The US-Iran War Has Begun

[Innula Zenovka]

Iran-linked hybrid warfare in Europe

Financial Times: The shadowy group claiming attacks around Europe (Evernote link because paywall)

Late at night, the three men strode towards the community ambulances carrying a can — then ran away once the vehicles, owned by the Jewish medical service Hatzola, had begun to burn.

The March attack in north London, shown on surveillance camera footage, was one of a series of night-time assaults on civilian targets around Europe that have been linked with a shadowy group that apparently sprang into existence less than a month ago.

Ashab al-Yamin — also known by the longer name Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, or Hayi — had no presence anywhere online before March 9, according to researchers.

Since then it has been connected with arson and explosive attacks in Belgium, the Netherlands and France as well as the one in London, all taking place against the backdrop of the US-Israeli war on Iran. The assaults have raised fears that Iran could be behind an emerging campaign of Russian-style “hybrid warfare” attacks around Europe.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Meaghan Wilson Anastasios (@meaghanwilsonanastasios)

You. Must. Watch. This. Second coffee spit today. Highlight? Dame Judi Dench. Fucking hilarious.

substack.com

 

[Free]

Meaghan Wilson Anastasios (@meaghanwilsonanastasios)

You. Must. Watch. This. Second coffee spit today. Highlight? Dame Judi Dench. Fucking hilarious.

substack.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Meaghan Wilson Anastasios (@meaghanwilsonanastasios)

You. Must. Watch. This. Second coffee spit today. Highlight? Dame Judi Dench. Fucking hilarious.

substack.com

Apparently some people didn't realize this was AI, which boggles my mind. It was so deliberately over the top that I would have thought it was obvious.

Other people seem immune to dark, morbid humor and were offended by the lack of seriousness on a Very Serious Topic.

Personally, I thought it was brilliant.

 

[Noodles]

An A-10? Isn't that that terrifyingly ugly Warthog thing that is supposed to take out the taker-outters with poop-yer-pants firepower so over-the-top that it makes Thor consider ordering Viagra?

We must have a set of tactics that protects those things ... right?

This "winning" stuff sure feels a lot like losing.

Yeah, I read once in Reddit where the A-10 apparently has to go full throttle when it fires its gun or it will stall due to the recoil and fall out of the sky.

The same discussion characterized it not as "Lets make a plane with a big ass gun, lets make this big ass gun, then make it fly.

 

[Noodles]

Apparently some people didn't realize this was AI, which boggles my mind. It was so deliberately over the top that I would have thought it was obvious.

Other people seem immune to dark, morbid humor and were offended by the lack of seriousness on a Very Serious Topic.

Personally, I thought it was brilliant.

I mean, I could see some.of the actors getting together for that project, but also I am not sure Sir Ian McKellen is that spry these days.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Yeah, I read once in Reddit where the A-10 apparently has to go full throttle when it fires its gun or it will stall due to the recoil and fall out of the sky.

The same discussion characterized it not as "Lets make a plane with a big ass gun, lets make this big ass gun, then make it fly.

Not actually true, though firing the mighty GAU-A8 Avenger (the big gun) does reduce the speed by a tiny percent.

The Air Force wants to get rid of the A-10's since they're old and not really suited for modern skies with modern air defense networks. However, the Army loves them and thinks they're the greatest thing for CAS, especially since the CAS versions of more modern aircraft with superior countermeasures can't loiter like an A-10 can...and are very expensive...and aren't exactly ready to deploy yet. Also the A-10 replacements won't be carrying the mighty GAU-A8 Avenger. The Army has offered to take the A-10's off the Air Forces hands, but the agreement that led to the separation of the Army Air Corp from the Army says the Army is NOT allowed to fly fixed wing combat aircraft. The Air Force even got pissy over the wing-like things on the AH-64 Apache where the missiles are mounted.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

The Army has offered to take the A-10's off the Air Forces hands, but the agreement that led to the separation of the Army Air Corp from the Army says the Army is NOT allowed to fly fixed wing combat aircraft. The Air Force even got pissy over the wing-like things on the AH-64 Apache where the missiles are mounted.

Apparently the Army is going to allow soldiers to have personal weapons on base. The Air Force just ahs to sell them to individual soldiers.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Yeah, I read once in Reddit where the A-10 apparently has to go full throttle when it fires its gun or it will stall due to the recoil and fall out of the sky.

The same discussion characterized it not as "Lets make a plane with a big ass gun, lets make this big ass gun, then make it fly.

Not actually true, though firing the mighty GAU-A8 Avenger (the big gun) does reduce the speed by a tiny percent.

