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Coons looks and feels like a blue dog, doesn't he?
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Sep 16, 2019 14:42
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Sure, they butchered a guy who was an American resident and journalist, but who are we to say that Iran is not worse?
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Sep 16, 2019 14:52
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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1173586320943456258?s=20 First they said they did something, and now they say they didn't do something! very suspicious! 
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Sep 16, 2019 15:15
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lmao https://twitter.com/DionNissenbaum/status/1173611954981744641
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Sep 16, 2019 17:09
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The Saudis absolutely do not want a direct confrontation with Iran That US claim is total BS regardless
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Sep 16, 2019 17:20
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I assume they might put more troops in Iraq? Direct conflict in Iran would be a complete nightmare for so many reasons. Less Claypool fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 17:23
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FlamingLiberal posted:The Saudis absolutely do not want a direct confrontation with Iran I wonder if it is BS. Frankly in find it hard to believe that an attack as sophisticated and coordinated as this didn't have Iranian advice or technology behind it.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:27
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Count Roland posted:I wonder if it is BS. Frankly in find it hard to believe that an attack as sophisticated and coordinated as this didn't have Iranian advice or technology behind it. The Houthis undoubtedly have had some of Iran's best-in-the-world guerrilla training, but this was just them cobbling together some drones they bought off Alibaba, strapping explosives to them, and sending them at a giant, high-value target. It's really not something we need some more complex explanation for.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:31
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Darth Walrus posted:The Houthis undoubtedly have had some of Iran's best-in-the-world guerrilla training, but this was just them cobbling together some drones they bought off Alibaba, strapping explosives to them, and sending them at a giant, high-value target. It's really not something we need some more complex explanation for. They manufactured cruise missiles with small turbojet engined on them. They are not alibaba drones theyr homr grown guided missiles
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Sep 16, 2019 17:34
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:They manufactured cruise missiles with small turbojet engined on them. They are not alibaba drones theyr homr grown guided missiles Are they? The papers pushing that angle seem to have a bit of an agenda.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:38
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Trump fires Bolton and then immediately goes to war with Iran just to taunt him 🤣
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Sep 16, 2019 17:38
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Darth Walrus posted:Are they? The papers pushing that angle seem to have a bit of an agenda. Certainly be credulous, but it does look like there's a good chance it was rockets, not drones, and did not come from Yemen. This isn't to say that Iran totally did it all themselves, but it does seem like something more than a bunch of homemade drones and good luck. And just for Willo... https://twitter.com/NarangVipin/status/1173582054430314496?s=20 https://twitter.com/NarangVipin/status/1173641795672010755?s=20 Mozi fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 17:41
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Darth Walrus posted:The Houthis undoubtedly have had some of Iran's best-in-the-world guerrilla training, but this was just them cobbling together some drones they bought off Alibaba, strapping explosives to them, and sending them at a giant, high-value target. It's really not something we need some more complex explanation for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil#Qasef-1 These, or rather something similar to these, were the drones used.
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Sep 16, 2019 17:46
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Fly Molo posted:Well, yeah, but any big industrial plant like that is gonna have some expensive fiddly bits that would take loving forever to replace Yes you could try that, but the difference is that you'd have to hit them very precisely and the damage would be extremely local if you are limited to drone bombing. Whereas in a petrochemical plant you can expect that just getting a few fires started will quickly spread.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:01
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Darth Walrus posted:Are they? The papers pushing that angle seem to have a bit of an agenda. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1208062/meet-the-quds-1/ Linking this again its a good break down of the weapon in question.  Now that I am looking at this again it looks like the missiles came in from the west north west. Guess if you launch from desert in Iraq and stay low you avoid most of the urban areas and radars. Also I would think the larger missiles Iran tends to use would do more damage. Guess these smaller cruise missiles would be easier to smuggle around Iraq.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:23
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Well the attack was a failure by all accounts. The terminal is not a crater.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:35
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I'm curious about the target acquisition used. Presumably those missiles use satellite navigation in the flight phase, but for precision in the final phase they almost certainly need something extra. Do they just lock onto something big and shiny, or would the attackers be able to pre-program it to hit specific structures, say, from photos? I know there are targeting systems that can do that, but can the Quds do it? The reason I'm asking is that if it's just "target big blob", then those tanks may not be high-value, but if it's more sophisticated they may have been targeted because they're hard to replace somehow. The missiles also spread out across different tanks/targets, which indicates incoming spread combined with some luck (looks like one was hit twice), or again, reasonably sophisticated target selection.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:51
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Setting all other things aside, that is some remarkably good accuracy on those strikes. Whoever did that knew what they were doing.
