Nah THAAD is not the only ballistic missile intercept system used. In Israel, a total of 5 systems were integrated together and used to intercept ballistic re entry vehicles directly. SM-3, Arrow 3, THAAD, Arrow 2, and David's Sling. So THAAD is just one of those 5. The actual price of a THAAD Talon interceptor is 12.7 million, which means 63 THAAD Talon interceptors were used (63*12.7=800.1). Such a number seems realistic given 39 THAAD higher altitude interceptions were caught on video visible from Jordan. That means the other 24 intercepts took place at lower altitudes, THAAD can go as low as 35-40km, and as high as 150km.
Guess the goal from the establishment uniparty is to try split the vote so an establishment democrat running as an independent can win, because there's no way Adams is winning lol. Independent, Democrat, or Republican, Adams is truly in the gutter no matter what.
Guy's giving out precise BDA on public French radio which he can do thanks to his intricate knowledge of the Fordow facility from inspecting it. While a lot of what Grossi says is publicly known (US hit weak points above enrichment halls with massive bombs, centrifuges are very sensitive to vibrations), it's still quite shocking that he just comes out and says all centrifuges are destroyed due to his knowledge of the facility. Explains Iran's animosity towards the IAEA. Who wants to co operate with an agency like this?
IAEA chief Grossi gave an interview on French radio today, link here. What I find most interesting is this statement:
Yes, and the knowledge we have of the facilities and capabilities, for example. I'll give you an example: Fordow, the major underground facility that everyone's talking about. It's almost like a movie script. We've seen the images of the perforations from these high-penetration bombs. Obviously, we can't assess the degree of damage. But given the power of these devices and the technical characteristics of a centrifuge, we already know that these centrifuges are no longer operational, because they are fairly precise machines: there are rotors, the vibrations have completely destroyed them. There couldn't have been any nonsense about significant physical damage. So, we can draw a fairly precise technical conclusion. I know the Fordo facility. It's a network of tunnels where different types of activities took place. I can also tell you that what we saw in the images and analyzed more or less corresponds to the enrichment hall.
So that's all the centrifuges at both Fordow and Natanz gone according to the IAEA. Over 15 000 of them were in active operation, 13 000 at Natanz and 2000 at Fordow, with Fordow being especially costly as the advanced IR-6 centrifuges were located there. So the blast pressure and overpressure through the ventilation shafts directly into the enrichment halls destroyed the centrifuges, according to Grossi. Also pretty clear why Iran no longer want to co operate with the IAEA.
Why are they still using IPS in 2025? You can get cheapo smartphones with high refresh rate OLED displays these days. It's not 2013 anymore when only top of the line android smartphones had portable OLED displays, the technology has matured to a great extent.
Something I missed yesterday, to do with this, the entombment of underground nuclear facilities in Iran. Israeli public broadcaster Kan News is now reporting that there is an unofficial agreement/understanding that Iran can't excavate their underground nuclear facilities, otherwise they'll face US military action. The facilities have to remain entombed, at least for now. Israeli state media source so of course remain highly skeptical, but it does line up with the events of the past few days. It also shows that Israel at the very least is pushing hard to keep these facilities entombed. The only thing Iran have done so far is fill up the two craters at Natanz from the two GBU-57 MOP strikes there with lots of soil. Good idea to prevent any potential radiation leakage.
The US warned Iran to stay away from nuclear sites bombed in recent strikes, to prevent Tehran from recovering enriched uranium possibly buried beneath the rubble.
American and Israeli intelligence are closely monitoring the Fordow and Isfahan facilities, where uranium stockpiles may have been stored prior to the attacks, Kan News reports.
A senior Israeli official told Kan that if Iran attempts to extract the uranium, “it’s up to the US” to decide how to respond.
who knows which others aren't.
I think Iran themselves confirmed most of the deaths of senior leadership quite quickly, so that's the most reliable source in this case.
