Hey @GrainEater, should probably pin this, or edit the original post to include the link.

According to various analysts, the US will likely transfer AA batteries and radars from East Asia to reinforce their force attacking Iran.

Even then, I don’t expect China to invade Taiwan:

1. China has repeatedly demonstrated that it prefers to sit back and let things take their course without overt interference, and certainly without flexing its military might.

2. China expects Taiwan to come back to the fold through natural and peaceful processes. Right now the disintegration of the US military, political and global system are working out for China just as they are.

3. China’s industrial capabilities have surpassed those of the US, and the US is still focused on producing “artisanal” systems, i.e. high-tech, over-designed, hard-to-produce, expensive hardware.

4. Still, China’s weapons systems are largely untested in combat conditions. I’m pretty sure this is something the Chinese supreme command is bearing in mind when it comes to confronting the US. You can say what you will about the US systems, but at least they’ve been using them non-stop in combat conditions for the past 25 years.

5. Also, do not forget that the military failure of the US is a specifically anti-missile capability failure. Perhaps a ground warfare capability failure too, considering the Ukraine war. That is not enough of an assurance that a war between US and China will be won by China with minimal or acceptable losses. Particularly since such a war will be prosecuted by the US using its “strong” assets, which is its naval, air and nuclear forces.

However, having said all that, the removal of systems from East Asia in favour of West Asia is probably going to create a lot of friction within the US military command structure. And it will certainly make East Asian allies/vassals, who heavily rely on US production (e.g. South Korea, Japan) to seriously reconsider their relationship with the US.

Patriots are running low. Estimated that 1600 Patriot missiles have been used so far by US, Israel and Gulf states to repel Iranian strikes, with an annual production of 600 per year.

The Iran war has triggered a shortage of missiles for Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems, Handelsblatt quotes military sources as saying.

It said the Persian Gulf countries alone spent about 800 missiles in the early days of the conflict. The US and Israel spent “at least” the same number. Handelsblatt says that stocks of missiles for Patriot are a top secret, while the Americans emphasize they have enough ammunition. However, the paper says experts are increasingly doubtful about this.

On top of the Persian Gulf states, Ukraine also needs missiles for Patriots, but their production capacity is limited. Lockheed Martin has tripled their output over the past three years, but this is only 600 missiles per year. In January, it promised to increase the capacity to 2,000 rockets a year from 2026.

The production of missiles for Germany will only start at the end of the year with deliveries scheduled for the beginning of 2027.

https://tass.com/world/2097275

That’s understandable. Should have made it more clear I was just doing napkin math with best case scenario for West vs worst case scenario for Iran.

Wasnvt aware of united24. They were just giving a sum that looked average by other accounts.

It’s mostly estimates from what countries that get hit report. There’s a few different numbers floating around. I went with the most average of them (for missiles) : https://united24media.com/latest-news/irans-long-range-missiles-could-put-european-capitals-within-reach-experts-warns-16408

With drones it’s a bit more difficult, as numbers range very wildly. I chose to believe Bahrain, that they got hit by 700 drones in 2 days and extrapolated 2000 per day everywhere from that. (Edit: Sorry, I extrapolated 2000 based on the ratio of missiles/drones used in Bahrain).

According to the best estimates, the US makes about 200-400 Patriots per year. Realistically, they probably make about half that, considering that statistics are inflated by announcements like “we aim to increase production by this much at the end of the year”, and then when somebody checks up on that, the production numbers actually drop lower than before. At any rate, the Patriot is the most produced surface-to-air interceptor. After that they make all these other high-tech interceptors at really low numbers (THAADS come out to about 35 a year!).

So in total, let’s say the US builds about 500 ground-to-air interceptors a year.

Let’s add to this another 500 air-to-air plane-launched interceptors a year (no data, just being generous as it is said these numbers are actually even lower than the Patriots)

By US estimates, Iran can produce 100 missiles per month, and probably (on its own, without factoring in Russia and China) 5000 drone per month. Iran probably has about 10 000 ballistic missiles and 100 000 drones. Actually Iran probably has way more ballistic missiles than that, since their armament efforts have been largely hidden from Western intelligence. The US lowballs their estimates, because they assume Iran has destroyed something like 10 000 missiles due to old age, or as a result of the deal with Obama.

Iran fires about around 2000 drones and 300 ballistic missiles per day. If that number seems low to you due to the number of hits shown on various videos, consider that most modern Iranian missiles have cluster warheads, so each missile fired is more like 4-10 missiles hitting the ground. Also some Shahed types actually carry quite a decent load, so their explosions can be mistaken as missiles too.

Israel uses on average 2 interceptors to shoot down 1 drone and 4 interceptors to shoot down 1 missile. We can assume the Gulf States use at least this much as well. They likely use more because their forces are extremely inexperienced and their regimes are extremely casualty-averse. But let’s be generous and use Israel’s ratios as a general rule.

This means that the Epstein Coalition requires about 2000 x 2 + 300 x 4 = 4000 + 600 = 4600 interceptors per day!!!

In one day, they eat 4 years worth of production of interceptors

On the other hand, even if Iran stopped producing all munitions right now, it could still keep going at this rate of fire for another 50 days to run out of drones, and 35 days to run out of missiles. The Epstein Coalition can probably stretch it up the weekend.

Use air to pressurize the clogged-up sewage pipes of the Gerald Ford. Plenty of ammunition there.

I think he brings realists for viewership. When he is alone he does refer a lot to Marxist theory and talking points.

Try Danny Haiphong too. Hr brings conservatives on sometimed, but he’s a communist.

Apparently locals are claiming on social media that Americans have died in the wreckage.

I think they only admit whatever has already been leaked by other sources. The 6 casualties they admit to are all from Bahrain apparently, and they only announced those after Bahrain did. Same with the 3 shot aircraft. At first there was photo of one, and they admitted one. Then after the video of the second they admitted a second. Then finally they admitted a third (though I haven’t seen a video of that, just the pilot picture)

Cypriot leadership has been feckless on this since the 1960s. And especially now that the government has been pro-Israeli for the last 15 years

They’ve been leasing their bases to the Americans for a while now. They used them to station interceptors for True Promise 1, 2 and 3. They used it as a transit station for Israeli arms deliveries during the Gaza slaughter, as well as a command post. They let the Americans use it as a striking and refueling base for the first bombing on Iran a few months ago.

An Iranian strike just occured in Cyprus, targeting the British airforce military base at Akrotiri (to the south of the island). At noon yesterday (about 12 hours ago), Iran fired a missile presumably targeting the base, but it was intercepted by Israeli anti-missiles (https://www.sigmalive.com/news/international/1305344/londino-iraniki-pyrauloi-ektokseutikan-pros-tin-kateuthinsi-bb-stin-kypro).

Just now (about 1 hour ago), 2 missiles hit the base and 1 got intercepted (https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/cyprus-explosion-video-what-happened-at-raf-akrotiri-base-today-uk-troops-get-security-alert-101772405590532.html).

Someone I personally know on the ground has just confirmed the latest attack.

Iran, don’t back down this time. Destroy the zionist entity. No matter how many ceasefires you sign, they’ll never stop killing your people.

I have no idea what you are trying to say

We don’t like this group = how dare you humanize them? They are vile evil terrorists

We like this group = time to be unbiased

I could easily use that bit to describe Palestinian freedom fighters. And it would be a whole lot more justified too.

Indeed!

Old Star Trek is my usual therapy.

Also, not ML, but if you want to read an uplifting badass story about mentally broken people kicking butts, I can’t recommend the Stormlight Archive enough.

The key is to always give the capitalists everything they want.