America - The Official Thread

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Apparently, multiple launch sites in Iran launched missiles at multiple US bases in Iraq.

This is their idea of a plan that satisfies both their base and their thinkers at the top.

Hopefully these missiles were aimed at runways and not barracks.
 
Dotini
Apparently, multiple launch sites in Iran launched missiles at multiple US bases in Iraq.

This is their idea of a plan that satisfies both their base and their thinkers at the top.

Hopefully these missiles were aimed at runways and not barracks.
Click to expand...
If this is true, things are about to get very ugly. I wonder if they are so brazen because they have a big ally supporting the action.
 
Rallywagon
If this is true, things are about to get very ugly. I wonder if they are so brazen because they have a big ally supporting the action.
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If our bases had been evacuated as was already begun yesterday, there will be no casualties. That will be key as to what comes next.

Edit:
Early report indicates (Sunni) Iraqi casualties at the Anbar base. Nothing so far the Kurdish base.

Apparently missiles are still reported being fired. Much is unclear at this time.
 
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The US: *assassinates a high ranking military official*

Iran: *retaliates*

Trump:
300px-Surprised_Pikachu_HD.jpg


I mean what did they think was going to happen? It was pretty much a given that Iran wasn't going to stand ideally by after having one of their leading officials assassinated in a foreign country. I just hope Trump actually listens and if he chooses to fire back, that he does so in a way that isn't boneheaded. Unfortunately, I feel like tonight or tomorrow the US will launch strikes on all 52 of those targets without much thought.

And you have Pelosi over here, who could easily do something about this, wanting to push the War Powers Act vote off until next week. But nope, let's continue to let Trump start a war illegally and without the approval of Congress. I swear, it's like no one in Washington wants to do their job. Seriously, all of Congress should be in session tonight and not leave until they've figured it out.
 
Whoa there Joey, talk like that upsets corporate leadership. There are "campaigns" to fund. We cant have them getting upset now that the gears of war have gained new momentum.
 
Early reports are of no US casualties. It appears US troops were not the target, but designed to affect events in Iraq.

Trump may go on TV tonite.
 
Swagger897
Well it’s a good thing we were voted out right?
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We were "voted" out of the Shiite zone. We are still well-connected in other provinces. Whether any of this is good, I doubt.

IMHO, we should get out of Shiite Iraq asap.

Edit:
Reportedly, there will be no statement from the administration tonight.
 
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So, how's that impeachment going? Last I heard McConnell has garnered all the votes the Senate will need to force the impeachment trial without the formal submittal from Congress.
 
Trump's not tweeting. Trump went 12 hours without tweeting the day he killed Soleimani.

The USSF just posted this.
 
From the New Yorker:

TEHRAN (The Borowitz Report)—Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is “completely baffled” as to why he appears to be the only dictator whom Donald J. Trump does not like, the autocrat said on Monday. Speaking to reporters in Tehran, the long-reigning tyrant expressed puzzlement and dismay that Trump had not given him the adulation that he has showered on seemingly every other totalitarian in the world.

“Trump loves Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman, and he’s even given Kim Jong Un a cute nickname, but, for some mysterious reason, I leave him cold,” the visibly saddened Ayatollah said. “I just don’t get it.”

Khamenei initially tried not to take Trump’s distaste for him personally, he said, “but when it became clear that he liked even second-tier strongmen like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of Turkey, and Rodrigo Duterte, of the Philippines, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt.”

One possible reason Trump might dislike him, the Ayatollah theorized, is that “he just doesn’t realize how repressive I am. If he did his homework, he’d see that I trample press freedoms, shred basic human rights, and persecute political opponents,” he said. “In terms of the things that are important to him, I really check all the boxes.”
 
mustafur
Looks unrelated luckily, if that was shot down by a US weapon well that would probably ruin all US credability at that point.
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I hope you are right. I don't see how either American or Iranian SAMs could target an airplane so deep in Iranian territory...but I guess mistakes happen.
 
This has been the craziest day I’ve ever experienced on the internet. I have friends who aren’t “online”, and they barely even know anything happened.

And it keeps going. Reports of two earthquakes in the southwest of Iran, close to the Bushehr nuclear power plant


Seriously, wtf is going on

The last 24 hours has not gone well for Iran:
• 50 people trampled at Suleimani’s funeral - this is just really sad

• launch 15 missiles at Iraqi/US bases, and manage to hit nothing - first, thank god they hit nothing, both in terms of the people on those bases, and the ramifications if they had killed someone. Second, the idea is being floated that they missed on purpose. Iran can sell whatever lies they want to their people about a successful attack (Iran TV claiming anywhere from 30-80 casualties. MSNBC actually broadcast these unconfirmed reports, no need to check facts, just gotta be first), while at the same time giving the US no real reason to launch a counter attack. It’s possible these intentions could have been communicated to the white house via back channels.

