extended-range JASSM-ER variant, so there shouldn't have been any new baseline missiles from this point on. So, counting just the ERs, the number would indeed be ≈3.5k - I'm not sure what proportion of the missiles used here are baseline vs ER, so for the sake of simplifying calculations I'm going to use the total figure, but keep this in mind, the real percentages could be way worse if they're primarily using up the better longer-ranged variant.
There has also been some prior JASSM usage in the fighting against ISIS, and against Yemen, but I'm not aware of any specific numbers. So, let's just go with 5600 as a nice round-ish figure for now (5569, plus some of the alloted FY26 ones given that the war started 5 months into it, minus the ones used in prior conflicts).
As for annual production, if we look over the past several years' budgetary documents (just google the name of the above .pdf replacing the FY for the one you need), we generally see yearly figures hanging around 500-550 (although for whatever reason FY26 has a pretty reduced order, and the FY26 document lists a 1140 figure for FY24, even though the FY25 document lists 550 for the same FY, so, uh, don't know what's going on there, surely figures for past years can't retroactively change? The FY24 document on the other hand lists 8512 for prior years, which is a completely ridiculous number and the FY25 document goes back down to 4970, so I dunno, was it just clerical error? I am going insane from looking at all these damn tables, I don't know how accountants do it). Note that total production is somewhat higher, since there's some foreign clients, but I think the bulk of the deliveries are indeed to the US (and we're talking about US inventories here after all)
So, our conservative estimate of 600 JASSM is 10.7% of the total stockpile in about 3 weeks, or 109% of the highest so-far yearly procurement rate of 550 (disregarding that weird figure mentioned above) in about 6% of the whole year.
The larger estimate (which likely isn't met by the strategic bombers' expenditure, but may well be met or even exceeded depending on how many F-15s/F-16s/F/A-18s are also launching them, especially if the CSIS's 786 for the first 6 days estimation holds up) of 1200 represents 21.4% of the total stockpile.
One additional note - the earlier JASSMs could be nearing expiration, https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Selected_Acquisition_Reports/FY_2022_SARS/JASSM-ER_SAR_DEC_2022.pdf states an assumed 15-year shelf life for the baseline JASSMs, and they started getting delivered in 2003. So the ones delivered up through 2010 have already expired, and each next year a bunch more are going to expire. So really, my 5600 number could have even been very optimistic! The actual percentages could be way worse... and from this perspective, the latest B-52 being seen with JDAMs isn't necessarily an indication that they've finally achieved enough air superiority to start freely using B-52s now, but could well be because they've genuinely eaten through so many JASSMs that they have no choice
To be honest the main part of munitions expiration comes from the chemical components which probably could be swapped out.
Maybe exposure to temperature cycles could cause degradation in the mechanics and electronics? But I doubt they're just storing these on open shelves.
It is primarily fuel-related, but also, I don't think replacing the fuel is exactly trivial, they don't exactly have a gas lid like a consumer car, I assume you'd basically need to disassemble and reassemble the whole thing.
Theoretically it's probably possible to design a missile that can be easily fixed up (here's a '89 patent for something like this, although it's still only for the motor case to be reused), but in practice I don't think it's something much effort has been invested into, since when large missile stock piles are being built the people involved will tend to assume that they'll just keep being manufactured until the next level of tech comes along, and don't really worry about them being a perishable item - no-one expects deindustrialization (which is why Western militaries are in the rut they are)
I see, I stand corrected then.
Also, cryocooling the rocket propellant to shatter it with sound waves then remove it from the casing is a pretty creative way of dealing with this lmao.