There is a "real world military" topic in which some purely military issues may get slightly into politics, and this is tolerated so long as no other rules (i.e., no insults) are broken. Those who have participated in this topic know that our non-US participants often have very different views than you are used to. It won't hurt you to hear another side of the issue and you may learn something. It should also be noted that some of those who post frequently in that topic simply have no idea what they're talking about; be polite in alerting them to this fact.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 06:01 am: Edit |
Carl, you ared saying that failing to follow the commitments made just really does not matter, that Hamas should get all the benefits of good faith despite showing bad faith. Then just what was the point of the agreement? I guess you think Israel should have given the terrorists who never cared about their own people whatever they wanted without expecting any good faith on the part of those Hamas murderers.
| By Dal Downing (Rambler) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 08:14 am: Edit |
Okay I have been trying to find out how many of the 254??? hostages? Are unaccounted for. Does anyone here know?
| By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 09:17 am: Edit |
Svc, the important thing was to free the hostages, get a cease fire and be on the way to some sort of solution, right? Dead bodies normally are dug up and identified by forensics AFTER cessation of hostilities for good reasons. It can be a difficult and time consuming job to locate the bodies. The israeli government knows this but still made the demand.
I know all the reasons for that but it doesn't change the fact that right know people in Gaza are unnecessarily starving because of a handful of dead. That is sick.
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 09:25 am: Edit |
Hamas caught trying to pass off a non hostage cadaver as one of the remains of a deceased hostage.
Talk about sick…
| By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 11:08 am: Edit |
How many people deserve to starve because of that?
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 11:16 am: Edit |
Information Warfare: Iran Israel AI War Propaganda
October 15, 2025: There is a new war going on in the Middle East between Israel and Iran. This is a propaganda war using Artificial Intelligence/AI systems to come up with the most compelling and convincing propaganda. The Israelis have a qualitative edge while the Iranians have a larger population to work with. This advantage is diminished by the fact that the religious government of Iran is unpopular with most Iranians. Since the religious leaders, or Ayatollahs, began running the economy, the economy has been a mess. The Ayatollahs tend to be honest but they have family members who are not and are often very corrupt. These children and other kin of the Ayatollahs make the most of their opportunities and that is resented by the majority of Iranians. Israel has taken advantage of this by supporting the Iranian resistance. They do this with money, weapons and advisors.
There are still a lot of descendants of Iranian Jews in Israel When Israel was founded in 1949 the Jews living in Moslem countries throughout the region, were no longer welcome. They fled to Israel where they could find safety and more prosperity than was available in their previous homelands. It also provide the Israeli secret service, the Mossad with qualified recruits for spies and intelligence analysts who could monitor what was going on in the neighboring countries. Gradually, Israel worked out peace and trade agreements with their neighbors. Egypt and Jordan were the first. Eventually the Gulf Arab states found Israel a useful ally against the Iranians. Before Iran underwent its religious revolution in the 1980s, the Israelis and the Iranian monarchy were on good terms. Many current Iranians would like to return to that relationship with Israel.
Israel and Iran have been enemies since 1979, when Iran got a new government. Out went the monarchy and in came a religious dictatorship pretending to be a democracy. The new government had elections and the nominally elective officials ran the government. There were some restrictions, with the senior religious leaders, or Ayatollahs, able to approve who could run for office. The senior Ayatollah has a job that involves more politics than religion. An important difference between Iranian religious leaders and those found in Arab countries is that the Iranians are Shia Moslems, while over 80 percent of Moslems are Sunni. Shia and Sunni usually get along, although there are some disagreements over which is the more legitimate form of Islam.
Israel takes advantage of these differences and sides with the Sunni Arabs against the Persians, as some people in the region still call the Iranians. The term Iranian began to replace Persian about a century ago but the term Persian will never completely disappear. The Shia Iranians and Sunni Arabs never got along. Until oil was discovered and exported a century ago, these differences never amounted to much. But the oil wealth changed the relationship between Iranians and Arabs. The Arabs had far more oil than the Iranians, but the Iranians used their oil to improve their armed forces. The Iranians always had a military advantage over the Gulf Arabs because Iran was a country with lots of agriculture and natural resources. The Arabs living on the adjacent Arabian Peninsula had little arable land and survived with coastal towns or cities importing goods that could be traded with the interior tribes. In the far south of the peninsula there was Yemen, which had no oil but did receive enough rain to support agr
In terms of religion, the Gulf Arabs and the Iranians saw the Israelis as enemies of Islam and a group that must be destroyed and removed from the region. The Israelis proved impressively resistant to these extermination efforts. Over the last few decades the Gulf Arabs have come to see the prosperous and militarily powerful Israel as a useful ally. This was especially true as Iran moved closer to developing nuclear weapons. This was something no one else in the region wanted to happen. The nations that bought the Persian Gulf oil agreed with that assessment.
