Over the next few weeks, keep your eyes on the Middle East
- Thread starter HunterPKP
- Start date
Does this presume Persia would never have been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate?
What interceptor missiles cost $4 million?
Edit: never mind. I just googled it. I didn't know they cost that much.
NYT and BBC both now reporting that the school strike was indeed our doing. We basically "double-tapped" that school and the surrounding area. The damage was not a result of a single misfired Iranian projectile as was parroted in this thread by multiple people.
Hopefully the author of the NYT article who has won two Pulitzers for international reporting meets the august standards of our TI readership.
Someone also plotted the school on the map shared by Hegseth and crew:
Hopefully the author of the NYT article who has won two Pulitzers for international reporting meets the august standards of our TI readership.
Someone also plotted the school on the map shared by Hegseth and crew:
All of them apparently.
| System | Typical Cost per Interceptor | What it Defends Against |
|---|
| Patriot PAC-3 / PAC-3 MSE | ~$3–5 million | Aircraft, cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles |
| THAAD interceptor | ~$12–15 million | Medium-range ballistic missiles at high altitude |
| SM-3 Block IB | ~$9–12 million | Ballistic missiles from ships (Aegis system) |
| SM-3 Block IIA | ~$28–36 million | Longer-range ballistic missiles, even ICBM-class threats |
| SM-6 | ~$9–10 million | Aircraft, cruise missiles, some ballistic missiles |
Throughout reading this thread I keep seeing in my mind @BigPapaWhit leaning back in an Easy-boy, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, pipe in one hand, glass of bourbon on the side table as he muses on the current events in the Middle East. Can only guess he is dictating these responses to his faithful sidekick. 
Yeah you definitely put it better than I have. I've done a poor job of it but I'm trying to get at the strategy level and what the overall plan we have is. Like we can talk about tactics and how good the military is at blowing stuff up, but honestly, how effective is that really? What is our end game? How do we get there? That is what I'm interested in as a one time history PhD candidate.
For instance, just today CENTCOM said we've dropped a ton of 1 ton bombs from B-2s, hit a bunch of sites, Iran's missile and drone attack numbers are down, etc. But someone I follow on bluesky for this stuff (former military, writes about it, well read), pointed out that is just measuring the efficiency of what we're doing, not the effectives. It is very similar to what we were doing in Vietnam and how McNamara had us measuring certain statistics. Cool, we're bombing, but to what end? Are we actually majorly degrading Iran's ability to launch missile or drone strikes? Or are they just cutting back to preserve stock and moving stuff around? Do ships feel comfortable going back to the Straits? Can civilian air traffic return? Is Iran done launching strikes? Why are multiple outlets reporting that we've gone to the Ukrainians for intel on drone warfare now and not the previous 4 years? Why have the Iranian drone attacks been more difficult for us to handle than anticipated?
I haven't gotten actual answers for this stuff. It has only been "oh its simple, we'll destroy Iran's military". Ok, how?" Oh the Iranians will rise up and install a new government." Will they? What are we doing to make that happen? I'm worried that we are bumbling into a drawn out regional conflict that boils over every few months, if not something worse.
Anyway, just doing simple military alphabet soup and numbers talk can only measure efficiency, not effectiveness.
I guess I've been under a rock. I remember flipping out when I heard our converted AGM-86/CALCM's (Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles) cost a million dollars a piece.
I wish we could go back to 1953 and tell the Brits to go kick rocks
Well who knows what happens in this scenario, there are 1100 years between the two
It wasn't quite a double strike, at least not in the way it is commonly used in the media.
These are all fair questions, and I wish we could talk about the stuff more instead of some of the other nonsense.
I can assure you measuring not just efficiency but effectiveness is preeminent in military doctrine and force projection. But that is just the military. There is a political machine behind them. And just like this board, never underestimate the power of politics to screw everything up.
Man you have it at 98%. No pipe but a cold lager and two dogs. I am absolutely laughing out loud. Getting ready to skim Britbox or PBS for some murder mysteries.Throughout reading this thread I keep seeing in my mind @BigPapaWhit leaning back in an Easy-boy, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, pipe in one hand, glass of bourbon on the side table as he muses on the current events in the Middle East. Can only guess he is dictating these responses to his faithful sidekick.
Oh, 500 BC or BCE if you prefer.... Of course. That should have been obvious to me, but I fixated on the chance to dodge the rise of Islam.
Edit: What's really wild about this is I was just in Athens, Greece four months ago. So much history. Wish I could have stayed a month.
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Speaking of truth, I read an an article that said China is now sending special ops, or whatever they term it, to the ME.
Is this happening? WW3 might actually come to fruition if its true.
You can clearly see the conflating of this story in real time. It starts out that the military bombed a legitimate target near a school and later becomes "the military bombed a school" by the somewhat less scrupulous sites.
Unfortunately I am also skeptical of leadership of CENTCOM, especially Generally Caine. They're a bit like the American version of the Kwantung Army in some respects. They are a loud voice for a, lets call it unequal, distribution of assets towards CENTCOM and an aggressive posture towards Iran.
Lest people think your too bourgeois.
me 20+ years of military and one time history teacher secondary level (high school). Russia/USSR was my jam.
