2026 Israeli–United States strikes on Iran and elsewhere in region - News and Discussion

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“Air Power is wholly ineffective against a sufficiently prepared adversary. And to come back to your question regarding the PLA. How is the USAF supposed to contest the PLAAF and PLA IADS when they cannot even inflict sufficient damage on an adversary with virtually no air force?”

Is this bait?
 
EmoBirb said:
It has already become evident that it would be a walk in the park for the PLA as soon as it became evident this year that the US military at large is all show and no go. Losing most of their bases in the middle east, several high value or outright irreplaceable assets and being unable to conduct carrier ops without grave mishaps and issues against a far less sophisticated and far less numerously equipped fighting force.
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Are you not taking into account that the Chinese military can also be quoted *all show no go* when the time for invasion finally comes? By whatever metric you are using for that quote.

Plus U.S. would be on the defensive in Taiwan conflict, unlike in Iran war where U.S. military is on the offensive & has inflicted multitude more damage to Iran than vice-versa, what is holding up U.S. victory is underestimation of how much pain Iran can handle and still doesn't surrender or collapse, along with its ability to block Strait of Hormuz & how vulnerable gulf states are.
 
Hull down said:
Air supremacy wins wars. Thats the way it will always be, until a larger transition to space dominance occurs
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Even in the past but especially In the current age you can bypass air-supremacy or supress it not any-where close to completely BUT to a very significant extent using ground launched drones & missiles.
 
My point is, these adversaries have studied the US tactics for decades and they are largely unchanged…it seems. Vietnam, Afghanistan were largely failures due to a resilient home team and an asymmetric response. A large hammer doesn’t work when a scalpel is needed. This is why spec-op teams are much more efficient, such as Venezuela. But even then, the long term plans doesn’t seem to outlast a resilient population.

Ukraine and Iran are not fighting force on force. Iran would be a disaster on the ground now that the large scale airstrikes have concluded. Why do they seemingly have so many missiles getting into Israel? Is that the outcome of a incompetent and defeated force?
 
Agreed. And to contradict myself a bit, I know the point is to stay a step ahead of those who wish to develop their own air superiority. In recent and past conflicts, it hasn’t mattered much. Future conflicts may not remain in this current realm. We’ll have to see how that plays out, I suppose.
 
mokahete said:
Are you not taking into account that the Chinese military can also be quoted *all show no go* when the time for invasion finally comes? By whatever metric you are using for that quote.

Plus U.S. would be on the defensive in Taiwan conflict, unlike in Iran war where U.S. military is on the offensive & has inflicted multitude more damage to Iran than vice-versa, what is holding up U.S. victory is underestimation of how much pain Iran can handle and still doesn't surrender or collapse, along with its ability to block Strait of Hormuz & how vulnerable gulf states are.
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Of course that's a possibility. Although it's much less likely because unlike the US the Chinese have invested their resources into what matters, which isn't obsolete bombers and maintaining forever platforms of questionable viability. They invested into drones, missiles, IADS that includes short, medium, long range and ballistic missile defense (as compared to the US basically having near zero SHORAD, because 'muh Air superiority' will 110% prevent anyone from shooting at you...)

The US is looking like clowns because they brought a conventional fighting force to an unconventional theater. They drop bombs and bombs and bombs and somehow all they end up doing is killing schoolgirls. The missiles and drones are flying ultimately largely unfazed. That one of their carriers almost burned down or that their AWACS and tankers are just parked in the open to get blown to bits is just the cherry on top born out of a weird sense of invincibility (drinking their own kool aid). The PLA could fall for similar pitfalls, but: Taiwan lacks the strategic depth of Iran, the taiwanese Military is riddled with PRC spies, the taiwanese as people are much softer than the Iranians, the Chinese and Taiwanese are ethnically very close if not in large parts identical, compared to the Iranian people fending of, in their eyes, foreign invaders from the US and Ivdea. Add to that the fact that neither the entire air force, nor the entire USN could be deployed and you already have the Chinese at a major advantage. Now look at how the USN is deadly afraid to enter the strait of Hormuz. And you think they would operate anywhere near Taiwan against the PLAN, PLARF and PLAAF? All of which directly able to intervene from the mainland? It's all a long way of saying that the entire PLA, aka arguably the largest missile force and the actually largest Navy by number of ships would go up against small Island nation inhabited by more complacent people who would have to rely on a fraction of the US Military to protect them. A force which has showcased to the entire world that they're unable to protect their own assets, the assets and vital energy infrastructure of their allies and inability to open a blockade by a far less capable and sophisticated force. Meanwhile China could let endless streams of missiles and drones rain down on Taiwan while completely blockading it. After that any landing operation can commence if they felt like it.

The ROC must be sweating, the PRC must be laughing and the USA still has to figure out how to finally leave the sand box after 30 years. INDOPACOM is not looking great right now, let's how that is in 10 years from now.

It's kinda hilarious seeing all of the Gulf States getting their vital infrastructure and US military presence reduced to nothing, Israel being turned into a major travel destination for missiles and the US losing assets and bases across the entire region and yet there are still the special bunch that believe the US could beat China in their backyard when they can't even beat an Iran that's been sanctioned since it's inception and was surrounded by innumerable US military presences.
 
