It turns out the IOF scum who offed himself was bragging about bulldozing Palestinian homes a few months ago:
https://xcancel.com/malsaafin/status/1848471577135853978
news
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
Gotta love when the trash takes itself out.
I read this recent think tank report on the German arms industry viz a viz Russia's
The exec summary and chapter 2 is worth reading, otherwise the main takeaways are that Clausewitz was right about industrial war and attrition, ukraine is getting rinsed, nato is not prepared for industrial war. A few other specifics:
-
the authors estimate that the Russian military industrial complex can build the equipment of the current entire German army about 3 times a year
-
on interception of missiles: Sample interception rates for commonly used Russian missiles in 2024: 50% for the older Kalibr subsonic cruise missiles, 22% for modern subsonic cruise missiles (e.g. Kh-69), 4% for modern ballistic missiles (e.g. Iskander-M), 0.6% for S-300/400 supersonic long-range SAM, and 0.55% for the Kh-22 supersonic anti-ship missile. Data on interception rates of hypersonic missiles is scarce: Ukraine claims a 25% interception rate for hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles, but Ukrainian sources also indicate such interceptions require salvo firing all 32 launchers in a US-style Patriot battery to have any chance to shoot down a single hypersonic missile. By comparison, German Patriot batteries have 16 launchers, and Germany has 72 launchers in total.
-
the authors estimate that any slowdown of tank build out rate due to running out of older Soviet era chassis won't begin until 2026 earliest
Democratization of advanced strike abilities via proliferation of drone and missile technology is a big deal. It is so much more expensive to defend against these munitions than attack with them. The significance of current world wars are akin to Agincourt, with missiles and drones playing the role of the long bow
running out of older Soviet era chassis
It struck me recently that what's implied by the use of "Soviet era" and the reality are two different things
Like even though the USSR collapsed in 1991, I feel that the use of "Soviet era" always implies to people some out of date clunky 1960s tech, and fails to properly contextualize that basically everything the west has sent to Ukraine has also been "Soviet era". The M1 Abrams, Leopard 1, the F-16, all of these are 1960s-1980s, they're as old as the "Soviet era" stuff. Hell most countries haven't adopted anything new since the early 2000s
It would be like calling US equipment "Gulf War era" or something, it's fucking meaningless
Minor point, but s300-400 is likely ukrainians putting lipstick on a pig of failed interceptions. Lets use expensive interceptors with shit load to strike close targets. And they are completely invisible to interception systems as well?
or much simpler explanation: its failures of ukraine aa systems to self-explode in air
I remember reading speculation (maybe a year and a half ago?) that ukraine had disabled the self destruct features on their interceptors because russian cruise missiles had some kind of EW support that was prematurely detonating them before reaching their target
That's why they kept flying into apartment buildings and exploding after totally failing to hit anything
Brazilian Liberal Media has made some claims that the Lula Government will be against the inclusion of Venezuela into BRICS. Considering that all joinings require a consensus on the part of member countries, this would be a spanner in the works. I don't know if this is true or not, but it doesn't actually strike me as surprising. The Brazilian Government has a difficult relationship with Venezuela since Cháves.
On the one hand, there's the electoral issue. We are marching towards the second round of the municipal elections and any support for Venezuela galvanizes the right and the far right which are the majority of the country.
But on the other we do have the leaked CIA cables from way back when that claimed Lula had a difficult personal relationship with Hugo Cháves. Behind closed doors, the Venezuelan Government was considered difficult to influence or pin down, and a difficult partner to be had. What some might claim is a sign of sovereignty, others in the Brazilian side would say is a difficulty in cooperating in a time of american hegemony. As such, Brazil's government feels a bit miffed with the way their brokered deals during the electoral crisis in Venezuela were more or less discarded.
I guess we'll see the truth of things when during the next couple of days.
Same media outlet just reported on the main foreign policy guy for Brazil, Celso Amorim, who was talking about the strategic importance and cost of certain countries joining BRICS or not. Seems he was clear cut on the value of Turkey, while being opposed to Nicaragua's entry (due to the whole Vatican thing a while back).
However, while the headline claims that 'Celso Amorim says he's against Venezuela's entry', the actual article reads: 'the former chancellor did not clarify if, in that specific moment, he meant it [a comment on some countries being worth less to the bloc] towards Venezuela specifically'.
Brazil as a country exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum. That trade relationship is specific to BrazilxUSA trade and is the reason why we are in a trade deficit with the americans. Considering that getting Venezuela in is more of a Russia/China ideal, I can't imagine that opposing their entry is anything more than optics at this point.
Ok since it's looking as if Israel are in their final preparations for their attack against Iran, I will be posting the leaked US spy documents on Israel's preparations, along with trying to make sense of what they mean. This is going to be a long and detailed post (lots of potentially terrifying details), so I'll be completing it inside the spoiler tag below.
The documents themselves, and what does this potentially mean?
I'll start by just posting the two military documents, they are written in a lot of military jargon that I'll try and explain to the best of my ability, I have no real expert knowledge, but I'll do my best. Feel free to provide any corrections where you see fit, I apologise in advance for any errors.