The Air Force wants to get rid of the A-10's since they're old and not really suited for modern skies with modern air defense networks. However, the Army loves them and thinks they're the greatest thing for CAS, especially since the CAS versions of more modern aircraft with superior countermeasures can't loiter like an A-10 can...and are very expensive...and aren't exactly ready to deploy yet. Also the A-10 replacements won't be carrying the mighty GAU-A8 Avenger. The Army has offered to take the A-10's off the Air Forces hands, but the agreement that led to the separation of the Army Air Corp from the Army says the Army is NOT allowed to fly fixed wing combat aircraft. The Air Force even got pissy over the wing-like things on the AH-64 Apache where the missiles are mounted.

I still am wondering how we managed to lose one of those things, and whether that was the result of some sort of tactical blunder. I guess that is somewhat answered by CronoCloud: "not really suited for modern skies with modern air defense networks."

Still, on the US side, the sacking of 12 -- 12! -- top brass in the military just cannot be a sign of good order. It seems to me like a surefire recipe for many "droppings of the ball" at a time that was perilous enough already.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Still, on the US side, the sacking of 12 -- 12! -- top brass in the military just cannot be a sign of good order. It seems to me like a surefire recipe for many "droppings of the ball" at a time that was perilous enough already.

The sacking of 12 top brass IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR and on top of all the firings that happened at the start of the Trump Administration.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The same discussion characterized it not as "Lets make a plane with a big ass gun, lets make this big ass gun, then make it fly.

Trufax, the gun takes up most of the inside of the airplane and the pilots practically straddle the barrel like Slim Pickens.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Trufax, the gun takes up most of the inside of the airplane and the pilots practically straddle the barrel like Slim Pickens.

I got to visit the Air Force museum in Dayton once and had the same experience there as I have looking at that picture. (I'm pretty sure I saw that very thing, since that looks very much like the interior of the museum.)

It was like I was in a recursive loop of,

1 PRINT "Holy crap, that's amazing";
2 PRINT "Holy crap, that's a horrible, ruthless machine for making people dead";
3 GOTO 1;

Then you walk into the hall with the ICBM's and the loop just gets more intense.

 

[Soen Eber]

I can see mini-versions of the A-10 as army drones, and the air force can say absolutely nothing about it.

 

[Free]

“Casualty Cover-Up”: The Pentagon Is Hiding U.S. Losses Under Trump in the Middle East

The Pentagon has sent outdated statements on the number of U.S. troops killed or wounded during the Iran War, resulting in undercounts.

theintercept.com

Almost 750 U.S. troops have been wounded or killed in the Middle East since October 2023, an analysis by The Intercept has found. But the Pentagon won’t acknowledge it.

U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, appears to be engaged in what a defense official called a “casualty cover-up,” offering The Intercept low-ball and outdated figures and failing to provide clarifications on military deaths and injuries.

At least 15 U.S. troops were wounded Friday in an Iranian attack on a Saudi air base that hosts American troops, according to two government officials who spoke with The Intercept. Hundreds of U.S. personnel have been killed or injured in the region since the U.S. launched a war on Iran just over a month ago.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump's Easter message

Aaron Rupar (@aaronrupar)

The New York Times's David Sanger sanewashes Trump's impeachably insane Easter threat against Iran as "unusually vivid"

substack.com

 

[Free]

Merging these two holidays into an unintelligible Powridgeon Day not only upends my travel plans, but it ruins the time honored traditions normally bestowed on our National Beer and Coffee Cake Day (typically referred to as Cakebrew Day). I won't have it!

/me nibbles on a coffee cake and sips a beer.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Bombing them back to the Stone Age(s) -- the history (Evernote Link because paywall)

The phrase “bomb them into the Stone Age” is a ghastly cliché, and so Trump and Hegseth probably just plucked it out of the air, but the actual origins are still instructive. It comes not from an academic scribber, but from Air Force General Curtis LeMay, the mastermind of the fire-bombing campaign that devastated Japan’s cities in World War II. He later served as head of the Strategic Air Command and Air Force Chief of Staff under John F. Kennedy, where he continually advised the President to initiate a preemptive nuclear strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He also appears to have taken actions that were designed to provoke the Soviet Union into World War III. He was the model for George C. Scott’s character in Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove and ran as segregationist George Wallace’s VP candidate on the American Independent Party ticket in 1968.

 

[Noodles]

Trump's Easter message

Aaron Rupar (@aaronrupar)

The New York Times's David Sanger sanewashes Trump's impeachably insane Easter threat against Iran as "unusually vivid"

substack.com

Is that...

Is that real?

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Somehow Infrastructure Week returned.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Impeachable? Ha! The base will eat it up and there will not be a peep from the R's leadership.

Bill Clinton -- maybe quoting Hillary -- nailed it years ago: "When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right."

He probably should have specified "the American people." We're seeing the end stages of that idiocy.