An update on the F-15E Strike Eagles conducting Combat Air Patrols (CAP) and Defensive Counter Air (DCA) at Diego Garcia and also in the Middle East and West Asia in general, called the CENTCOM area of responsibility by the United States.

A few days ago, the US Air Force trialed a new anti drone and cruise missile loadout on their testbed F-15Es, equipping them with 42 APKWS laser guided rockets each. The APKWS laser guided rockets offer a cheap and high magazine capacity firing solution to drone and cruise missile swarms (they cost 20K USD each and work by equipping a guidance kit to unguided Hydra rockets, kind of like equipping a JDAM kit to an unguided bomb), as seen by equipping 42 of them on one aircraft, with three seven shot pods on each wing. What's interesting is that the positioning of the rocket pots still leaves eight hardpoints open, four on the conformal fuel tanks and four next to the rocket pods.

Now this similar loadout appeared on an F-15E at Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan, in active service. In addition to the 42 APKWS laser guided rockets, 4 AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared guided air to air missiles are mounted on hardpoints next to the rocket pods, and 4 AIM-120 radar guided air to air missiles are mounted on the hardpoints on the conformal fuel tanks. This allows for a potential of 50 engagements per aircraft.

Apparently a new Phineas and Ferb is also coming out, felt completely ancient when I found out that the first episode of that came out in 2007, 18 years ago...

This is the exact same thing he said after that journalist told him about the TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) acronym.

Why did that journalist do that...

You also assassinate Qassem Soleimani in the first mission of the game I think? Because he worked with ISIS and the Mexican cartels (in the game, obviously not in real life). Being a while since I played the games, especially the newer ones I've played very little of, so it could be from a different call of duty game.

Just looked it up, in the first mission of the sequel, Call of Duty Modern Warfare II 2022, you guide the missile to assassinate Soleimani during an arms deal between Iran and Russia, but Soleimani is called "Ghorbrani" in the game, and the assassination takes place in a fictional country, not Iran or Russia.

Very good article/piece on the Pakistan-India conflict that took place earlier this month.

Highly recommend reading this if you're wondering what happened during the four to five days of war/conflict. It's a good overview of the timeline of events, lines up with most previous reporting and observations, well sourced and cited. I just finished reading the entire thing.

Hamas hasn't commented on the Thursday leak, I think the leaked agreement from Saudi Arabian sources is an effort to try push Hamas into signing some sort of agreement.

It depends on the airline, the operational risk they're prepared to take, and just how affected they are by delays caused by air raid sirens. Ryanair is a low cost airline that relies on quick turnarounds to make their business model work, having their planes circle the skies above Tel Aviv while the air raid sirens go off makes that infeasible, hence the extension to the cancellation of flights to Tel Aviv. Other airlines or groups can afford more flexibility in this regard, the low cost airlines are most affected, I think Wizz Air is one of the few low cost airlines to have resumed flights, I guess they're prepared to take the risk to exploit a gap in the market. This also leads to Israeli local airlines having a monopoly on these routes previously operated by low cost airlines, with elevated ticket prices. Most airlines still have cancelled their flights to Israel, but from the article OP posted:

Resumed flights to Tel Aviv:

• Air France
• US' Delta Airlines
• Hungary's Wizz Air
• Greece’s Aegean Airlines

Flight cancellations extended from June 8 to June 15:

• Lufthansa group, which includes:
• SWISS
• Austrian Airlines
• Brussels Airlines
• Eurowings

Flight cancellations extended to July 31st:

• British Airways
• Ryanair

Overall triggering the air raid sirens is an effective form of inflicting economic damage, but it requires the use of the most advanced missiles like Palestine-2 and Fattah-1 with exoatmospheric maneuvering, multiple Rezvan/Zulfiqar missiles (different from the Zulfiqar/Dezful/Qassem series, the Zulfiqar here is a Rezvan variant) have been launched and failed to trigger the air raid sirens as they got intercepted outside of Israeli airspace by Arrow 3, without any debris landing in Israel.

It also comes at an extremely high cost to Yemen, Sana'a International Airport is officially closed now after today's Israeli countervalue airstrikes and the loss of Yemenia Airlines leased Airbus A320-200 aircraft.

To understand why the airport is officially closed now and not after the previous airstrikes, we have to look at the structure of Yemenia's fleet. The previous Israeli airstrikes on Sana'a airport, took out three aircraft that were not in active use, but could be used, an Airbus A330-200, a Boeing 727, and what looks like an IL-76 transport aircraft, but the ID on the last one is unclear. ~~The A320 fleet was not damaged, despite initial reporting saying it was and many, including myself, mistook the A330 for an A320.~~

Correction: 2 A320s were also destroyed alongside the A330, the initial A320 fleet size was six, not four.

