They have to do something, large scale drone attacks are a good way to do that without putting a bunch of your very limited troops at risk. Plus this is an awkward time for oil generally, probably won't be as easy to find alternate sources when a hundred other countries want some too.

Admittedly I don't think they really have a path to victory here, but if they ever decide to do negotiations, the threat of large drone attacks like this gives them a little more leverage.

They already had the photo op in Versailles yesterday, maybe that was good enough?

Pentagon AI chief: Musk’s Grok chatbot used to launch thousands of missiles at Iran

The Pentagon artificial intelligence chief on Monday said Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot is tantamount to national security in a sworn statement that noted xAI’s technology has been used throughout the Iran war.

Cameron Stanley, the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, wrote that the chatbot “enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury, a testament to the greatly increased operational efficiency made possible by the Grok Gov Model.”

“Furthermore, it has tailored functionality to support military planning workflows, report synthesis and generation, predictive analytics for logistics and sustainment, red-teaming analysis of adversary positioning, personnel management, and medical supply lines,” Stanley wrote. “The Grok Gov Model offers features unique to XAI that are found in no other frontier AI model,” he added

Almost every Ace Combat game has a mission where you have to fly in a canyon to avoid enemy radar. They don't make you do it in a F-5!

Also, shout-out to the flight sim youtuber who correctly predicted how like 80% of this went a month ago. Incredible amount of skill required for something like this

Can't help but wish they held him over the coals a little longer but eh

Was watching the news with my dad and he said the leak was fake because it would mean America lost and Trump would never agree to that

We were flying at an extremely, extremely low altitude.

From a flight-standard perspective, the standard training altitude is around 500 feet, but we were below 50 feet.

We knew that Patriot systems were deployed in the area, and that this base had multi-layered air defense. Given Kuwait’s cooperation, they were protecting this base, and scrambled F-18s were monitoring it.

Even though we knew AWACS aircraft were up there and surveillance/listening sites were active, the entire flight was conducted under complete radio silence.

I should mention here that there were 2-3 ships, we were flying so low that we passed between 2 ships, and their decks were higher than us. In other words, the sailors were looking down at us from the deck.

holy shit

where did this first quote come from, "internal authoritarianism" is libshit but not in either of your 2 links

Twitter post by the people that wrote the article. I didn't save it but it was basically just the first bit I quoted plus a link to the article.

After years in the PSL leadership, Walter Smolarek has resigned and published a devastating tell-all letter alleging internal authoritarianism, sabotage of local organizing efforts, and even the development of an AI-powered system to monitor members.

A particularly alarming claim in Smolarek’s letter alleges that PSL is now spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ software developers to build an A.I.-powered secret police system with the objective of spying on members of every PSL branch in the country. Its stated purpose is to compile reports that the national leadership will use to “ensure compliance with national directives.” He says members caught reading Jacobin or taking an organizing class are treated as security breaches. According to Smolarek, this comes at a time when the organization refuses to fund political or leadership education initiatives.

Article on the resignation

Resignation letter (Google doc)

It is not immediately clear if there are any injuries

it was difficult to make out any distinct parts of the wreckage

ok