Here's the full analysis I made almost two months ago, if you're interested
MarmiteLover123
joined 2 years ago
Aircraft aren't being shot down by drones in Ukraine, at most one way attack drones have taken out a few helicopters in flight. Fighters fly to high or fast to be taken out by drones. Drones and loitering munitions take out fighter aircraft that are parked on the ground. Fighter aircraft are still very important, a big part of the reason why Ukraine's air force can't operate freely, even at high altitude beyond the range of Russian ground based air defence, is Russian fighters lobbing air to air missiles at them from 200km away. At one stage, Russia was firing 6-8 R-37M missiles a day at Ukrainian aircraft. This capability led to attrition of the Ukrainian Air Force to the point F-16 deliveries were necessary. Yeah there aren't that many, if any, dogfights anymore with this kind of BVR capabilitiy.
Ground based air defence is playing the biggest part in area denial to enemy fighters. Russian aircraft are reduced to lobbing standoff weapons like glide bombs from high altitude outside of the range of Ukrainian ground based air defence. Ukrainian fighters can't even do that due to the Russian Air Force, they have to perform low altitude, terrain masking flights to fire munitions at Russian ground positions. Fighters still play an important role and can't be replaced by drones yet. Iran has a massive drone and missile arsenal, yet they still want modern fighter jets.
My argument has always been that the US empire is trying to re orientate itself and prepare for a new phase. These "colour revolution/regime change" organisations have gotten bloated, inefficient, ineffective, and contradictory. We had CIA backed rebels fighting Pentagon backed rebels in Syria. We had Voice of America putting out both pro and anti Trump propaganda. Chaos can be effective, but clearly not anymore. How many successful colour revolutions have taken place over the last decade? I think Ukraine was the last one in 2014. Hong Kong failed, Bolivia had mixed results, Venezuela failed. Notice how Trump and Musk went after USAID hard, but nothing was said about NED. The news about the defence budget being reduced was incorrect as well. My guess is that they want a unified direct line for the regime change stuff, under the direct control of the State Department or even the Presidency. Yemen is a possible flashpoint in the medium term. The opposition to Ansarallah/the Houthis could be reactivated on the completion of the US air campaign.
The DOGE hysteria could have been a PsyOp to distract from this. I think the leaked signal chats are potentially a PsyOp to distract from the largest US military movements to the Middle East in over 20 years, since the Iraq war.
“Oh but ClimateChangeAnxiety, games cost more to make now!” No they don’t. You’re choosing to spend more to make them. You’re choosing to hire larger teams to make larger games with better graphics. Don’t do that. Make them the same way you did in 2010.
You have better tools now, you can make the same products you made in 2010 with less labor today. Do that. And charge less.
Outside of niche games and genres, those would sell poorly. Mainstream consumers will absolutely not accept stagnation. This argument always comes up with regards to game franchises that had their heyday 10-20 years ago, and the answer is the same. A lot of those games had mechanics, progression skips, and glitches that would be considered unacceptable in the modern market. That was fine back then as the internet and YouTube were no where no where near as big as they are today, so the knowledge of game breaking progress skips, extremely overpowered builds, and glitches was contained through obscurity. You had to either phone a hotline (remember those) or go on a niche internet forum to find out about these things. That's not possible anymore, someone will post a YouTube video within 24 hours of the latest exploit and it would be all over the internet within a few days. I say this as someone who is a huge fan of those older games and still plays them today.
The only series I've seen revive itself by making the same kind of game it made 15 years ago was Ace Combat, a niche franchise that was in a poor situation in the first place, because it tried to enter the mainstream and failed with it's Call of Duty clone with airplanes game.
And besides that, the Switch and Switch 2 is already a constrained platform. Most flagship smartphones are more powerful than the Switch 2. Nintendo is the only party around making games under such hardware constraints. That's because ever since the GameCube, they failed to compete against PlayStation and Xbox on the processing power front. So Nintendo competes in hardware niches, motion control with the Wii, and the portable factor with the Switch. Nintendo is the company making games with the technical complexity of those made 5-10 years ago. So if they're charging more, that means the industry is in big trouble. GTA 6 $100?
And to be completely honest, this stuff (consumer electronics and video games) has always been that expensive outside of the western/first world sphere. Cheap consumer goods in the western world is possible because of globalised neoliberal capitalism, a system that is now dead. The 2009 financial crisis was the big blow, and afterwards Obama, Merkel, Macron, Cameron, Abe, they all tried to revive this system and failed. COVID and the resulting inflation was the death knell. The Trump administration in the USA is trying to lessen the blow (for the USA) by taking direct control of the world's oceans and key points, along with tarrifs. If consumer electronics are considered expensive now, just wait for what the next decade has in store. So many potential flashpoints.
Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon
To be honest I was surprised he lasted this long. But the recent Tesla news, Wisconsin election results and DOGE trying to run the US Government as a private sector agile takeover have been too much now, the Trump-Musk relationship is no longer beneficial for both sides, so it will be put on the backburner.
US airstrikes on Yemen continue for the 19th day in a row this time, with the first publicised daytime airstrikes of the current campaign targeting Hodeidah Governorate. Reportedly, a water treatment facility responsible for providing water for 50 000 people was targeted amongst the strikes.
More airstrikes reported east of Saada City.
More airstrikes in Hodeidah Governorate.
Airstrikes in Sana'a Governorate, targeting individual cars.
New directives have been issued by the Ansarallah government, stating that citizens must no longer film or discuss US airstrikes on social media. Casualty figures are also not being released further for the moment. As of the 28th of March, 41 deaths were acknowledged as a result of US airstrikes, including one Brigadier General, two Colonels, seven Majors, and three Captains.
More airstrikes in Saada city, a total of 17 seperate strikes.
Airstrikes targeting communications networks in Ibb Governorate, hit for the first time during this most recent phase of the conflict. Airstrikes have been going on for 9 hours now.
Renewed airstrikes in Saada Governorate.
As for targeting the air defence systems themselves, it absolutely can be done in theory. Iran has anti radiation ballistic missiles in the Hormuz 1 and 2 for this. The question is if this capability will be used in practice if war breaks out.
Iran don't have "hypersonic weapons" (in a missile that spends the majority of it's flight time in the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds while capable of maneuvering), Iran has ballistic missiles with Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicles (MaRVs) capable of glide phases and "pull up/down" maneuvers. Then there is Fattah-1, which has a thrust vectoring sustainer rocket motor on the MaRV itself to enable changes in trajectory in the midcourse, and allows for more energy to perform maneuvers in the terminal phase. Fattah-2 is Iran's rumoured hypersonic weapon, but there are no signs of it being operational.
It's still very difficult to defend against MaRV capable missiles if/when they evade midcourse interception by systems like Arrow-3 and SM-3. THAAD does plug the hole in the air defence of MaRVs gliding above the engagement ceiling of systems like Patriot and Arrow-2, but then magazine size (the amount of interceptors in a THAAD battery) becomes a big issue. More explanation on that here and here. There is a cool video of Iranian MaRVs in action during Operation True Promise II somewhere in those threads, if you want to see what glide phases and pull up/down maneuvers look like in practice.
The main problem with Iranian missiles is that their longer range missiles don't have great accuracy, but Bahrain is well within the range of Iran's shorter range ballistic missiles, which have demonstrated high accuracy before. So I don't think that the USA will park their aircraft within range of the shorter range missiles. The A-10s are rumoured to be stationed in Jordan, and the F-35As are in Saudi Arabia. B-2s are well out of Iran's MaRV capable missile range in Diego Garcia. Bahrain is a good location to put air defence systems in place to defend against potential attacks on Qatar and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where the US has large air bases. Even if Qatari air bases are not used in the attack, they could still be targeted.
That first picture is what I posted about here the large military movement to Bahrain. It went under the radar, but NBC News confirmed my suspicions that at least part of this deployment is to move two Patriot batteries and a THAAD battery to the region.
The Pentagon has moved an additional aircraft carrier and its attendant ships into the region, joining the USS Harry Truman carrier strike group already there. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has authorized at least two Patriot missile defense batteries from Asia to be moved to the Middle East, two U.S. officials and one defense official told NBC News.
And in a move that suggests thoughts of a sustained campaign in the Middle East, NBC News has also learned from one U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter that defense officials have approved the relocation of a large missile system known as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, a more complex effort.
The other part of this airlift, I suspect, is to support the A-10 deployment from the National Guard to the region. I expand on my theory about the A-10s new role against fastboats and drones here, and commented on the new US warplans about new nuclear weapons for the extremely unlikely event of a nuclear strike here. I tracked Chief Kurilla's plane landing in Israel this morning, but didn't post about it. F-35As were already deployed over a week ago to the region, posted about that here.
Will the USA strike Iran? It gets more likely with every deployment, but it could just be part of the "maximum pressure" strategy to try force Iran to the negotiating table. I still don't think the USA will strike Iran at this time, but the assets needed to strike Iran are being moved to the region to do so if the USA deems it necessary. Key deployments to watch out for are the F-16CJs from the 480th Fighter Squadron and other squadrons, this is the US Air Force's "wild weasel" aircraft for SEAD/DEAD operations. F-22 deployments to the ME region would also be very significant.
In case anyone is wondering, airstrikes in Yemen have been continuing for over 9 hours now, and I'm still providing updates here