Well they did hit a school (and a clinic). The scuttlebutt seems to be they were working off old target data, not that they thought "hey lets blow up a school." The school and the clinic are on the grounds of what was once a larger base of sorts. The school was created and walled off separately about a decade ago and the clinic within the last few years. No one saw fit to check up on it since then
I also taught high school (2 years) and middle school (6 months) once upon a time. Would only briefly consider it again if I got an 8 figure salary
Lest people think your too bourgeois.
me 20+ years of military and one time history teacher secondary level (high school). Russia/USSR was my jam.
I'd be interested to see the source for that. I haven't read anything about it and it seems highly unlikely. China might be sending observers but the PLA is in upheaval right now as Xi has purged leadership entirely.
I believe it's a "special envoy". Diplomats essentially. That's how I read it at least.
What I do wonder is if we have assets on the ground to “tag” targets or provide on site intel? I have doubts but history says otherwise.
The immediate "they did it to themselves lol" stuff was a common Israeli propaganda tactic in Gaza whenever something egregiously horrific happened, like a hospital being bombed. It was usually easy to disprove but their intelligence apparatus puts in the work online just as I'm sure our does. Not saying that's the case here but it was a similar pattern.
Damn. I like Raising Cane. While I like Generals that carry an aura of hostility, like a rabid bulldog on a chain you prey never breaks. Somewhat conversely, I find raising Cane to be quite polished and smooth.
Wherever the style, you certainly want them to be competent and capable. I think Midnight Hammer and Absolute Resolve showed them to be quite capable. Say what you want about those ops, they were wildly successful showcases of the pinnacle of American military might.
The rise of Islam is pretty interesting. The Sasanian Persians and Byzantines fought four wars over the course of a century with one another, including two wars that each last ~20 years at least. The last one almost destroyed both empires. The Byzantines tried to sue for peace and become a client state at one point but rebounded. They later defeated the Persians in a massive battle in Iraq while the Persians were sieging Constantinople. The Persian soldiers eventually revolted and killed the emperor and the empire fell into civil war. Both empires were devastated by the war and the Byzantines by the Plague of Justinian.
The Islamic armies took advantage of all that and the many divisions within the Byzantine Empire. Many of the subject peoples of the empire despised the Byzantines. The Byzantines were pretty chauvinist about Greek language and culture, and didn't particularly tolerate other Christian sects (miaphysites like the Copts, Nestorians, monophysites, etc). But they found they were tolerated and relatively left alone by Arab Muslims.
It's possible the nearby school suffered collateral damage, but no way it was because they were operating of off old target data and the like. If you know anything about our satellite capability, we would have had satellites flying over that territory, taking copious amounts of high resolution video and other assorted imagery for months leading up to the op (like we did for Midnight Hammer). Ultra high resolution imagery is too cheap and easy to come by, and we absolutely obsess over targets these days.
There may well be something to the story, but the prevailing narrative just doesn't fit.
Hold on to your suspicions, for sure, but don't be too quick to suspend disbelief either.
Ok but multiple sources and outlets have reported on it now. NPR has an article (I posted it earlier but will report here) showing the difference in the before and after. We very clearly from the images hit the middle of the school with a precision airstrike. It wasn't just collateral damage. https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s...school-was-more-extensive-than-first-reported.
I don't doubt we had good images but our info seems to be wrong. That is the only reasonable conclusion to draw from the evidence at hand.
I read an encyclopedic book on the Byzantine empire whose exact title escapes me at the moment.... It was something like "The Rise And Fall of the Byzantine Empire". Like many thorough books on in important historical topics, it requires more than one read. I'll have to tee that one up again soon.
If the pictures are to be believed, it looks like the so-called school was the only thing that was actually obliterated.
Our pictures may have been perfect, but that doesn't mean that targeting coordinates get input correctly. We've killed our own where we accidentally swap the coordinates between friendly's and hostels. We also don't generally strike that close to sensitive targets where the risk of collateral damage outweighs the benefit of the target under consideration. A school full of young girls would have been a hard risk to overcome.
I'm going to give this some time to play out.
Yeah I'm interested in the Gothic Wars of the 6th century AD when the Byzantines fought some brutal wars in Italy against the Gothic kingdoms. It ended up being a net negative for the Byzantines and led to massive depopulation in Italy. There is a campy/cheesy alternate history book about them from the 1930s. Kinda like a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall
This is the best take I have seen on here. We should all be hopeful even if skeptical.
Iran conflict and China: How it is unsettling Beijing and its ambitions
China is not feeling the shock of war in the Middle East - yet. But it is feeling the ripples.
www.bbc.com
It will be interesting to see what role China plays in a rebuilding/post war effort since they are a major ally and the primary international supplier of Iranian funds, ie their #1 customer.
Tomorrow I would hope that @Dungeon09 gives us his assessment of the Iranian Republican Army fitness regimen. Who’s next in line for head of S&C. I would also hope for some historical evidence based on Olympic weightlifting and wrestling results.
Good article.Iran conflict and China: How it is unsettling Beijing and its ambitions
China is not feeling the shock of war in the Middle East - yet. But it is feeling the ripples.
"Beijing may also see a chance to help mediate talks along with other countries. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has already spoken to his counterparts in Oman and France, and China has announced it will send a special envoy to the Middle East"
So diplomats.
I'm not sure what a special envoy is in their terminology? That's not the article I read earlier, just sharing what I could find that suggests now China may be getting involved.
Starting to see destabilization on the ground. Pay attention to defections in the next 2-3 days if they’re acknowledged publicly.