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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.

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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.

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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.

And clearly things are still being bought, such as Warthogs which until very recently were available in big quantities. This isn't a complete list, like I said in the beginning. There are many companies which don't disclose their stockpiles. OIP Land Systems has become (in)famous, but it's one such example. We only know what they have left because of journalists that looked into their warehouse. Based on their website, they should still have some Leo 1s and M113/AIFVs, plus 23 Gepards, but we don't know for sure. Many other big defense companies such as Excalibur Army and STV group with Soviet AFVs, Military Vehicle Solutions with CVRTs, possibly Flensburger Fahrzeugbau with German-made armor, etc. also are unknowns, tho we can see on Google Earth that they still have some stuff left. But most of the times, we can see that lately their stockpiles have thinned out a lot, for obvious reasons.

Some of the stuff still stored is also probably already charted for Ukraine in one way or another, such as those 96 Leopard 1s from the Swiss company RUAG bought back by Rheinmetall in 2024 which will probably be as the basis for Skyranger SPAAGs. In the end, most of what remains are diverse types of CVRTs that the UK is still slowly phasing out and uparmored logistics vehicles such as BV-206s. All in all, what I want to point out with this small thread is that the private stock of heavy equipment in Europe have dried out as a way to resupply Ukraine, and the official govt stocks are for the most part looking the same. It's mostly just old Soviet crap that's left, but a lot of it won't be given to Ukraine in the foreseeable future. Which explains apparently unreasonable things such as the restarted BMP-1 production line by SVT Group in the Czech Republic. Old armor is still a huge part of the Ukrainian fleet, and you need to keep it running somehow.

As usual, I didn't bother talking about trucks because meh. But even the companies and places that used to stored military trucks have been emptied out. And that's it for now!

Heh, just in time regarding the depleted govt military stocks: https://xcancel.com/NichoConcu/status/2051727452762755495

Ive been shared some satellite imagery of the Lenta military graveyard in Italy. Although I cannot share the images, I can say that most of what we saw previously and documented being there has likely been sent to Ukraine. What remains mainly is Italian Army prototypes. There is a few B1 Centauro’s still there, but these will likely also be transferred in the near future. The M113’s and derivatives which were stored outside which we saw months back are no longer there. Now there very well may still be some vehicles hidden in the buildings. However for now, we cannot confirm or deny if that is still the case.

https://xcancel.com/JustTheChuck2/status/2051754163915104342

It feels that Europe is mostly drained of armored vehicles. Not sure if any country outside of Europe would be willing to sell anything given how world is turning for worse, and it's mostly free-for-all political climate in many parts of the world.

Yesterday Avg. $4.483

February 26 (Pre War) $ $2.983

Current Gas Record: $5.016 on 6/14/22

Yesterday Avg. $5.659

February 26 (Pre War) $3.720

Current Diesel Record: $5.816 on 6/19/22

Nadja Natalie Isaksen, the party's immigration policy spokesperson, announced her departure on Sunday, telling local media that the party was not what she had "hoped for and fought for" and that she didn't feel she had "the right conditions" to continue her political work within its ranks or to develop politically . Isaksen, who was previously only known for claiming that Danish-Afghan MP Samira Nawa from the centre-right Radical Left party was not truly Danish and postulating that there are genetic requirements to national identity, will have limited options for continuing her work in another of the tiny nation's crowded field of extremist movements . All right-wing parties have ruled out the possibility of her joining them. Although the Danish political elite maintains a racist baseline, Isaksen's open biological racism appears to be a step too far even for them .

When the party entered the tiny nation's rubber-stamp parliament a little over a month ago, party leader Lars Boje Mathiesen gloated over the commentators and journalists who had dismissed the party as a "clown car" and didn't think they had a chance. That triumphalism seems premature in retrospect.

Isaksen is the third of four MPs to abandon the party that entered parliament at the March 24 election. Jacob Harris was kicked out of the party after it was revealed that he and his wife had engaged in fraudulent practices regarding a now-bankrupt construction company, with a bankruptcy trustee recommending the couple for bankruptcy disqualification and police placing them under investigation for siphoning huge sums fun the company to spend on luxury consumption. As art of the candidate vetting process, Harris had signed a sworn statement declaring he was not involved in financial crime, which party leader Mathiesen displayed to the press before retreating to his office when confronted with uncomfortable questions .

Emilie Schytte left the party citing lack of leadership transparency and disaffection with Mathiesen's absolutist leadership style, accusing the party of being "a pyramid scheme of hypocrisy and absolutism". She also protested the overt racism of Rasmus Munch Søndergaard, the self-declared "race realist" who had written the party's immigration policy and the sexism of party secretary Asher Garde who had claimed publicly that younger female MP's had only been elected for their "sexual market value". Schytte herself has come under scrutiny for lying on her CV, claiming she taught artificial intelligence at Roskilde University for two years when the institution confirmed she worked as a teaching assistant for just three months. Serious questions have also been raised whether she fulfills the residency requirements to be eligible to stand for election in the first place, given reports of her maintaining an apartment in Sweden, though authorities ultimately cleared her . 

The loss of three out of four MPs is not the only bad story the embattled fascist party has seen since entering parliament, running on a platform of racism,  "drain the swamp"-style faux populism and grievances over car taxes. After the party was pressured to publish its previously secret bylaws in the wake of Schytte's exit, it was revealed that party leader Lars Boje Mathiesen cannot be deposed for the next four years and receives the highest salary from his party out of all party leaders, an additional DKK 60,000 per month on top of his MP salary, bringing his annual compensation to over DKK 1.6 million . 

This is Mathiesen's third involvement in party politics that ends in chaos. He was previously kicked out of the now-defunct New Right party just a month after being elected party leader in February 2023 due to excessive demands for remuneration and attempts to transfer party funds to his personal accounts . Before that, as a local councillor in Aarhus, he stormed out of the far-right libertarian Liberal Alliance in anger after being passed over for a national nomination, complaining there was "no free competition" in the party.

Lars Boje Mathiesen is now the only MP for the Citizens' Party. The clown car has turned into a unicycle.