Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran's nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran's government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
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.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
The latest Simplicius: Humiliation: Israel Tucks Tail After Failing All Objectives in War against Victorious Iran
I think the title's blatant triumphalism betrays how there's a battle in the media over the portrayal of the conflict, with both sides basically doing their own victory dances. I will say that the Israeli side does look a little depressed as the fragility of their society and economy and military has been laid bare, and there does appear to be a psychological blow to Zionists that may or may not translate into lasting change (e.g. mass evacuations). But like, you shouldn't have to constantly insist that you've won a conflict; the results should speak for themselves beyond all doubt. So I'm personally comfortable calling this a draw, but let's see what Simplicius has to say about it.
Simplicius should be reading our own @[email protected], as a lot of those assertions are just plain wrong. For example, they have way more of those bunker busters and manufacture 6-8/month. The 20 refers to a specific model number of them, presumably the one with the George H. W. Bush memorial tailfin.
I agree that clearly Israel/the US didn't deliver a knockout blow to Iran's nuclear program, but they did hit a lot of anti air, suppressed missile launchers, and more critically, they demonstrated willingness and ability to indiscriminately bomb civilian infrastructure. Missile launchers can hide, apartment blocks and universities can't.
Do we actually know this for sure though? What seems to be available as information is:
They started being delivered in September 2011
There were 20 bombs as of 2015
They were manufactured at a rate of 2 per month, until an expansion of production facilities in July 2024 to 6-8 per month (https://archive.is/KB5Tg)
I kind of doubt that the "2 per month" necessarily indicates that every month since 2015 has seen those 2 manufactured - it's a pretty niche weapon, and I doubt they've been constantly manufacturing them all this time. After all, those 20 that we know about took 4 years, which is a rate of 5 per year - or 0.42 per month, not 2.
Additionally, I feel that it's reasonable to be skeptical of any claims of increasing capacity by Western MIC (and industry in general, how's the CHIPS act going?), given that they've been going on about increasing capacity (particularly of artillery shells) since soon after the start of the Ukraine war and yet not much seems to have materialized. If we're trying to get an idea of how US military procurement is going, recently the Army canceled or reduced to minimum sustainment rate a bunch of stuff, like:
Now, historically the Air Force has generally been able to get their way with regards to funding much more than the Army, so they're probably doing a lot better. But still, there are clearly a lot of problems in US military procurement.
Also, another note on manufacturing - this bunker buster uses tungsten, I'm not clear on how much but it's presumably a substantial amount given the total weight. I've brought this up before, but it just so happens that the biggest tungsten producers are... China, Vietnam, and Russia (with Bolivia being 5th
, and even North Korea showing up with a little bit 
).
Given the wide variety of industrial applications, tungsten's obviously pretty pricey, and we already have an example of lack of tungsten affecting US procurement - the NGSW program, which intended to introduce a new rifle and fancy cartridge that could penetrate modern armor. Except, instead of doing what is traditionally done when you want armor penetration, which is use a harder material (and given that steel alloys aren't sufficient anymore, the next step is tungsten), they went with highly-overpressurized rounds - essentially, instead of making the projectile harder, you make it travel faster and with more energy, in the hope that this will compensate. In practice, as more information is starting to come out with those rifles now in service, it seems like such penetration isn't actually really achieved, and tungsten-tipped variants will be needed anyway (https://www.armytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2023/02/28/the-not-really-next-generation-weapons-program/#%3A%7E%3Atext=tungsten)
So why did they bother with this whole thing in the first place, given that tungsten-tipped variants already exist for existing calibers (https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/small-caliber-ammunition/7-62mm-series/7-62-mm-x-51-armor-piercing-8-m993/, https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/small-caliber-ammunition/5-56mm-series/5-56-mm-x-45-armor-piercing-45/)? Well, because those are far too expensive to field in large quantities - precisely because of the use of tungsten.
Now of course, a handful of aircraft bombs are a very different manufacturing context from millions of rounds, but said bombs also obviously involve a substantially larger amount of material. So even if the US wanted to make a whole bunch of these, there's simply a hard limit imposed by availability of tungsten.