In short, preparations for a large attack on Iran have been taking place at Hatserim airfield, involving loading Air Launched Ballistic Missiles (ALBM) onto at least six F-15I (Israeli version of the F-15E Strike Eagle) aircraft at the base, likely of type "Golden Horizon", but not certainly. A minimum of 56 ALBMs have been taken out of storage so far by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in total at all air bases. 40 of type "Rocks" and 16 of type "Golden Horizon". More on that later. ALBMs being taken out of storage and loaded onto aircraft was also spotted at Ramat David airfield and Ramon airfield.
Israel have also been spying on Iran, within Iran itself, using some sort of stealth UAV of type "RA-01", operating out of a hangar at Ramon airfield. More on that later.
Israel also conducted a large scale practice exercise for their attack on Iran, involving one AWACS aircraft and three aerial refueling aircraft. The AWACS and refueling force is of a similar size to that which was used to conduct long range strikes on Yemen during September. No word on the size of the fighter aircraft force component though.
Israeli air defense systems in Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 continue to be deployed, along with the Navy being deployed.
Lastly, Israel likely has deployed the nuclear armed Jericho II Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBM) in a defensive position since October 1 2024, the date of Iran's retaliatory ballistic missile attack. There is no indication that this is an offensive deployment or that they will be used in the upcoming Israeli attack. But this is as close as we'll get to the US acknowledging the Israeli nuclear arsenal, and shows that nuclear weapons are in play.
What's interesting from these leaked documents, is that they reveal the existence of two weapons systems of which there is no public information on. The Golden Horizon ALBM, and RA-01 stealth ISR UAV.
The RA-01, based on the size of the suspected hangars and intended role, could be a propeller powered flying wing design drone, similar to an RQ 170 but propeller powered. Other suggestions involve an ISR version of the Ibis HA10 High altitude long endurance concept drone, Public research paper here, with the wings fitted on after exiting the hangar as the wingspan would be too large for the hangars at Ramon. It would also explain the US spy report providing details about a technical crew needed to prepare the aircraft after take offs and landings. I'll attach an image below to illustrate this, and yes, it's the highest quality image available. This is really obscure territory here. This UAV concept was designed with stealth and a flight time of over 24 hours in mind, so it's a viable suggestion. The twitter account that initially suggested it also got deleted, which adds some sort of credibility to the theory I guess? It's concerning that Iranian air defences have not been able to detect or engage this UAV type.
As for what this could mean in an Israeli attack, we'll start with the ALBMs. The concept of this is familiar, the most well known ALBM is probably the Russian Kinzhal, an Iskander SRBM converted for an aerial launch. Israel have a similar weapon in the Air LORA, a LORA SRBM converted for aerial launch. The "ROCKS" ALBM is weapon that we do have public information on. It's a weapon with a range estimated to be between 250-300km which gives it stand off capabilities, uses a single Sparrow booster stage (the sparrow series are a series of ALBMs that Israel uses to test it's Arrow and David's Sling air defence systems, they are designed to imitate Iranian ballistic missiles), and uses GPS and inertial guidance, along with an electro optical seeker, or anti radiation seeker. A ROCKS ALBM with an anti radiation seeker was likely used to destroy an Iranian air defence radar that was part of a S300PMU2 missile battery during Israel's April attack. Drones were used to stimulate Iranian air defences into action, giving away their position for the anti radiation missile to home in on their radar. The fact that 40 of these missiles have been deployed is very concerning and could indicate Israeli intentions to carry out a wider scale Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD/DEAD) operation. This is a capability that Israel has already demonstrated against Iran, that Iran failed to stop last time round. We have also seen how effective this attack vector has been against US Patriot air defence systems in Ukraine, when Russia destroyed them with Kinzhals and Iskanders.
There is much speculation on what the "Golden Horizon" ALBM is as there is no public information on it, with many suggesting that it is the internal nsme for the Air LORA ALBM. I disagree, and think that it is likely a multi stage version of a Sparrow ALBM (in particular blue sparrow), readied for actual combat use. Imagery of such a weapon was posted by the IAF online a few weeks ago. It's still up on twitter actually. This would give this weapon a longer range in comparison to ROCKS, in violation of some of the missile treaties Israel publicly says that they follow, which is likely why it's been kept secret. These weapons would give Israel a great stand off capability with their long range, a range of around 2000km potentially. Israeli jets wouldn't even need to leave Israeli airspace to strike Iran. It was also theorised by some that Israel fired a few of these weapons with inert warheads during their strike on Iran in April.
What happens from here really depends on what Israel targets with their ALBMs. If they target Iran's above ground missile facilities, along with very limited strikes on air defence systems, I can see a potential road to de escalation, with Iran likely launching a limited drone or ballistic missile attack in response, similar to the April attack. If Israel carries out a large scale SEAD/DEAD campaign to open up the possibility for a further aerial campaign, and/or tries to strike Iran's underground missile or nuclear facilities, we could be on the verge of all out war. Such an attack would amount to a declaration of war, and Iran's response would likely make their October 1 attack look small in comparison. The resulting escalation ladder of such events could get really tall really quickly. I don't see Israel being able to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles over the medium to long term, which could lead to a US response if Israel is on the end of a large retaliatory strike.
This really seems like Israel's self-destructing. If they do carry out this attack, I assume that Iran would just close the straight of Hormuz and bomb oil production facilities in response too.
I wonder at what point would the US consider Israel more liability than asset too.