All this played a role in the massive June Israeli-American air strikes on Iran that eliminated most Iranian offensive weapons and production facilities for those weapons. The Israeli informant network in Iran identified key military, intelligence and security officials who could be killed during the attack.
Israeli military planners took advantage of how Iranian leaders misunderstood what was going on. The Iranians believed that Israel would take no action before the next round of nuclear weapons negotiations. Iran believed that it was all Israeli propaganda to obtain concessions from Iran. This was a fatal mistake, because the Iranians failed to implement their safety protocols. These included leadership only meeting in secure locations. Instead the leaders met at a military base and Israeli operatives inside Iran noted this and reported it.
Israel has hundreds of operatives inside Iran. Most are Iranians dissatisfied with the religious dictatorship misruling the country. Most Iranian leaders don’t believe the Israelis could recruit and use these operatives. As in so many other areas, the Iranian misunderstood what was really going on. In 2018 it was these operatives that allowed Israel to get half a ton of Iranian nuclear weapons program documents out of the country. Iranian arrogance about Israeli capabilities has often turned into a fatal flaw.
Israel exploiting Iranian errors has worked multiple times because Iranian leaders refuse to believe the Israelis would operate like that, that their own people hate them so much that they willingly cooperate with Israeli intelligence, and in particular that Israel has penetrated Iran’s regime security forces. Yet, during the June 13 Israeli attack the Iranians once more made some very expensive miscalculations. Israel managed to kill several senior military leaders, destroyed most Iranian air defense systems, ballistic missile operations, and crippled, with an assist from the Americans, the underground nuclear material processing operations.
The June 13 attacks made Iran’s leaders very angry and they retaliated, but all they could launch were about a hundred missiles and drones which survived the Israeli attack. Some got through, caused about two dozen Israeli casualties and damaged some buildings. Iran made some subsequent attacks that caused more damage.
Meanwhile Iranian problems are multiplying and escalating. These include a new program to cripple Iranian oil exports by imposing severe financial penalties on nations that buy Iranian oil. This will not halt oil sales but will reduce them to a certain extent and reduce the amount of cash Iran has to cause mischief in the region.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei survived because the American B2 bombers that damaged Iranian underground nuclear facilities were not used to kill him. The Israelis and Americans agreed that it was best to leave Khamenei alone. He was a known unpleasant quantity. His successor would likely be worse.
In the end this brief Iran-Israeli war left over 5,000 Iranians dead or wounded. Israel lost 29 dead and nearly 3,500 injured. Iranian errors and Israeli ingenuity and quick action won again. The war did not end, but the Iranians got another reminder that the Israelis are not to be underestimated. Next time should be different, because the Iranians never stop trying.
FYEO
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 11:17 am: Edit |
Hamas AGREED to return the dead bodies immediately. How things 'normally' work isn't relevant.
You seem to insist that Hamas gets to ignore any part of the agreement it wants to. What does an agreement mean if one side can arbitrarily ignore parts of what they promised?
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 12:06 pm: Edit |
I am not saying this is factually correct, but the BBC are saying the signed agreement did not explicity state all the deceased (on both sides, as Israel are returning 15 remains for every 1 remain they receive) had to be immediately returned/by Monday evening for Hamas (and the remains going in the other direction shortly afterwards).
The BBC have updated this and they are now saying 'Israel has called on Hamas to "make all necessary efforts" to recover the bodies of the remaining 21 deceased hostages as agreed' - which would seem to support their initial point, as Hamas either may not have 'all the deceased remains'(other groups may have them or the people who buried the remains are dead?) or that the remains are buried in rubble/tunnels, which needs heavy lifting equipment (which they have asked for).
I agree Hamas may be delaying - which could be seen as breaking the agreement, but returning all the bodies by close of play on Monday, was not possible - and that was accepted by both parties in the agreement?
| By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 02:37 pm: Edit |
What I am saying is simple: the matter of return of the dead should have been one of those matter solved later. Of course the public opinion in Israel wouldn't accept that, even if the government had considered that course. International mediators, Trump et al, could possibly have come up with an acceptable compromise that meant that the return of the dead wouldn't derail the whole agreement. They may still do that.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 03:39 pm: Edit |
Should have been isn't relevant. Doing what both side AGREED to do is relevant. War is a nasty business no matter what, and nobody outside the war gets to say "this side should give up that point because I think that would be nice."
| By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 06:36 pm: Edit |
Alex as far as I am concerned the whole lot of them can starve. You send in aid. Just like happens in Africa and other countries. The Aid comes in and is then taken by the terrorist's freedom fighters are whatever they call themselves. Money does not go to the starving people.