(also, something else about the tungsten producers - Canada's actually 4th, so I guess we might see the Fallout 1 intro but about ores instead of oil
)
Funny thing is that the new Liberal minority government, with the help of the Conservative party, recently passed a prominent piece of legislation that seems laser-focused on making it easy for mining companies to ignore a lot of safety and environmental regulations. I wonder if the idea is to make Canada the go-to source for minerals important for the US defence industry and use that as a trade-negotiation bargaining chip now that the US is having problems sourcing them from China, Russia, and countries allied with China and/or Russia.
these bombs are big but they aren't exactly high tech. they are nothing compared to the complexity of mass producing vehicles like the ones you cited. I suppose it's possible that these haven't been built in significant numbers, but I certainly wouldn't hang my hat on there only being a handful.
also, you cited cost of tungsten - I bet the bombs themselves are not even a significant portion of the cost of these strikes compared to logistics/mobilization/maintenance of the 120 odd planes used in this mission.
Mechanical complexity isn't always a good metric for overall cost - something that's technically simple in terms of number of parts can still be expensive because of the cost of those individual parts. I'm not a specialist in manufacturing or anything, but I would assume part of the difficulty with tungsten is even being able to actually work with it in the first place - you need the kind of tools that can actually cut into it (although when you just need a big solid chunk for a bomb it's probably not so bad). Plus, there's just the plain physical limitation of how much material exists - if I have a trillion dollars, it doesn't mean I can buy 41 thousand Abrams tanks, because only like 10k were actually built and they stopped in '92. Now, obviously tungsten isn't that limited, but this is just for illustrative purposes.
This seems intuitively true, but I'm not sure if it holds up. What I'm finding is anywhere from 13 million, to 20 million, to a vague "tens of millions" for the GBUs, per-unit.
(btw, the M10 I'm finding as somewhere between 14 to 19 million depending on the specific phase of contract negotiations, an AMPV is ostensibly a mere 3.1 mil, adjusted for inflation, while a Stryker is... 6.9 mil?! for an 8-wheel APC, basically a fancy BTR, presumably much simpler than a tracked and better-armored vehicle like the AMPV? Maybe the unit cost listed on Wikipedia is for one of the fancier Stryker variants or something, but holy shit it must be great to be General Dynamics and bilk the military that much... anyway, clearly the "nothing compared to the complexity of mass producing vehicles like the ones you cited" point doesn't hold - again, it seems intuitively true, like "it's just a bomb, how much could it cost?", but you gotta factor in the MIC graft! Even the latest Abrams is a "mere" 26.4 mil (again, adjusted for inflation), which could be merely twice as expensive as the GBU on the lower estimate, or cheaper on the higher estimate if that "tens of millions" is above 30)
A B-2 flight-hour is anywhere from 135k to 170k (flight-hour costs do actually include logistics and maintenance, sort of - what they do is take the total cost of the whole fleet over a given period of time, and divide it by the hours, so you don't necessarily get a good idea of how much the maintenance costs proportionally to the regular flight of the plane, but it is accounted for in the whole cost as an average), which for the 37 hours long mission, taking the lower estimate, is like 5 mil per plane - with each carrying 2 bombs, and taking the lower estimate for the bombs too, that's 2.6 times the cost of the flight for the payload. Now, there's probably a bit more subtlety and nuance to calculating this stuff, but this is just to give a rough idea.
For the whole thing, obviously there were a lot of other planes involved, and calculating the precise costs of everything isn't really possible at this point - we don't know exactly what other planes flew, from which bases, how far, etc. But for example, an F-35 flight hour is supposed to be somewhere from 33k to 42k (I'm giving up on doing inflation adjustments at this point
), an F-16's 25k, I'm not finding numbers for the EA-18G Growler but the regular F/A-18 is 19.5k, and obviously these planes, not being strategic bombers, would have flown much shorter missions. There's also various recon and refueling aircraft... let's, just for the sake of a very rough estimate, call it as 118 F-35s (125 - the 7 B-2s, not realistic at all but just to keep it simple), at the lower estimate - that's 3.9 mil per hour, and the actual main portion of the operation, involving all aircraft together, wouldn't have lasted more than a few hours, right? So like, I dunno, 5 hours, like 20 mil? Possibly the cost of just one GBU, depending on which estimate we're going by.
