In my view, China and Russia are ceding influence in the Middle East to the USA, accepting it's under US influence. Gaza peace plan gone through unopposed. Minimal military assistance to Iran before and during the war with Israel and US strikes, mainly supplying precursor chemicals for solid rocket fuel and buying lots of oil. US led mutual defence pacts, Saudi Arabia getting F-35s. I'm sure that China and Russia are expecting something in return though.
MarmiteLover123
joined 3 years ago
Depends on what country really. Is this good news for Gaza, Iran, probably not. Taiwan and the Philippines? Depends on if it brings conflict/war with China closer or further away. Sub Saharan Africa? I don't know, probably not great for South Africa, which usually means not great for the rest. I haven't seen Russia or China backing up South Africa much from Trump's attacks.
Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi, all meeting in the Kremlin, Russia today, with Russian leadership.
The three world powers deciding on their spheres of influence.
So first Trump says that a second strike wasn't necessary (in effect throwing Hegseth under the bus), and now Hegseth is blaming Bradley to try save his job. It might just work, Hegseth did similar with Mike Waltz during "signalgate/whiskeyleaks", threw him under the bus and now Waltz has a useless job at the UN.
I think Hegseth (and certain factions in the US military) are terrified that Hegseth is going to be replaced with a Vance/Peter Thiel appointee in Discroll. Discroll will in effect "techbroify" the US military and sell it out to Palantir and Andruil. So Hegseth enjoys some support from those that want to avoid that.
It's what Venezuela has had since 2013 or 2017 I think. It's good for Venezuela that they have got it in working condition, but it's not a new capability. It's the most advanced air defence system Venezuela has though, and their best chance to shoot an aircraft down. It's a tracked system using tank chassis, so it should be able to disperse if there's an opportunity to do so. But Venezuela only have a single battalion.
I timestamped it to try skip the chud noise and go straight to the details.
The US has been running simulated strikes for weeks, but with transponders on and publicly calling them simulated strikes. If they did one with transponders off and no public acknowledgement, that would be worrying.
Some German ex military chud did a simulation on Command Modern Operations of what a strike could look like, warning for the video lots of chud nonsense, but an overview.
Venezuela's S-300VM/Antey-2500/SA-23 air defence system, their most advanced air defence system, has finally made an appearance in Venezuelan videos, a first since the escalation against Venezuela started.
It can be seen integrated with a modernised P-18M Spoon Rest D early warning radar, likely part of the S-125/SA-3C surface to air missile system.
With the APKWS counter drone and cruise missile rockets though, that's just a laser guidance kit mounted to an unguided Hydra 70mm rocket, with a proximity fuse and cheap infrared seeker for the air to air variant. Much like how a UMPK kit turns an unguided Russian FAB bomb into a guided glide bomb, or a a JDAM kit turns a Mk 80 series unguided bomb into a guided bomb. The US has plenty of Hydra rockets already produced, the limitation on production would be on the guidance kits. Anti ballistic missile interceptors are the much bigger production bottleneck for stuff like THAAD and SM-3.
With Iran, during the last attack the US evacuated bases close by like Qatar, and attacked from areas where Iran would not attack, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, even Greece potentially. And their aircraft carriers remained outside of the range of even Iran's longest range anti ship ballistic missiles. This also explains all the recent "mutual defence pacts" in the Middle East, as a strategy to encircle Iran. Iran then attacked the evacuated base in Qatar as a form of symbolic retaliation. Also for a counterforce attack with conventional ballistic missiles, a high degree of accuracy over long range is required. Iran is working on that by fitting optical seekers to the maneuverable warheads of their ballistic missiles, first starting with the shorter range missiles, and expanding to the longer range ones. I think they're up to 1200km range now. But it's quite challenging. Some from of radar guidance/radar mapping like on the Pershing-II and potentially the Chinese DF-21 could be more feasible long term.
There was this incident with the carrier, so there's pretty strong indication that it was in fact under threat
Yes that's true of course, but it doesn't have much to do with the press release you posted, which mainly focuses on the wild weasel mission performed, the pilot intentionally baiting out anti aircraft fire. The maneuvering of the aircraft carrier pictured is about defending against anti ship ballistic missiles, which is a whole other topic, a very interesting one in terms of area denial tactics. The press release mentions shooting down cruise missiles and one way attack drones though
As the 480th EFS commander, Parks led the squadron to a record 108 aerial victories against enemy Unmanned Aerial Systems and Land Attack Cruise Missiles. Additionally, Parks guided innovative employment standards by using air-to-ground AGR-20F rockets in an air-to-air role and prioritizing older AIM-9M missiles, saving more than $25 million dollars in munitions costs and leading to the first successful AIM-9M combat employment in 30 years.
Parks has been credited with six aerial victories protecting the lives of more than 5,000 Sailors aboard the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75)
The AGR-20F APKWS is a good anti drone and cruise missile solution, because one F-16 or F-15 can equip 42 of them, and they're about 22 000 USD each, compared to hundreds of thousands for modern air to air missiles, which have a much smaller magazine capacity on the aircraft, usually 6-8 at maximum. There are also specialised air to air versions of it now, though it's a laser guided rocket, so not much of a difference. The AIM-9M is however quite old and therefore significantly cheaper than most air to missiles, hence cost savings mentioned.
108 aerial victories for a squadron, and an individual pilot shooting down 6 aerial targets, is not a record number anymore though. A US F-15E squadron based in Jordan shot down over 150 during the Israel - Iran conflict, with some pilots shooting down over 20 drones and cruise missiles.
The part about SAM launches vs F-35s is actually mentioned in another press release, linked here, you'll probably find this interesting.
“This is the first time anyone has been shot at in 20 years – actually carrying out the Wild Weasel mission. It’s the first time we’re carrying novel weapons on the F-35, bombing into tunnels, double-tapping targets with deep-penetration weapons,” Osborne said....
“To see the squadron grow and get to a spot where the Airmen are comfortable living and working in a place where you're being shot at and still be experts … to watch SAM launches happen (during Rough Rider) and see guys go toward it and jump on their targets. It was impressive to see,” Osborne said.
On the airstikes vs Iranian nuclear facilities
Our weapons officer was the overall mission commander,” Osborne said. “We employed weapons to great effect against surface-to-air missile sites… while they were trying to target us with some very high high-end systems and they were just unable to. … It was cool to see the jet detect and defeat things – to watch it do exactly what it was designed to do.”
The formation of F-35s were the last to leave. They were never fired upon. But, upon their return, they were prepared for retaliation.
“From that point forward, we’re operating under alarm yellow and alarm red conditions, dispersing aircraft and people, expecting ballistic missile attacks, preparing for casualties and medical evacuations. It was wild,” Osborne said.
There's not really been any change in the situation since the official NOTAM from a few days ago. All the big international airlines are avoiding direct flights to Venezuela and avoiding overflying Venezuelan airspace. Some smaller regional airlines and cargo operators that operate older aircraft like Boeing 727s, older 737s and MD-80s, are still offering direct flights to Venezuela.
Looks like the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier is preparing to leave the US Virgin Islands after spending only a single day in port, tugboats approached during the evening.
Video
Could be a bluff, could actually be leaving, could be misdirection/theatre (the US is close enough to Venezuela that an aircraft carrier is not necessarily needed).