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EmoBirb said:
It has already become evident that it would be a walk in the park for the PLA as soon as it became evident this year that the US military at large is all show and no go. Losing most of their bases in the middle east, several high value or outright irreplaceable assets and being unable to conduct carrier ops without grave mishaps and issues against a far less sophisticated and far less numerously equipped fighting force.
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That is a spectacularly bad take.

Bases lost? None. Name the base that the US has abandoned due to damage.

Bases damaged? a number.

High value or irreplaceable assets lost? Two tankers, two AWACS, and one TPY2 (thus far). The only one of those that is a pain in the butt to replace is the TPY2, and I think the US has demonstrated Aegis feeding data to THAAD before. So we could stuff a Burke into the Black Sea or eastern Med by Syria for coverage in a pinch.

"Carrier ops without mishaps"? My dude, fires happen. If they happen in the wrong spaces, they get bad. Because there's no space to run, and bunkrooms are parked in places that are right next to places that like to catch on fire if you let them. I'm just amazed that they haven't also had a crash while landing. Those can get really bad, if the crashing plane hits the deck park.

The typical house fire in the US is caused by hot dryer lint igniting and then spreading elsewhere. Clean your lint filters, please!!!



Not James Stockdale said:
Even if you believe that this war is going well for the Iranians, all it says about the China fight is that the Taiwanese could be more resilient than expected. The Chinese have to execute a D-Day sized amphibious operation against any adversary with a stronger A2/AD capability than anything the Germans had in Normandy. That would be extremely difficult for a military with no large-scale combat experience in the last 50 years even if they weren't going to have the world's largest air force and Navy lined up against them. If there's anywhere that air superiority matters, it's over the ocean, and there's no such thing as an amphibious warfare submarine.
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Yet. I'm sure someone is planning on building a couple.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Bases lost? None. Name the base that the US has abandoned due to damage.

Bases damaged? a number.

High value or irreplaceable assets lost? Two tankers, two AWACS, and one TPY2 (thus far). The only one of those that is a pain in the butt to replace is the TPY2, and I think the US has demonstrated Aegis feeding data to THAAD before. So we could stuff a Burke into the Black Sea or eastern Med by Syria for coverage in a pinch.

"Carrier ops without mishaps"? My dude, fires happen. If they happen in the wrong spaces, they get bad. Because there's no space to run, and bunkrooms are parked in places that are right next to places that like to catch on fire if you let them. I'm just amazed that they haven't also had a crash while landing. Those can get really bad, if the crashing plane hits the deck park.
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Bases lost? On paper none, because who in their right mind would admit that anyway.

Bases "lost" (as in unusable for operations) in reality?
https://archive.ph/E8LkF
Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage. Six U.S. service members were killed in a strike on Port Shuaiba that destroyed an Army tactical operations center. Iranian drones and missiles also targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base, damaging aircraft structures and injuring personnel, and Camp Buehring, damaging maintenance and fuel facilities.
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That was over a week ago, by now it's even worse.

I suppose the AN/FPS 132 wasn't a high value asset? And I suppose KC-135 and E-3 are still in production to offset the losses of the several airframes that were damaged beyond repair?

Fires happen? Lol. They surely shouldn't happen on a warship, especially not of that scale. Plumbing failing, fire breaking out either due to negligence or intentionally after a several month overstretched deployment putting the carrier out of action for most likely more than a year at best. That's the state of the USN in 2026? Where are the escorts through the Strait of Hormuz they at one point proposed?

This is the essence of all show and no go. Everything is theoretical and sounds nice in power points and spreadsheets presented to shareholders and officials, but the practice falls apart quickly. Embarassing.
 
Emobird just happens to have a realistic and unbiased view of what might actually be reality. Don’t let patriotism blind you. Psyops are active and propaganda works both ways. HR5736. Take this into consideration and then look how the Commander and Chief acts and speaks. The US is not dominanting this one.
 
Due to toxic spills of discussions about this topic into other forum topics, this is no longer a news-only topic.

Be warned, you will likely find some highly questionable analysis by armchair experts with zero real world knowledge. If this offends, please ignore this topic.
 

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ComradeVortex said:
More pictures.
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I wonder if the location can be ascertained by geolocation experts based on that hill in the backround. As always, iranian sources claim they shot it down over Iran, while western posters say all kinds of other things, it's one of those lost in Kuwait last month, it's a crash site in the US etc.
 
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-n...-news-trump-israel-strait-of-hormuz-missiles/
Iran struck a water desalination and power plant in Kuwait hours after hitting an oil refinery.

Tehran launched strikes on the Gulf state’s energy infrastructure after the US attacked Iranian civilian infrastructure on Friday.

Donald Trump boasted about destroying bridges outside Tehran and threatened to bomb power plants next.

Kuwait relies on desalination, which removes salt from seawater, for 90 per cent of its drinking water. Iran also targeted a desalination plant in the Gulf state on Monday.

The Kuwait army said its air defences were attempting to intercept “hostile missile and drone attacks” on Friday.

Also on Friday, Iran launched strikes on Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

The Gulf conflict has already sent oil prices well above $100 a barrel, with Brent crude reaching $141 on Thursday.
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