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Sep 16, 2019 18:52
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RIP Syndrome posted:I'm curious about the target acquisition used. Presumably those missiles use satellite navigation in the flight phase, but for precision in the final phase they almost certainly need something extra. Do they just lock onto something big and shiny, or would the attackers be able to pre-program it to hit specific structures, say, from photos? I know there are targeting systems that can do that, but can the Quds do it?
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Sep 16, 2019 18:59
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Guess who is ready and willing to bomb Iran. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-coalition-israel-idUSKBN1W11ZX
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Sep 16, 2019 19:00
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I like this headline: https://twitter.com/jfentonharvey/status/1173493675000848384?s=21
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Sep 16, 2019 19:02
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RIP Syndrome posted:I'm curious about the target acquisition used. Presumably those missiles use satellite navigation in the flight phase, but for precision in the final phase they almost certainly need something extra. Do they just lock onto something big and shiny, or would the attackers be able to pre-program it to hit specific structures, say, from photos? I know there are targeting systems that can do that, but can the Quds do it? Nobody knows, but the Houthis have a history of launching successful high-precision strikes with these types of drones, ie specifically taking grounded airframes and VIPs.
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Sep 16, 2019 19:03
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FlamingLiberal posted:The Saudis absolutely do not want a direct confrontation with Iran The Saudis 100% want direct confrontation with Iran, their timeline just probably is more in 2-5 years rather than right now. They're in the middle in one of the single largest arms buildups in human history, they absolutely are on a war footing. Funny thing about this whole situation is that the US spent the last decade becoming a domestic oil/energy producer specifically so as to not get automatically pulled into middle eastern wars over strategic access to oil. Like the US hardly imports poo poo from Saudi Arabia, they supply everyone else. WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:They manufactured cruise missiles with small turbojet engined on them. They are not alibaba drones theyr homr grown guided missiles you can, again, get all this poo poo mailed to you online, trivially, and you can get detailed explanations of how to make everything but the explosive payload on youtube Rent-A-Cop posted:If GPS isn't being degraded in the area it should be plenty good to bullseye something 100' wide that doesn't move. Yeah you can build drones that autopilot land on runways, that's got to be pretty easy in comparison. RaffyTaffy posted:https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1208062/meet-the-quds-1/ Linking this again its a good break down of the weapon in question. 10-15 years ago this would've been needed some SOF missile tech guys on the ground to do this. It may still have been considering the overall success of the attack does seem exceptionally high for a bunch of primitive drone tech. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 19:07
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Herstory Begins Now posted:The Saudis 100% want direct confrontation with Iran, their timeline just probably is more in 2-5 years rather than right now. They're in the middle in one of the single largest arms buildups in human history, they absolutely are on a war footing. You might be looking at it the wrong way: does knowing their own strategic resource access won't be negatively impacted make the US less or more likely to engage in a disruptive shooting war over the Persian Gulf, considering the alignment of other interests?
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Sep 16, 2019 19:15
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Conspiratiorist posted:You might be looking at it the wrong way: does knowing their own strategic resource access won't be negatively impacted make the US less or more likely to engage in a disruptive shooting war over the Persian Gulf, considering the alignment of other interests? What's the upside? Access to Iranian oil isn't even minimally worth the absolute bloodbath that a shooting war with them would be. Nor does anyone in the US really give a flying gently caress about Saudi Arabia outside of the Kushner faction who are being personally bribed by them. The loving US senate of all people is opposed to supporting KSA. Even removing the names of the selected country, there is zero political will for a war in the middle east and the entire 2020 election would be run on 'he's trying to embroil us in another suicidal and criminally wasteful middle eastern war'
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Sep 16, 2019 19:19
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If America isn't interested in a confrontation with Iran then why are they so hostile to Iran? Truly a mystery for the ages. ED: btw Iran just seized another tanker.