Yemenia operates four A320s, two that they own outright and purchased in 2011, and two that they lease and came to a lease agreement on in 2023. The leased aircraft fly out of Ansarallah/Houthi controlled Sana'a, the Yemenia owned aircraft operate out of the STC (UAE backed separatist group) controlled Aden. So after the previous Israeli airstrikes, Yemenia could keep operating out of Sana'a after the airport got hastily repaired, as the two aircraft carrying out flights from Sana'a were undamaged. Today however, one of those leased aircraft got destroyed by Israel in Sana'a. It's likely that the owner of the second leased aircraft has forbidden/grounded it from flying to Sana'a, fearing that would be destroyed as well. Thus, the airport cannot function unless Yemenia is prepared to send aircraft that they own to Sana'a, or work out new lease agreements for more planes with an owner prepared to risk their aircraft getting blown up by Israel.

The previous Sana'a International Airport reopening seemed more like a media stunt than anything else, with aircraft taking off from a hastily fixed runway (with the wreckage of destroyed aircraft visible in the background) and a makeshift terminal that looked like a local market. I didn't post about this reopening because I always feared that it would end this way, with Israel blowing up a recently used plane on the tarmac, given that this is a countervalue strike exchange and that's Israel's modus operandi at this point. I didn't want to be a downer or pessimist.

All this is to say that yes it's effective economic warfare by Ansarallah in Yemen against Israel, but it comes at the cost of committing to a countervalue strike exchange where the Israeli enemy can always inflict a high amount of damage.

Sorry for the infodump, this was supposed to be a short reply, believe it or not. But the information is needed to understand why the Sana'a airport is closed after today's airstrikes, but was reopened within a few days after the previous airstrikes.

Israel just carried out airstikes on Yemen, in Sana'a International Airport, destroying a Yemenia Airlines Airbus A320-200 half an hour after landing.

Yemenia has a fleet of four of these aircraft in active service (now three), two from 2011, and two that they've leased in 2023. The leased aircraft fly out of Sana'a, while the aircraft that they own themselves fly out of Aden. A previous Israeli airstrike this month heavily damaged the airport and it's terminal, and destroyed three aircraft, their sole Airbus A330-200, a Boeing 727, and an Ilyushin Il-76. It was initially thought these three aircraft were A-320s before the images were released. Ansarallah/the Houthis in Yemen reopened the airport by patching up the runway and temporarily constructing a makeshift terminal. Given the state of the temporarily reopened terminal and runway (the wreckage of the destroyed aircraft was still visible in the background), it was questionable just how the functional the airport was, though it was enough for the one or two flights a day to Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Penn Jillette is old Reddit personified, Adam Conover is new Reddit personified. That's all it is really.

Israel don't have the conventional munitions launched from aircraft to do deep damage to Iran's underground facilities, which is why Netanyahu was talking about commando raids and so forth. Israel fundamentally lack this capability. They could carry out a weeks long campaign repeatedly bombing tunnel entrances and attempts to rebuild them making operations difficult, but that's different from destroying the facility itself.

As for what could be done, even though it's unlikely:

On the conventional front, what Israel could do is take a page from South Korea's latest ballistic missile, and rig up one of their Jericho III ICBMs with a very large conventional bunker buster warhead and use it over the much shorter range towards Iran. The South Korean Hyunmoo-5 is a 300-3000km range, 36 ton two stage solid fueled ballistic missile (the same size and weight as a Minuteman III ICBM) with an 8-9 ton "bunker buster' warhead that can penetrate over 100 meters.

On the nuclear front, a very low yield "bunker buster" warhead delivered by a Golden Horizon air launched, maneuvering re entry vehicle capable ballistic missile, could be a tempting option for Israeli commanders. The planned, but eventually cancelled, W-86 nuclear Earth Penetrating Warhead (EPW) for the Pershing-II could penetrate 60m of soil before exploding and had a 1 kiloton, or even sub 1 kiloton, yeild. This low yield, and underground detonation with little (or no) radiation and limited fallout effects might lower the nuclear threshold, especially when striking a nuclear facility where some level of radiation leakage is to be expected. Military leaders might be encouraged to use the weapon, whereas they would be reluctant to use the larger yield nuclear weapons.

Another option would be a symbolic strike campaign at a nuclear site where the air defences are in a weakened state, such as Natanz. Damage would be minimal to none, but the purpose would be essentially saying that Israel can strike here.

I don't think Israel will go it alone on a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities however, options are too limited and they'd want US support for a protracted engagement. If anything, the option of symbolic strikes on Natanz is the most likely if Israel does decide to act.

The difference between Iran and Yemen is Iran has a more developed economy and military, and everyone knows where the key sites are located, key countervalue and counterforce targets, the nuclear facilities and missile cities, air defence sites and military bases and so forth. Yemen on the other hand is one of the poorest countries in the world, and aside from a few key well known countervalue targets like airports and seaports, and counterforce targets like the Amran tunnels, which the US and Israel did bomb extensively, there's very little intelligence on exactly where everything is. After that, it becomes a very expensive game of whack a mole. Trying to stop the launch of solid fueled ballistic missiles which can be wheeled out of a tunnel, tent or building anywhere in Yemen and fired in minutes is not feasible, it's just SCUD hunt 2.0. However Iran is also not prepared to fight like Yemen or endure what the Yemeni people have endured. Iran will stop fighting long before that. Iran has a lot more to lose than Yemen has.