Do you think Russia are China would allow such an attack on their people. There would have been Genocide on any group that would try what Hammas did.
No the world HATES JEWS whatever.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 - 11:29 pm: Edit |
I had to do some digging since this kind of stuff doesn't go into the kind of press normal people read.
In the negotiations, Israel said "and you will give us all of the bodies right up front" and Hamas said "Gee, we cannot find them all, but give us a month of aid and ceasefire and we will do what we can to find them." Israel said "not good enough" and "we know you are lying so hand over the bodies first thing." This went back and forth. Trump insisted that it was probably true that at least some of the bodies would be hard to find. So they included provisions to mount a search for the ones Hamas honestly couldn't find. The word "honestly" remained a sticking point. Finally, Hamas said "fine, put it in there we have to deliver all of them, but in the real world we're going to do the best we can and you're just gonna have to accept it." Israel said "if WE don't think you're doing the best you honestly can, if WE think you are holding some back when you have them at hand, will will choke the aid flow." Hamas said "fine, we'll sign, we do our best, and the world will demand you accept whatever WE say is OUR best" and Israel said "We know you're lying, we know you will lie, and YOU know what WE will do when we catch you at it."
The key point is that Israel Intelligence knew very •••• well that Hamas had at least 18 or 19 bodies ready to hand over, and that two or three were going to be hard to find, and that the others would be easier to find.
So Hamas is lying and Israel does know it and everyone agreed that this aid choke was what would happen in the end. Expect Hamas to hand over a body now and then -- just enough to keep Israel from going Medieval on them.
There are deals in writing and there are deals both sides know are not worth the paper they were written on.
| By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 12:20 am: Edit |
What I expected. It is all a show and the guns will speak soon again.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 12:30 am: Edit |
Did you really think we had achieved "everlasting peace"? Be careful or I will arrange for Greta Thunberg to go home to Sweden.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 02:24 am: Edit |
Thanks SVC, it looks like the BBC was correct about the explicit need for all remains to be immediately handed over was NOT part of the agreement.
Best endeveour springs to mind.
Hopefully it's a valid question - how succesful was Israel in Killing Hamas senior leadership (who might have know where all the bodies was?
About the best analogy I can think of is the Simpsons Epsiode where Homer gets cloned - and he drives them out int to the middle of nowhere.... and asks -
"Who can remember the way home..." - after the 3rd clone who raised their hand is shot.... the others put their hands down.
With the Hamas 'Civil War' possibly going on - would you put your hand up to annouce you know where some of the bodies might be?
As I said earlier in the week - if the general location of a remain is known - could a speciast search team be sent in (and if required, a Palestinian becomes a 'guest' of the Israeli Government, like a traditional hostag/guest often used historically to keep the other side honest)?
That might return the remains earlier AND force Hamas to act/show it is acting as speedily as is possible?
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 09:01 am: Edit |
Paul and the BBC, one again, pull one detail out of a basket and impute a totally different basket. The agreement does definitely say ALL bodies, and while it provides an exception, Hamas is known to have grossly and deliberately failed to keep its “best efforts” promise. The Israeli response to this perfidy was also baked into the original agreement.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 10:01 am: Edit |
Not sure how you read that - did I not say Hamas might well be delaying the handing over of the bodies (my 12.06 post yesterday)?
But as an example that both sides need to do better :-
"Both Israel and Hamas are complaining to mediators that the terms of this ceasefire deal have been breached.
Hamas has been saying that, since it came into effect, more than 20 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, four were killed in the past 24 hours.
The dispute over the return of 19 hostages’ bodies still held by Hamas remains a major threat to this fragile truce."
I would guess 'not killing the other side ' was part of the agreement - and 20 people (yes, allegidly, but Israel stopped the free press reporting in Gaza, so we only have 1 biased (supporting Hamas and against Israel, within areas not controled by Israel, to make that clear) reporting these incidents) killed seems to be fairly signficant?
May be those 20 people were threatening Israeli troops (as alleged by Israel) - or some were and some/all were innocent, we will not know for a while - but 20 people dead on one side (with zero reports of casualties on the other side), hardly seems like a cease fire?
