A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of a destroyed American AWACS plane in Saudi Arabia, of which there is a very limited supply and each of which is enormously expensive both monetarily and in terms of components. Iran hit this with a precision drone strike that likely cost ~$20,000.

I don’t have much to add from the last megathread description. This isn’t to say that nothing has happened or has changed since then - decades are still happening in weeks - but the general flow of the war is remaining the same. Trump sometimes threatens to open the Strait with troops and flatten Iran to rubble, and other times threatens that he’s gonna back off and let other countries handle it if they really want little trifles like “fuel” and “energy” so much. Iran continues to strike across the Middle East. The West continues to bomb civilian infrastructure due to their relative inability to affect the missile cities. In all: things are generally getting worse for America and the Zionists.

April is the month where the last ships that left Hormuz before it was closed will arrive around the world, so the last month of economic turmoil has been a mere prelude to what’s going to occur in the near-future. The silver lining is that Iran appears to be formalizing the new state of affairs in Hormuz, creating a rial-based toll to allow passage between a pair of Iranian-controlled islands where they can be monitored, meaning that, as long as the US doesn’t do something exceptionally stupid, the global energy crisis may “only” last a couple years instead of simply being the new reality from now on. Some countries have already agreed to this arrangement, and others will inevitably follow despite their consternation as their economies increasingly suffer.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    71·
    7 days ago

    https://xcancel.com/ripplebrain/status/2040144764494885275

    Seems like the attack corridors theory about amero-israeli airpower in Iran gets more likely by the hour. AND the AD stashed away in tunnels one as well. The moment they step out of the pre-programmed and established umbrella of EW and SEAD, like during a CSAR mission in which time is of the essence and the factors above cannot be setup as extensively, they start taking losses

    I said in the first stage of the conflict that it would make sense for the Iranians to hold much of their AD in reserve. As the conflict drags out, damage to air bases accumulates, forcing the US/Israel to sortie from more distant bases. Airframes degrade and need more maintenance, carrier groups have to exit the region and rotate out, MALE drones are shot down, and it becomes increasingly difficult to cover Iranian airspace or conduct DEAD operations. This allows AD to operate in the open for longer. The cost the Iranians have paid is taking a lot of damage in the first phase of the war, but the prospect of maintaining a persistent AD network over the entire country (which is huge) was never a winning one anyway. If this has been their strategy, expect US/Israeli air losses to increase over time.

    Video from last month showing Iranian AD in reserve https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/2040146518708191232/pu/vid/avc1/852x480/lSCeRYvpXPsrGHds.mp4?tag=12

    • sisatici [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      28·
      7 days ago

      I was always thinking about something like that. imagine digging a vertical hole, putting a retractable platform in there maybe something like image below, and steel doors to shut access after platform descends. maybe another horizontal hole for extra protection, pull the radar with a wench or something. or instead of digging a hole, mage a fortified hangar and pull the radar wench. sure it is probably expensive but these radars cost billions if not hundreds of millions. activate system before how many seconds it take for the radar to be hidden. you know the speed of anti radiation missile, you know the time it takes to platform to secure the radar, you activate the system before anti radiation missile reachs critical range.

      Do these tunnels in iran cover radars too or rather short range IR AD vehicles ?

    • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      7 days ago

      Can someone help me with this? I have no idea what all these abbreviations are supposed to mean, I can’t parse this can some explain it to me? I get “AD” is probably “Air Defence” but MALE drones just sounds like some weird CHUD shit about woke ruining the military and Trump finally fixing it.

      • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        7 days ago

        sorry, the acronymization in military tech discussions can get pretty ridiculous catgirl-sorry

        • EW - electronic warfare
        • SEAD/DEAD - suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses
        • CSAR - combat search and rescue
        • AD - air defense
        • MALE - medium-altitude long-endurance, I have to do a double take each time I see this one too, it ended up being a really awkward abbreviation. It’s in reference to the common use of these drones being for them to loiter around an area over a long period, waiting for targets to be spotted and launching munitions at them - this used to be what people mainly imagined when they heard “drone” during the GWOT years, but recently, the more specific term has started seeing a lot more use in order to distinguish these from the other classes of drones popularized by current conflicts, like FPVs (that’s another abbreviation right there! first-person view, in reference to how the drones are piloted) and the Shahed-style, for which there is not yet consensus on a good name, some outlets call them “rudimentary cruise missiles”, which is a bit of a mouthful (until we start abbreviating it ralsei-devious), but mostly gets across what they accomplish strategically.
        • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          5·
          7 days ago

          Thanks for that! I’m normally ok with figuring out acronyms when it is just one or two but when there’s this many at once it just kind of starts to stop making sense to me, especially when it uses another acronym for the context of an acronym.