GCC radars are needed for early warning, not only fire control.

the evidence is Alert system may not even work for missiles, or give very short warning (seconds to 1 minute instead of the usual 10 minutes)

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-03-...

If we are speaking of interception/penetration, these are also solved by Iran using several strategies that Israel/CENTCOM did not expect:

  1. use of cluster munitions
  2. exhaustion of expensive interceptor inventory (exchanging $7000 shahed drone for $3-5 mln worth of PAC-3 interceptors)
  3. Use of penetration aids
  4. Changing trajectory at the terminal stage
  5. coordinating swarm attacks (let AD to intercept SRBMs, while the real damage is caused by abundant cheap Shaheds that fly too slow and low to be detected)

https://www.csis.org/analysis/unpacking-irans-drone-campaign...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/23/iran-cluster-b...

I've read that NATO radars in Turkey were equally important to provide early warning to Israel. It's not far-fetched to assume that US radars in the middle-east did too. US THAAD in Israel would definitely be networked into those.

I think that there is a problem here - you're talking about the firing of the defense system at targets, whereas knowing that that radar needs to be readied because missiles have been detected is what the other radar system provided.

> In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not.

Honestly it's more than that. Propaganda and lies put out by ALL actors in this conflict. If you want to understand what's going on I think you have the expose yourself to as many competing sources as you can find. And still you're going to end up with a very shoddy picture. The term for this is epistemic collapse.

I read the source he listed and it doesn't say any of that

If you spend a moment to verify the info that is the fact check.

No one can do the thinking for you.

This is the second time in 2 weeks I’ve seen a comment like this on HN. 37 years old. Been on here 16 years. Incredibly odd to me. Just announce “can someone else tell me if this is true?”

Are you asking someone to fact check publicly available information for you ? Even NYT reported this

For the United States, the government doesn't have the capability to extricate Israel from its political system, but the feds can create blowback for Israel which makes them less capable to influence the US in the future while achieving other strategic aims in the region. US war planners know plenty about blow back and I think this is being done on purpose. I am terrified for innocent Israelis, Iranians and Gulf state residents that have been led into this. Most of the states and peoples in the Middle East who have been destroyed used to be allies with the US. That isn't on accident.

Ah yeah, well I didn’t know it was that high!

But I’m responding to the rescue mission comment, which, since Vietnam, have overwhelmingly employed helicopters (Huey’s then, Black Hawks today). But machinery aside, the larger point is that air operations will likely go worse here than they did in Vietnam, unfortunately for both sides.

Well, the A-10 is down no matter how correct you feel you are.

Shoulder launched missiles are absolutely capable of taking down large slow aircrafts in 2026.

This is not a rpg from 1930

That A-10’s can’t suppress manpads

There's also no possibility that a Geran would be able to engage an A-10. It doesn't have a RADAR, it is much slower and less manoeuvrable.

I would question to what extent repeating propaganda, qualifies as debate.

Even if you do say that it qualifies, it doesn't qualify as productive debate.

There is really no productive debate to be had here. Even if you think that Iran needed to be bombed, it took absurd incompetence to start doing so before planning how to handle asymmetric warfare against drones in an affordable way.

I also think there was an initial “euphoria” (I guess) during the initial days of the campaign.

People I know (even Iranian expats) were excited to see the regime get hammered and there was hope for possibility of change (and also a little bloodlust)… but I think as the war drags on and the US is exposed to be in an un-winnable mess, sentiment will continue to sour.

This has already started to happen in Nate Silver’s post you linked.

>>How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?

> Apparently 37.7% of Americans,

These are the same thing. The MAGA base is fracturing and the polls are showing that with the very number you are using as a retort.

Your first link says 28% support it, so somewhere between 28 and 37%. I do wonder how many of those people could find Iran on a map, though I suppose you could ask the same about the people who are against it.

75 million using the YouGov number and just under 100 million using the Nate Silver average. (I think you must have used the more Trump-favorable number AND included children in your computation, which is not reasonable.)

Also worth noting that Nate Silver's measure has been declining for almost 3 weeks, the majority of the duration of the invasion.

Before the invasion, a University of Mariland poll says 55 million and a YouTov poll says 71 million support. These are useful numbers because we know there's a rally around the flag effect that distorts thinking during a conflict.

https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/do-americans-favor-at... https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54158-few-americans-suppor...

20-25% of Americans would support Trump pulling his pants down and taking a shit on the floor in the oval office on live TV. These people's opinions shouldn't be taken into account or respected in these discussions.

> seems to fall some along common political lines though

While true, I think it's more correct to say that the determining factor is which television news media people most readily consume.

This is what bringing democracy looks like?! The regime is more entrenched than ever and our commander in chief keeps threatening to commit war crimes on a massive scale. If he follows through on what he says he will do and obliterates all the civilian infrastructure in the country it will kill mass numbers of innocent people and turn millions of survivors into impoverished refugees.