There will be no preventing Operation True Promise III if Israel attack Iran, it would have to be weighed in any potential calculations. If Iran chooses countervalue targets as part of such an operation, the result would be devastating for Israel and Israel would likely respond in kind with countervalue strikes, instead of just strikes on nuclear facilities.

As for where Israel is currently, I don't think I can sugarcoat it. Hezbollah still hasn't carried out any military operations in months, even after the expiration of the ceasefire in Lebanon and Israel launching Gideon's Chariots. Syria is gone, led by ex AQ Al Jolani. The resistance operations carried out by Hamas, while brave, are not near what is needed to push back on Israel given the extent of what is planned under Gideon's Chariots. I think over two thirds to three quarters of Gaza is currently under IDF/IOF evacuation orders and Israel (with US PMCs) are the sole distributors of aid. The situation is bleak, Rafah essentially no longer exists anymore. I think this is why we see so much criticism of Israel from Europe, because now that they know the end result of Israel taking over Gaza is inevitable, they are free to criticize and speak as it won't change anything, in typical European virtue signalling and uselessness.

Haven't seen any evidence of that. Pakistan claimed to hit the 96L6E “Cheese Board” early warning C band (500MHz to 1000Mhz) radar at Adampur Airbase, using CM-400AKG Air Launched Ballistic Missiles (ALBMs), with their passive radar seekers modified for the anti radiation mission. This radar can be mounted on a wheeled chassis, or on an elevated observation mast that gets towed around for better low altitude coverage.

Satellite imagery showed some movement at Adampur, but no signs of explosions at previous radar sites. India admitted to minor damage at the base, but said that the S-400 system was intact. So it looks like the S-400 survived unscathed, but failed to intercept all projectiles. All in all neither system performed great, but the S-400 did outperform the HQ-9. The ALBM threat to these systems, US, European, Russian or Chinese is very real, even ground launched ballistic missiles like ATACMS have destroyed components of the S-400 system before. To understand this, we must look at the missiles used.

The primary anti ballistic missile for the S-400 is the 9M96 and 9M96E2 missile, a Russian equivalent to the Patriot PAC-3 MSE. A kinetic hit to kill interceptor with a thrust vector control altitude control system (ACS). Think of these missiles as mini Talon missiles from the THAAD system, with a much lower maximum altitude. (20-35km vs 150km). These missiles, like Patriot PAC-3 MSE, are considerably smaller than the blast fragmentation missiles for aerodynamic targets, as seen in the below photographs. Here three 9M96 missiles take up the same space as one blast fragmentation missile.

Patriot adopts a similar solution for a combined loadout, with the smaller PAC 3 missiles taking up less space than the PAC 2:

The problem with these combined loadouts is that magazine capacity is compromised between engaging aerodynamic and ballistic targets. The Russian solution to this is the S-350, an air defence system that just uses the 9M96 missile. South Korea has it's own version of this. The US solution is a Patriot battery armed just with PAC 3. Think of these systems as mini THAAD, just for engaging shorter range ballistic missiles, they can engage aerodynamic targets, but it's not their primary mission. One S-350 launcher can carry 12 9M96 missiles:

Same for this Patriot launcher exclusively with PAC 3 missiles:

Theoretically an S-400 can also be kitted out just with 9M96 missiles:

But ultimately S-400 (initially named S-300 PMU-3) and Patriot were primarily built around engaging aerodynamic targets, their blast fragmentation missiles can engage ballistic targets, but the results are suboptimal. The kinetic hit to kill interceptors were added afterwards to improve ballistic missile interception, but there are still compromises in magazine capacity and in the sensor chain for engaging ballistic targets, especially modern ballistic missiles that can do pull up manoeuvres and so forth. The Soviet Union and Russia nowdays has S-300V, a system built around terminal interception of ballistic missiles and low altitude cruise missiles, using bespoke radars, massive interceptors with a 150kg blast fragmentation warhead to intercept ballistic missiles. But this system is even more expensive than S-400. Some S-400 batteries in Russia have been adapted to use the modernised missiles from S-300V4/S-500 to further improve anti ballistic missile capabilities. Also Russia seems to have production issues with the 9M96 missiles, just look at all the public photographs of the S-400, how many have 9M96 missiles pictured? How many S-350 batteries exist? Russia placed an order for a total of 12 S-350 batteries, for 144 launchers and and 1728 missiles, between 2018-2027. That's around 170 missiles a year, or at best 250 a year if deliveries started in 2021, and only half of this order has been delivered. The USA produces 500-650 PAC 3 missiles a year.

We're now back to the same position we were in at the end of 2024. Russia chooses to escalate the conflict via large scale air raids, NATO vows to respond by giving Ukraine access to long range weapons that can hit Russia within it's internationally recognised borders. (The German president said that there are no longer any range restrictions on the type of weapons that Ukraine can get, from both the United States and Europe).