this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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Image depicts one of Iran's many anti-ship options, which include missiles, drones, mines, midget submarines, and more. The particular missile shown is the Abu Mahdi cruise missile.


Below is my weekly summary/preamble, spoilered so that you can get down into the comments more easily.

preamble

I don't think I've ever seen a ceasefire that, for weeks, is so obviously about to be broken at any given moment and yet nonetheless continues. So-called Operation Freedom may mark a resumption of hostilities, as the US seems to once again be trying an active role in attempting to take control of the Strait of Hormuz. The initial, ridiculous claim was that the US Navy would itself be escorting ships (i.e. just getting your destroyers sunk for no reason), and as expected, this was just said to try and calm markets. Nonetheless, there is reporting that other military measures may be taken against Iran soon if they continue to keep the Strait closed, so we'll see how that all goes.

US gas prices at the pump have hit close to record high numbers, and generally the average citizen is growing mightily displeased with Trump, even those in previously safe demographics. Unfortunately, this discontent is not immediately geopolitically relevant - as both parties are staffed from top to bottom with pro-war Zionists with only a small group of exceptions, and third parties will necessarily never be allowed to take power, there is no way for US public discontent to manifest itself in a change of policy. What is more likely to cause changes in policy will be grumbling from American capitalists, of which there are many factions. The fossil fuel capitalists seem perfectly content for this situation to continue indefinitely, with record profits. I imagine the financial sector is pretty nervous, but aren't currently demanding Trump cease fire - same for the tech industry which has now been engulfed in AI, as the bubble seems to be close to, but not quite, popping. Smaller businesses and agriculture are perhaps the most likely to be crying uncle, but may have limited representation.

Going back to Western Asia, the situation from last week has remained broadly the same. The Zionist tactic in Southern Lebanon appears to essentially be "If we can't occupy this land, then you won't be able to, either," as they are doing their utmost to physically destroy as many towns and villages on the border as possible. Hezbollah's success at keeping Zionist territorial gains fairly minimal, and the growing onslaught of not only anti-tank guided missiles but also FPV drones causing chaos where the Zionists attempt to hold and advance, have, I believe, partially contributed to Iran not pushing the issue of a comprehensive ceasefire in Lebanon so far as to cause them to feel the need to resume fire on the occupied territories.

The US blockade has truly been a mixed affair. While it's obviously quite leaky and many Iranian ships are getting through, Naked Capitalism and others have pointed out that it's not just Iranian ships that are transporting goods, and that there are ~70 Chinese ships with Iranian oil that are much less willing to risk running the blockade. But, once again, the success of the blockade isn't all that relevant. Iran has experienced periods of a couple years straight without meaningful oil exports and survived, and their extensive land borders make a true siege impossible - goods can and are still pouring into the country, and with Pakistan recently allowing Iranian exports through their border, as well as the Caspian Sea in the north and Iran's railway link to China, Iranian exports can still leave just fine. Another interesting indication is that China's government has ordered Chinese businesses to ignore US sanctions against Iranian oil, so we'll see how that develops. And while the issue of maintaining sufficient public cohesion in the wake of economic suffering is a potential long term problem, we haven't yet seen any meaningful scenes of public discontent inside Iran. Internal unity appears to be staying at record levels in the face of total war.

Even being as careful as possible to check my own biases, it's difficult for me to form any other conclusion other than that Iran is winning, and people like Armchair Warlord have even pointed out that American tactical victories have been pretty minimal so far.


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Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
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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.
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https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
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[–] Tervell@hexbear.net 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

a bunch of math stuff in this article that goes over my head, and the article format with all the footnotes and graphs isn't very suitable for translating to a hexbear comment, so I'll skip to the conclusion bits, any game-theoretic modeling nerds feel free to check out the actual article https://archive.ph/l1njb

An Equilibrium Model of Counter-Base War in the Western Pacific

The bitter experience of the 2026 conflict highlights the problem of base vulnerability. It is fair to say that, from a purely military perspective, base vulnerability is the principal challenge facing the US. The diffusion of precision-strike capabilities means that US bases located near the great missile powers face a considerable risk of attrition. Above all, it calls into question the US ability to fight China in Asia. For if China can destroy US bases in the region, the US will not be able to fight China, much less defeat it.

more

During the 2026 war, Iran was able to more or less destroy all US bases on the Gulf littoral using cheap and plentiful short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and drones, forcing the evacuation of most US military personnel and aircraft. CNN reported recently that sixteen bases have been destroyed. The US air force was forced to operate from rear area bases in central and western Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. Even these bases came under heavy attack from Iranian MRBMs and long-range drones, with the US losing two E-3 Sentry airborne command posts and multiple aerial refueling tankers at Prince Sultan Airbase. More than a dozen expensive and difficult-to-replace radars across the region were also destroyed. These developments were clearly not anticipated by the US military, since evacuation orders were not issued until after the counter-base attacks.