As bad as the regime is, and it's very bad, what we're doing is even worse for most Iranians and the odds a democratic government arises from the ashes of our bombing campaign is incredibly unlikely.

As a person who believes in democracy, don't you think it should be the US Congress the one declaring war?

Yes, bombing schools, universities and dessalination plants is a sure way to have more democracy in a country. Especially double taps where you kill the rescuers.

The US have so many examples where they did so and worked!

> As a person who believes in democracy, I'm pretty on board with it.

As others have stated. This war will not bring democracy. Bombing Iranians have united them with the regime.

Also, US and Israel do not want a democracy in Iran. Israel would prefer a non-functioning place like Palestine or a mostly non-functional place like Lebanon that they can easily control.

Would you say you fall into the hardcore trump base category?

If this is a troll it is masterful. If it's an honest opinion I would invite you to check your skull for unexpected holes where your brain may have fallen out.

What do you think the odds are that this war results in more democracy?

>"As a person who believes in democracy"

Is this a new spelling of fuck whatever semblance of international laws we have and big dicks do as they please?

Bringing democracy and freedom to the world by bombing school children. God bless America!

Literally none of the fighting countries want Iran to be democratic. Neither USA nor Israel nor Iran. Israel dont want the country functional and would prevent democracy. USA idea of regime change is to keep regime, change head for someone who pays extortion money. And if Iranian leadership wanted democracy they would have one. Not sure if you noticed, but American admin loves dictators and insults democracies

So ,WTF are you talking about here.

Also, bombing city with that double tap tactic during protests ensures you kill protesters.

122 A-10s have been lost outside of combat over the years. 8 have been lost in combat.

Lots of flights, maintenance resources stretched thin, old aircraft - this is when you'd expect to see crashes.

It's an airplane. It is as susceptible to doors not being bolted on as much as a civilian flight. Maybe actually a higher chance of some benign mechanical issue as it is well known that air crews are often overworked with little to no sleep with the high tempo of sorties in these types of missions. Lots of historical examples of US military aircraft crashing from mechanical issues and not being shot down

My comment was re: stating it as fact which is misleading. Beliefs or guesses are not facts.

Military airplanes do crash, there are lots of crashes every year: https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/11/military-aircraft...

At war there's a lot more pressure on ground and air crews that can lead to more mistakes. Also the mission would be flown closer to the limits vs. training.

So... We don't know? If your question is whether that's a good guess/greater than zero probability then sure. Is it a certainty? No. The Iranians will claim they shot it down. The Americans may or may not admit and if they deny then people will say they're lying.

Russia today probably.

> European countries are protected by NATO and a nuclear umbrella.

Well, protected by the United States primarily. They've mostly divested from military spending and capabilities over time, which is the ideal thing, but it seems like maybe we can't live in that ideal world, anyway...

I'm not suggesting that Iran shouldn't have a military, but instead questioning the purposes for which it would have one. Today its military is used for sending missiles at Gulf States, funding Hezbollah, and oppressing its people. So for it to have little to no military practically speaking would be a good thing.

Second at 2.5% GDP (again these figures are highly questionable) that's plenty to have defensive capabilities versus neighbors. There's nobody there to really worry about because who outside of the United States is going to invade Iran? And even then the US is only doing it because they won't stop doing crazy shit and launching missiles at everyone.

I've just been at a conference where some high-up guy from germany was talking about the effect of sanctions... russia used to sell wood pulp to germany, german factories would produce paper products and then sell a lot of them back to russia.

Then sanctions came, no more very cheap wood pulp for the german industry, and after a year of sanctions, the russians built (i think) 4 large paper factories, so even after the sanctions end, that business is not coming back to germany.

If by "bend the knee" you mean that they don't regularly chant "death to America", sure.

Those countries, like Iran, are also quite poor because the army siphons off so much of their resources.

> This is an interesting take given that the US seems to have ignored many of the most important lessons from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

This is a fun trope that's parroted but none of these wars were the same or even really close to each other in goals.

Vietnam - actually has great relations with the US and we won the peace.

Iraq - well they had Saddam and now they have a functioning parliament and things seem to be going a lot better for them. Was it worth $1.5 trillion of US spend to achieve that? That's a better question.

Afghanistan - We wanted to provide schooling for little girls and stuff like that and, well, the population didn't want it. So at some point you cut your losses.

Iran - We're not going to like invade and occupy Iran, though we could. We're just going to have to keep blowing up their military capabilities until they have a more reasonable government.

> As for "end up in another war", the language you chose is very revealing. You don't just "end up in...war". Wars don't start themselves. Someone starts them and in the case of the US, it's almost always the US.

It was just a figure of speech - Ukraine wound up in a war.

The US usually starts the war because the US is the only country in the world actually trying to do anything about nefarious actors. Easy to criticize from the sidelines, which is why American foreign policy has shifted to - we don't care what militarily irrelevant countries think about our activities because, well, we don't and they don't matter and we don't really care what they think. It sounds bad, but if we just retreat to isolationism as the MAGA and far-left crowds want, well maybe Iran goes and builds 5x the missile capabilities we have now, then they close the straight, force the gulf states to capitulate, and now you've got a nuclear armed Iranian regime in control of 20% of the world's oil supply. Oh and now you have nobody there to save you because China isn't going to go sail boats over there and bomb Iran, and Europe certainly isn't. Now what do you do?