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Sep 16, 2019 19:24
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RIP Syndrome posted:I'm curious about the target acquisition used. Presumably those missiles use satellite navigation in the flight phase, but for precision in the final phase they almost certainly need something extra. Do they just lock onto something big and shiny, or would the attackers be able to pre-program it to hit specific structures, say, from photos? I know there are targeting systems that can do that, but can the Quds do it? There's a lot of variables here, but the main one is the design for closing the guidance control loop in terminal guidance. If it's remotely (TV) guided, latency dominates the time in closing the control loop, which forces a slower projectile speed in order that your control authority exceeds trajectory drift. If it's guided through on-board processing, it depends more strictly on the steps in the control loop (image sample rate, comparison to reference image, and translation of comparison to control arguments) and processing (purpose-built FPGA? other processor?). In this case, there's a trade study where you can design the terminal projectile speed or size the processing/choose the efficiency/accuracy of your algorithms to close the control loop fast enough to exert effective control. A prerequisite of doing the on-board processing right is having effective pre-target imagery from the expected ingress in similar conditions to limit algorithm error. I don't know if what you get from Google Earth is good enough for what they might be able to cobble for the latter. Without complete information and assuming some telecom architecture exists to close the link to the drone from launch to impact, seeing a photo of very accurate, small explosions leads me to believe it's TV-guided drones with small explosive payloads. If that's the case, flying an additional 10 km to attack from a more advantageous ingress would be achievable, especially without AA. If this is the case, I wonder if the Houthi claim about help within KSA has to do with maintaining the RF link. OFC it might be cruise missiles without image guidance, I just don't know how their GNC works and the precision they can get from GPS, etc nowadays. guidoanselmi fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 19:26
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Count Roland posted:I wonder if it is BS. Frankly in find it hard to believe that an attack as sophisticated and coordinated as this didn't have Iranian advice or technology behind it. Ask yourself the following two questions about the claim:
If the answer is "yes" to both question, then it is bullshit.
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Sep 16, 2019 19:36
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Cat Mattress posted:Ask yourself the following two questions about the claim: Wow are you some kind of intelligence Tsar or a Q-level agent?
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Sep 16, 2019 19:47
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Herstory Begins Now posted:The Saudis 100% want direct confrontation with Iran, their timeline just probably is more in 2-5 years rather than right now. They're in the middle in one of the single largest arms buildups in human history, they absolutely are on a war footing. I think that the purpose of those weapon purchases is to maintain a close relationship with the most influential foreign lobbies in the west to ensure the American government will continue to defend Saudi interests. From oil to water to a dozen other things the entire Saudi economy is so dependent on vulnerable ifnrastructure that it is very hard to imagine them seriously contemplating war with anyone who can potentially shoot back. A few well placed swarms of cruise missiles could not only wipe out the entire Saudi economy but also render the country more or less uninhabitable. Now maybe the Iranians would opt not to target essentials like water (this would be more restraint than the Saudi's have demonstrated in Yemen but the Iranians have more to lose here) but this is the 21st century and banking on your enemy not committing an unprecedented atrocity just doesn't seem like the safest bet. Especially when the Iranian government has good reason to view any such conflict as as existential threat.
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Sep 16, 2019 19:59
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Conspiratiorist posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil#Qasef-1 according to wikipedia, those only have a range of 120 km, which would pretty much rule out a launch from Houthi territory. also I'm not sure where you got a possible range of greater than 2000 km for the Quds 1, but that Arms Control Wonk website suggests it is almost certainly substantially less than 1350 km, which makes it pretty unlikely that those missiles could have hit the refinery from Yemen either
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Sep 16, 2019 20:04
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Darth Walrus posted:The Houthis undoubtedly have had some of Iran's best-in-the-world guerrilla training, but this was just them cobbling together some drones they bought off Alibaba, strapping explosives to them, and sending them at a giant, high-value target. It's really not something we need some more complex explanation for. Even if they was the method/materials, it's still exceptional. KSA has super advanced US armaments, but can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. The real key to military effectiveness is coordination. This attack was highly coordinated, with multiple drones/missiles/whatever, multiple targets, in a short period of time, over very long distances. Actually pulling this off is exceptionally difficult. It isn't impossible that this operation was planned in Yemen, but I can't think of anything else they've done that's that compares to this.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:17