This was always the play for Netanyahu. If he becomes the prime minister who significantly weakened or eliminated most of Israel's enemies (by any means necessary, including genocide), who is going to charge him in Israel?
AOC+3 and Schumer being the great Palestinian senator is just so ridiculous it's making me laugh
To be honest this is just turning into another partisan split. Democrats and CNN say the strike did nothing. Republicans in the administration and FOX say it was devastating.
Truth is much more complex, there's no way to know exactly what was damaged underground at this stage.
CNN damage leak was actually from the DIA in the US, Israeli sources are actually pretty confident, which is surprising.
MarmiteLover123
joined 2 years ago
Quite a few factual errors in this article.
$800 million on THAAD Talon interceptors, at $12.7 million per Talon, is 63 interceptors. That's not 15-20% of the arsenal. 900 THAAD Talons were manufactured as of February this year. 192 of these were sent to the UAE, the only foreign operator. If you assume another 100+ fired in tests and to intercept ballistic missiles from Yemen, the arsenal was around 600, so only 10-11%.
This cost estimate is an estimate, based of this article. It's an estimate that takes the 39 or so THAAD interceptors seen on video from Jordan and assumes 60% more missiles were used. Here's the source of the actual numbers counted on video from Jordan.
It's not meant or designed to defend against threats like that. THAAD is designed for high altitude interception in the terminal stage, hence the acronym, terminal high altitude air defence. THAAD operates between altitudes of 36-150km. THAAD is designed to be deployed in an integrated air defence network, where other systems such as Patriot PAC 3 MSE, SM-6, and in the case of Israel, Arrow-2 and David's Sling, take care of the threats at lower altitudes, and systems such as SM-3 and Arrow 3 take care of midcourse phase intercepts. THAAD contributes two things in this setup, the niche ability to plug the endo exo atmospheric gap in terminal defence, that 36-150km altitude envelope. The article actually talks about this later, so I have no idea why this is even mentioned. The other contribution is it's TPY/2 radar, significantly more powerful than the radars aboard AEGIS equipped destroyers and ashore systems that fire SM-3 and SM-6 and Israel's Green Pine radars for Arrow 3.
Lasers against ballistic missiles? Unless there's a plan for space based lasers, that's not going to work. The atmosphere is too thick for a ground based laser defence against such high speed and high altitude targets. Laser defence has only just reached operational capability for slow and flying drones and potentially counter rocket, artillery and mortar systems. Long way away from laser defence against ballistic missiles.
One can talk about the strategic limits to THAAD, but who has an equivalent? Russia does not, China is the only nation attempting to operate an equivalent with the HQ-19, first publicly displayed last year. This capability is not cheap, easy to engineer, or readily available. Pakistan wants an HQ-19 battery, but we'll see if it materialises.
As for limited interceptor stocks, yes they are limited, but the US, NATO, or Israel is not going to sit around and let the opponent fire hundreds of missiles without a response. We saw this in Iran, Israel quickly mobilised their air force, surveillance and covert on the ground assets to suppress Iranian ballistic missile launch facilities. Everyone in the alt media space was talking about how Israeli jets wouldn't dare enter Iranian airspace to bomb their missile force because of Iran's air defence, yet that's exactly what happened, and Iranian air defence didn't manage to shoot down a single manned aircraft. By the end of the war, Israel was bombing as far into Iran as Yadz, 1850km from Tel Aviv. How many Iranian ballistic missiles have a range greater than 1850km? What was the state of the Iranian missile force at this point? Did the Iranian missile force manage to reduce Israel's military capabilities in any way throughout the war, or accomplish anything more than bombing population centres? This is a far more pressing concern than the state of the USA/Israeli interceptor stockpile. You can't enter an attrition war to drain the aforementioned interceptor stockpile, if your capability to fire the missiles that drain this stockpile is vastly reduced. And if all the missile force can do is credibly threaten population centres, and can't counter military capabilities, it becomes a deterrent or compllence weapon, and not a weapon that can take the fight directly to the USA/Israeli military.