• Ukrainian 737 crashes shortly after take off from Tehran’s airport, cause of crash still unknown - this is really sketchy in my opinion. The coincidence of a mechanical failure tonight of all nights, leaving Tehran, that’s just weird. The fact it was a Ukrainian flight headed to Kiev just makes it weirder. That said, I’ve read that there were over 120 (edit, 82, not over 120) Iranian on that flight, so I can’t see the Iranian shooting it down on purpose (sadly ironic, after Trump tweeted about the 52 sites to remember the 52 hostages, Iranian officials tweeted back, “you like remembering numbers, remember 290 and 655”). The video footage of the fireball in the sky, and the photos of the wreckage don’t lend themselves to mechanical failure, but I’m not an expert at all.
Edit: this is from the Ukrainian foreign affairs minister
We are currently aware of the following information on the countries of origin of those killed in the crash #PS752 : Iran - 82; Canada - 63; Ukraine - 2 + 9 (crew); Sweden - 10; Afghanistan - 4; Germany - 3; United Kingdom - 3. We express our condolences. The Ukrainian authorities continue to investigate.


Pure speculation time, I did read earlier that several USAF F35s were seen taking off from a base in Iraq. This could have been a completely routine sortie, or it could have been precautionary measures taken knowing that these bases were likely to get attacked...no need to leave the birds on the ground to soak up rockets. However, a few months ago, I read that the USAF was claiming to have successfully flown the F35 through Iranian airspace, undetected and undisturbed. It could be possible that Iranian air defences were trying to shoot down an F35 that flew near Tehran, even just as a scare tactic, and accidentally shot a passenger plane.

• 2 earthquakes near their nuclear plant - this one has all the Alex Jones wannabes screaming “I told you they had weather weapons, I told you so.” It’s actually pretty funny.


This “war” has been stranger than anything I could have imagined. I never thought I’d see the day when world leaders are literally tweeting at each other, threatening to blow each other up. At one point this evening, Iran claimed that if the US retaliated to these missile attacks, they would destroy Dubai and Haifa.

This kind of sums it up



In future history classes, people will have to study tweets and sub tweets. Let’s hope the great 2020 Meme War is over (it did generate some awesome memes though).
 
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twitcher
.
Agreed...but in regards to the F35 being astronomically expensive, it’s not really that much more expensive than the F14 or F15 were for their time (accounting for inflation), and is not really that much more than something like a Block-70 F-16 Viper, or those new F-15X, or even a Typhoon.


Just to add to the discussion about subs - while we like to poke fun at the capabilities of the Iranian airforce, make no mistake, their subs are no laughing matter. The Ghadir class subs are based on a North Korean design, and went into service in the late 2000s, so we’re not talking about some antiquated Soviet stuff left over from the Cold War.

Additionally, and perhaps contrary to common assumption, diesel electric subs like the Ghadir class are much much more quiet and difficult to detect than nuclear subs. I don’t know the details of why, but it has something to do with the nuclear reactor emitting a frequency that’s relatively easy to detect. The weakness of the diesel subs is that they have much shorter limits on how long they can stay submerged, unlike nuclear subs that can stay submerged basically indefinitely (modern US nuclear subs only need to surface to take on food for the crew, everything else is self contained. In wartime config, they can stay down for roughly 6 months, and that’s just what they release to the public).

As far as detecting subs, the primary methods are hunter/killer subs like the US Virginia class, sonars on surface vessels, along with sonobouys dropped by maritime helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft. I spent a summer at the RCAF’s maritime patrol squadron in Comox BC, right around the time when Iran started launching these new Ghadir class subs, and it was very much a hot topic of conversation, of which I was only allowed to be privy to tiny bits of. Crews from Comox regularly deploy to Diago Garcia in the Indian Ocean to partake in surface and submarine surveillance in and around the Gulf. It’s true that you can spot a sub from the air, but it’s basically the definition of looking for a needle in a haystack. The Iranians know the limitations of the environment they operate in, so they have ways of hiding the subs on clear blue sunny days. At night, and days with poor visibility is when they get the most active.

As far as the threat these subs pose, it is legitimate and cannot be dismissed lightly. Ever since the US Navy sunk the majority of the Iranian Navy in a single morning (Op Praying Mantis, April 1988), Iran has rebuilt its navy focused primarily on sinking a US carrier battle group passing through the straight, or trapped in the gulf. The Iranian strategy is focused on what is referred to as a “saturation attack”, with the goal being to overwhelm the battle group’s defences with sheer numbers, of both small fast boats and shore/air launched anti-ship missiles. The US and NATO have obviously run several war games simulating this exact scenario, and reports indicate that in one of these war games, a Swedish diesel electric sub was able to sneak through the defence network amidst the chaos of a surface saturation attack, and successfully managed to “sink” an American carrier. That said, most theories suggest that in order for the Iranians to successfully sink a carrier battle group, they would need to throw everything under the kitchen sink at it, and it would all be one-way trips...meaning, they’d have basically no navy and no airforce left....and the US would only be down one carrier battle group, of which they have several. Not a good long term strategy from the Iranian perspective.
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It's not complicated. You can't turn the reactor off so a nuclear submarine always makes noise. With a diesel electric you can turn the engine off. There is no noise. At all.
 
twitcher
.
Agreed...but in regards to the F35 being astronomically expensive, it’s not really that much more expensive than the F14 or F15 were for their time (accounting for inflation), and is not really that much more than something like a Block-70 F-16 Viper, or those new F-15X, or even a Typhoon.
Click to expand...

In 1998 an F14 would cost you $38million, $59.5 million today with inflation. An F35B is currently $122 million. It's astronomically expensive.
 

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