So, turns out the bombs weren't that small of a portion of the cost - gotta factor in the MIC graft!
Finally, a point I started making before I actually drove myself insane looking up the numbers and assumed the bombs actually were a paltry portion - even if they don't seemingly cost as much (which as we've seen, they actually do), we still have to account for decline in manufacturing. I feel like a lot of people don't realize that the US is, to a great degree, coasting by on the stuff they made in the late Cold War and the 90s. Westerners love to shit on Russia for "oh, they're not really making that many new tanks, it's just refurbs!", but... the US does the same thing - an Abrams hasn't rolled off the assembly line since '92! Everything has been refurbs of the original 10k they made during the Cold War. The B-2? Last one was made in 2000. The Bradleys were mostly all made before 1995.
Just because the US of the 80s and 90s was able to make thousands of tanks and IFVs, doesn't mean the US of today can. The US of the back then might well have been able to pump out a whole lot of these bombs (or whatever the equivalent with that period's technology would have been). The US of today... maybe not.
The US is replacing both with the jltv they have already manufactured 10k of them?
I think Ukraine has shown that very advanced heavy spgs have a lot of problems. The German one had maintenance issues. Guided artillery seems to have been much to costly to justify its limited combat effectiveness.
It's the JLTV which is getting cancelled (I just put it under the general label of MRAPs since I assumed people would be more familiar with that term, the US military has way too many incomprehensible abbreviations for everything). Canceling that does make sense, the problem is that they're seemingly also canceling basically everything else to do with transport vehicles. The US at this point seems to have about 7000 proper APCs and IFVs at best (I guess technically there's also 2k M3 Bradleys, which I assume can be used as M2s if the need arises, as they're mechanically mostly the same vehicle, just serving in two different roles with separate designations), plus 2k base M2s in storage (which would likely have to be upgraded to a modern standard before being pulled out), 4.7k M113s that are woefully outdated at this point, and the 12.5k JLTVs and 9k other MRAPs (which were designed for COIN, and while they can be pushed into the role of conventional APCs as they have been in Ukraine, it's not ideal). The AMPV was supposed to add another 3k, but it was cancelled. More Strykers could have been made, but they were canceled.
7k sounds like a big number, but:
that amount of vehicles and more have already been destroyed in Ukraine
the US, as per its position as global hegemon, kind of needs a lot of stuff so they can maintain a military presence in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia all at the same time. China for example has about 5.6k modern APCs and IFVs, recently started manufacturing a new one, and another 7k of older stuff (plus who knows how many MRAPs). In the event of a future conflict, the US obviously wouldn't be able to deploy it's whole force entirely against China - that 7k split up between a bunch of fronts doesn't end up being so much.
Edit: actually, it turns out like 2.4k of the Strykers are an assortment of other variants, like mortar carriers, combat engineer vehicles, ambulances, air defense, etc.. 545 of those are the recon variant which is relatively close to the base APC in configuration, so let's be generous and count those as APCs - we have to subtract 1.9k from the US's APCs count
The Russians are using some guided shells too. In fact, the proliferation of drones is opening up a whole new avenue for guided artillery (https://tass.com/defense/1426745, https://armyrecognition.com/focus-analysis-conflicts/army/conflicts-in-the-world/russia-ukraine-war-2022/analysis-how-russia-is-using-new-laser-guided-krasnopol-m2-artillery-rounds-for-precision-strikes-in-ukraine).
Western systems have definitely not performed well, but that's all the more reason for continuing to look into developing new systems (although admittedly, the Western MIC would probably end up coming up with something even more over-complicated than the current stuff). With this being the 4th in a row failed attempt, the US is still stuck with the M109 Paladin which goes back to the 1960s (although it has admittedly gone through several extensive modernizations since then).