...

The Counter-Base War Game

Given the arsenal, magazines and force posture, each side is allowed to choose a tactical doctrine. For the US, a tactical doctrine is an interceptor expenditure policy given by the number of interceptors it fire at each inbound ballistic missile or cruise missile. For China, a tactical doctrine is given by three parameters. First, what proportion of strikes are directed at suppression instead of aircraft in the park. Second, what proportion of suppression strikes are aimed at HAS. Third, a front-loading parameter that controls how much China front-loads the suppression strikes. A Nash equilibrium is defined as a situation where neither side can gain any advantage by deviating from its tactical doctrine, given the enemy’s tactical doctrine. We identify the equilibrium by iterated best response and then verify it through perturbation checks. The equilibrium tells us what the two sides can be expected to do during the war and the expected outcome.

Results

We consider a number of scenarios given by different force posture and strategic investments.

  • Until recently, the US concentrated its aircraft at just six bases. In this scenario, China allocates only 22% to suppression strikes; 27% of which are directed at HAS. The front loading is modest. The US fires both types of interceptors at the maximum allowed rate of 5 per inbound weapon. The expected aircraft losses are a crippling 392 of 450.
  • In our baseline scenario, we assume that the US has dispersed its aircraft to all 24 bases. In equilibrium, China allocates 41% to suppression strikes; 75% of which are directed at HAS. The front loading is very modest. The US again fires both types of interceptors at the maximum allowed rate of 5 per inbound weapon. The US loses 336 aircraft by the end of the week.
  • The civilian defense analysts are unanimous in their recommendation for building HAS [Hardened Aircraft Shelters]. Our model replicates their main result. In this US hardens scenario, we assume that the US has added 300 HAS. In equilibrium, China has to allocate 70% of its missiles to suppression; 83% of which are directed at HAS. This is because China must expend a lot of missiles to “crack the eggs open to expose the birds” before it can hit them. Expected aircraft losses come in at 204, compared to 336 in the reference case. HAS thus works as a “missile absorber.”
  • Anderson and Press (2025) assume that electronic countermeasures are so effective that they increase the CEP of all Chinese missiles to 45m. This seems highly improbable to your analyst. (Another highly implausible assumption in Anderson and Press (2025) is that the campaign will last for 30 days. This is because they do not allow China to front-load suppression strikes. We find that, once China is allowed to choose to font-load suppression, the counter-base war lasts under a week.) China has already fielded cruise missiles that are immune to guidance jamming. We explore a jamming scenario in which Chinese ballistic missiles CEPs rise to 45m but jamming does not work against air-breathing missiles. In addition, we assume that the US has built 300 HAS. In this effective jamming scenario, we find that China does not bother with suppression at all, which is no longer possible given the assumed CEPs, and instead directs all attacks to the apron. The number of aircraft lost comes in at 88. We emphasize that this is still a highly implausible scenario in which the Chinese have found no countermeasures for guidance jamming. This is certainly not the lesson to be drawn from the conflict in Ukraine. But what the scenario does show is the dramatically rising importance of electronic warfare.
  • Finally, we consider a precision-mass scenario where China counters HAS and guidance jamming by fielding 3,000 cheap long-range drones that are jamming-resistant (drones are just slower cruise missiles with a greater wingspan). This is arguably the central scenario for war in the near future given that Russia has already deployed variants of the Shahed drone with precisely this capability. In this precision-mass scenario, China allocates 72% of all strikes to suppression; 73% of which are allocated to HAS targets. The US is forced to conserve interceptor inventories, allocating 2.54 and 2.36 per inbound missile and drone respectively. The US loses 301 aircraft.

...

To add insult to injury, Western estimates of Chinese missile inventories may be off by as much as an order of magnitude. For if Western estimates are Chinese inventories are correct, then Iran has already fired as many SRBMs and MRBMs as are estimated me to be in China’s missile order of battle. At any rate, if the US can invest in HAS, China can invest in missile stockpiles. China’s defense-industrial base is as large as that of America and Europe combined. The US is the strategic defender in Asia meaning that China gets to choose when to attack. It can simply choose to time the attack at the peak of its war-preparedness, including stockpiling a large number of missiles and drones. All of this means that the US will find it very hard to win an arms race against China. In addition, the balance of resolve is favorable to China because the US will be fighting for an extended deterrence commitment while China will be fighting for what they see as national reunification. The unfavorable balance of resolve rules out any hope that the US could prevail in a nuclear crisis by threatening nuclear escalation. Given these observations and our results, deterrence in Asia is no longer a feasible foreign policy objective for the United States.

[–] culpritus@hexbear.net 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

some-controversy

With the new data points coming to light from the war on Iran, seems like the dreams of the hegemonic demons are going up in smoke.

xi-lib-tears