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Helsing posted:I think that the purpose of those weapon purchases is to maintain a close relationship with the most influential foreign lobbies in the west to ensure the American government will continue to defend Saudi interests. From oil to water to a dozen other things the entire Saudi economy is so dependent on vulnerable ifnrastructure that it is very hard to imagine them seriously contemplating war with anyone who can potentially shoot back. A few well placed swarms of cruise missiles could not only wipe out the entire Saudi economy but also render the country more or less uninhabitable. KSA wanting and actively seeking an eventual war with Iran isn't some theory, it's the explicit reason for why they are the single largest purchaser of arms on the planet ever since they massively ramped up anti-Iran/shiite rhetoric internally. Ironically their actual capabilities to wage the war are uh, exceedingly questionable at the moment, but even their Yemen venture was intended to get their military theoretically valuable combat experience that it was almost completely lacking. Whether or not they even learn something in Yemen remains to be seen. Before Yemen they certainly saw themselves as more or less on par with Iran, now I don't think almost anyone is meaningfully fearful of the Saudi military, even with their ridiculous amount of expensive equipment. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.MPRT.KD?most_recent_value_desc=true Look what they've been doing since 2012. IDK why KSA's unprecedented military buildup isn't more of a thing that people are aware of because they 100% are not planning on using it defensively. They clearly have regional aspirations and the backing of both the US and the tacit or bought support of other powers if they get expansionist. Hell Yemen was probably meant to be an expansionist campaign before they wildly and totally bungled it. E: also if you look at their military spending as a % of gdp, they're at E2: not like, they are literally there Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Sep 16, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2019 20:27
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Jose posted:https://twitter.com/halaljew/status/1173672283925307392?s=20 Holy poo poo. The Saudi Army is even worse than I imagined.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:31
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Squalid posted:according to wikipedia, those only have a range of 120 km, which would pretty much rule out a launch from Houthi territory. Iran had previously claimed their Soumars have 2000+ km range, though of course only they would know the specifics. ACW is right in that the Soumar-derived Quds-1 could have reduced range (even despite a reduced payload), but they're only guessing based on display model pictures, and are rather dismissive of Yemeni indigenous technical capabilities when it's a fact they've had missiles and drones since before the conflict started, and consequently their own local experts for the Houthis (which from what I've gathered were the ones who pushed to start building suicide drones).
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Sep 16, 2019 20:33
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Count Roland posted:Actually pulling this off is exceptionally difficult. It isn't impossible that this operation was planned in Yemen, but I can't think of anything else they've done that's that compares to this. It was well-executed, but I don't think you can conflate that with it being an operationally complex mission. The fact that it was effective and appeared well-planned is probably easier because it was a simple mission. They launched a bunch of projectiles that hit in a short period of time in a single phase. There wasn't need for contingencies, maintaining a significant degree of coordination over a period of time, or specialized forces. Compare that to several squads with mixed units assaulting a position. The logistics, intel, and maintaining surprise may have been easy/hard depending on who did it from where and from how many locations. Even then, unless this was planned/executed urgently, they probably had time to plan effectively.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:41
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I'm still astonished that a handful of drones (and/ or missiles) were able to knock out half of Saudi Arabia's oil processing capacity. Why have the enormous Saudi defense budget and all those US military bases in the area if they can't even carry out the most fundamental task of ensuring that Saudi oil keeps flowing? It's the sheer gap between the rhetoric and the reality that's kinda stunning me.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:45
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Oil infrastructure is notoriously fragile and vulnerable. It has a hard enough time not blowing up in normal operation.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:50
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Longer mainstream article about the Abqaiq attack with some more speculation: https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/saudi-oil-facility-attacks-may-have-come-from-iraq/ It has a link to this Security Council report from earlier this year. Lots of pictures and interesting detail there if you're curious about Houthi armaments. https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2019_83.pdf quote:Based on information received from the engine manufacturer, the 3W110i B2 engine has a fuel consumption of 3.5 liters per hour. The fuel tank of the UAV-X, in the main fuselage, has a capacity of approximately 21 liters, which would allow for an endurance of six hours without the needto re-fuel. In KSA, the Panel has also inspected what appears to be additional external fuel tanks for the UAV-X, which would increase the endurance further. The engine manufacturer estimates that, depending on prevailing wind conditions, an airspeed of 200 to 250km per hour and a maximum range of 1,200 to 1,500km could be achievable for the UAV-X. That's a cheap platform with close to the range needed, but it wouldn't be able to carry much of a payload. And I'm still not convinced about guidance. Is TV guidance of ~10 UAVs close together at a distance of 500-1000km feasible at all? That's way over the horizon. So either they have automatic seekers (and good timing, since otherwise smoke and fire from the initial hits would obscure the view) or there was terminal phase RF guidance from a station much closer to the target.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:50
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Pistol_Pete posted:I'm still astonished that a handful of drones (and/ or missiles) were able to knock out half of Saudi Arabia's oil processing capacity. Why have the enormous Saudi defense budget and all those US military bases in the area if they can't even carry out the most fundamental task of ensuring that Saudi oil keeps flowing? Missile defense is mostly fake, so there's only so much you can do.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:51
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