NCD these days is a mixed hodgepodge of NATO propaganda, US defense industry propaganda, laughing at wacky military shenanigans around the world, and pornographic degeneracy involving military aircraft and other vehicles.
NCD started as a spin off from Credible Defense, which is a community where all articles have to be well sourced, arguments well reasoned, and citations are required. NCD has exactly none of those things.
Trump ordered the assassination of the top IRGC general when he was in office the last time. Biden has done nothing similar with Iran. To Iran, that’s a big difference in US foreign policy.
So seems like Iran intends this to be a one and done response for everything Israel has done the last few months.
i.e. “Please don’t escalate this any further. We prefer this level of escalation and no more.”
122.75 is assigned for air-to-air communications.
In some ways that’s good: you don’t want someone shouting about “YOU’RE ON GUARD”. On the other hand, in this situation you want to choose a frequency that your target is actually monitoring, and guard may fit that bill better.
None of the current ICBM platforms were designed for missile defense. Missile defense simply did not exist at the time.
Sentinel is busting its budget because it’s renovating and rebuilding all of the ground segments: all of those decrepit silos and computer systems. It’s still money well spent in my opinion.
Missile guidance is not a computationally hard problem, and it hasn’t changed much since the 50s. Terminal missile defense is a fantastically hard problem, and wasn’t mastered until the last decade or two. And the current generation missile defense capabilities still haven’t all been demonstrated in combat.
Having said that, I would generally expect NATO’s missiles to work as advertised in a hot war. And I would plan for Russia’s missiles to be somewhat less effective than they advertise, but still a credible threat.
I’m just repeating what happened or what the plan was the last couple of go arounds, with Napoleon and Hitler.
Napoleon did occupy Moscow, but it didn’t help him very much.
Hitler was turned back just short of Moscow, but the Russian government had all sorts of continuity plans that involved moving further east. Entire factories were uprooted and shipped into the Urals.
Even with nuclear annihilation, NATO could still get to Moscow in a three day operation. It’s just a question of which cities back home are still standing.
Moscow is not the big prize you might think it is. Russia can just retreat hundreds of kilometers further east and carry on.
NATO can do the thunder run, but they are not equipped to win a massive land war in Asia. You really gotta listen to the Sicilian from Princess Bride on this one.
Any type of parole has to be at least marginally less dangerous for the hostage than execution.
If you don’t have the resources to provide for your POWs, the correct solution is parole, not execution.
But in cases of Israelis who also served in the IDF, the rational choice is to kill them instead of giving the IDF a propaganda win.
This is a war crime. You can’t execute POWs just because the enemy is getting close to the POW camp.
If you think you want to be more prepared for a nearer-peer conflict, you might want to get your B2 crews some real combat sorties. Kind of like a college football rent-a-win game before the conference season starts.
It’s a risk because the Spirits are basically capital ships of the air, but it may be a worthwhile trade-off.