Could be. I guess my definition is “US can do whatever it wants without contest” and that seems to be the case here. What fighter jets does Iran have that are not destroyed? Do they have significant anti air defenses that we can’t attack and that limit our operations? Not to my knowledge but maybe there are parts of the country where that’s true, for now.

Of course in any war someone can fire back at and sometimes hit your aircraft even if you have complete airspace control.

Really, any rival state-level actor benefits from seeing America squander its currently limited supply of high-end munitions and put months of stress on its airframes, warships, and people.

... & sells drone parts to any and all participants. You need drones? You know who to call!

In other words, all the ingredients for WW3. Lets hope we can somehow avoid that.

> I suspect fascism is currently winning

I think this war is actually pushing many away from fascism. Trump was the reference for a lot of the European right and this is showing people he was terrible and, by extension, embarrassing them all.

Heck, Orbán is currently running an electoral campaign as "the candidate of peace".

The post-1945 rules-based order was already a slow motion train crash that most of the West remained in denial about until Putin wiped his behind with it in the 2014 invasion of Crimea. To pretend that Trump is somehow breaking an otherwise intact system at this point is fanciful.

Nah, this problem is systemic, and much older than the current administration. Or has everyone forgotten the "anthrax" in a test tube? The invisible WMDs? The fake news about soldiers tossing babies out of incubators? Setting up a web of lies and attacking is a foundational value of the United States.

Which is why any "adventures" that involve boots on the ground will come with a significant rise in US casualties. Few Americans have likely seen the videos from the Russian Invasion, of what modern war with $1000 quadcopters dropping grenades on terrified soldiers looks like.

> a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan

And a US colony/territory for the 43 years before Japan invaded. They were ruled by a US puppet state in a supposed "transition to independence" at the time Japan invaded, however it's unclear how much actual independence they would have had in practice.

I mention this because:

1. The way you state it makes it sound like they were somehow independent before the war.

2. It explains why MacArthur was there with the US army to resist the Japanese invasion from the first day it happened (Dec 7, 1941)

3. Its history worth looking into to contextualize just how bad the US has always been at taking over places. Acting as if this is post WW2 (as the media does) is counter-productive to truly understanding the number of really botched invasions the US has done.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yud6EFprZeaVDaeQ6

This is the view outside of Fairchild AFB, which runs the training course in question.

Wikipedia reports that Spokane has a Mediterranean climate, as does Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province where this F-15 is reported to have been shot down.

They're also wrong. The geographic center (around Ellensburg or so) is also in what is known as Eastern WA (east of the Cascades).

I know you're not.

I've found that most of our population has almost no connection to the people that actually fight wars, and therefore have no idea what they think. With the exception of a few criminals, none of us desire to commit war crimes. None of us want to send rounds into civilian infrastructure, seeing regular people struggle to get food, fuel, and water in Iraq did not make me feel powerful and it was obvious it did not advance our goals on the ground.

The jingoistic commentary people hear from politicians and former military podcasters that don't fight anymore is repugnant, and this backsliding in the (at least attempt at) honorable execution of war is not going to bode well for our country. It's probably trite when we're double tapping girl's schools, but I want to think that purposely striking civilian infrastructure, universities, hospitals, water resources... this was all something "we" didn't do.

This is actively devaluing the meaning of being a Marine. Maybe this already happened in Mai Lai, maybe this was further chipped away by Abu Ghraib, maybe letting Eddie Gallagher off... etc etc. But this feels different in a way I've never felt before.

Care to elaborate on this?

It’s not not woke, it’s wokeness of a different kind. They exclude those who disagree with their brand of orthodoxy, it seems like to me they’re firing anyone who says no to the ground invasion.

They won't face any US law. AIUI, they have been getting letters from the DOJ office of legal counsel that say it's legal. This effectively immunizes them (the DOJ can't turn around and charge you with a crime, if they advised you beforehand it was not a crime).

The best shot would be to turn them over to the ICC

> But, even if you dismiss the idea of international standards, this is clearly very bad for US soldiers (and sailors, airmen, etc). I wonder if they see that.

Even if you dismiss the idea of international standards, a no-quarter declaration is against _US law_, specifically subject to the penalty of death with no other lawful penalty defined: https://www.govregs.com/uscode/title18_partI_chapter118_sect....

As a matter of fact, if Iran comes out of the war having not committed war crimes they’ll have a huge worldwide moral and public image victory over the United States and Israel.

It's not naive to have adult expectations for adults

And yet, they are still around, made famous and split into separate groups, still actively fighting on multiple fronts all over Africa. And if the Iranian government falls for sure they will be coming back with a vengeance in the area.