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 11:02 am: Edit |
'it looks like the BBC was correct'
More complicated than that, as I said, you're pulling one walnut out of a basket and imputing a different basket.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 16, 2025 - 01:42 pm: Edit |
Attrition: Ukraine Destroyed the Last Russian AWACS Aircraft
October 16, 2025: Last year Russia lost the last of its A-50 AWACS/Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft. It took nearly a year before anyone could confirm that Russia had lost its last AWACS aircraft over Ukraine. Since then Russia tried to get the new A-100 AWACS into service but, as of this year only two prototypes exist and neither of them is capable of operating as an AWAS because of missing components and lack of testing a completed aircraft.
In Ukraine Russia used its A-50U aircraft to track Ukrainian aircraft in flight and the location of Ukrainian ground radars while also finding targets in Ukraine for Russian missile attacks. Russia suspects that the Ukrainians used their S-300 and Patriot Anti-aircraft missile systems to stage a trap to ambush the A-50U destroyed in early 2024. The Russians noted how this S-300/Patriot trap worked and avoided it during the February incident that saw the second A-50U shot down. The Ukrainians outsmarted the Russians twice and to avoid another such incident Russia has withdrawn T-50Us from anywhere near Ukrainian airspace. Russia cannot afford to lose anymore A-50Us. If Russia lost another A-50U they would no longer be able to maintain round-the-clock surveillance of Ukrainian airspace.
Russia built about 40 A-50U aircraft/Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft at a cost of about $350 million each. Russia cannot afford to build any new ones because they don’t have access to the Western components required. In 2019 the Russian Air described in some detail the capabilities of this new version. In 2015 A-50Us were spotted operating in Syria, where the first four A-50Us delivered were apparently getting some practical experience in a combat zone. In Syria American and Israeli aircraft were active and available for the A-50U to practice their new detection and tracking capabilities on. The Syrian experience also made it possible to tweak the A-50U capabilities in spotting large naval and land targets and directing airstrikes at them.
The new U version entered service in 2011 but foreign ELINT electronic intelligence experts did not have a good opportunity to see how effective it was until 2015. To do that you have to get your ELINT aircraft close to an A-50U in a combat zone. In this case, the most effective ELINT aircraft turned out to be several American F-22s stealth fighters quietly, and apparently undetected, operating over Syria. Officially the F-22s were there to perform missions where effective stealth was a requirement. That meant reconnaissance missions during periods when the Russians or Syrians were angry at the U.S. Russia had some of its most modern electronic warfare systems operational and vulnerable to close examination by American and Israeli ELINT. The A-50U was apparently unable to detect the F-22.
While both the Ukrainians and Americans have defeated the A-50U, this Russian AWACs is still effective against Chinese and other foreign aircraft. Russia is saving its A-50Us for aircraft it can safely detect and track.
Back in 2012 Russia upgraded its A-50 AWACS and the first of these A-50Us entered service. The A-50 AWACS entered service in 1984 and 40 were built by the time the Cold War ended. In the 1990s most of the A-50s didn't fly much at all. The A-50 is based on the Il-76 transport. After over a decade of development the A-50 became a growing presence in Russian air operations during the 1980s.
The inspiration for the A-50 was the U.S. Air Force E-3 AWACS, which entered service in 1977. This was a continuation of AWACS development that began in 1944. The first AWACS appeared in 1945, when the U.S. Navy deployed radar equipped aircraft to control large numbers of airborne warplanes in combat. The Navy continued developing airborne early warning and control aircraft in the 1950s with the introduction of the E-1 and replaced it with the E-2 in the early 1970s and the E-3 in 1977. This model is still in service and 68 were built between 1977 and 1992.
The A-50 used less capable technology than the U.S. AWACS. The A-50 radar only had a range of 200 kilometers, compared to 400 for the E-3. The A-50 upgrade uses modern digital, rather than analog systems and has a max range of 600 kilometers. The new computers allowed 150 aircraft to be tracked and this was done more quickly and with fewer equipment breakdowns. The A-50U could control ten warplanes at a time, while these aircraft perform air-to-air or ground attack missions. The upgrade was actually underway when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and was dormant until money became available to revive it two decades ago.
China bought some of the older A-50s and was so dissatisfied that they switched to a new AWACS design based on the Boeing 737-800 airliner. The 157 ton Il-76 jet is considered less reliable and more expensive to maintain than the twin engine, 79 ton, Boeing 737-800. Chinese airlines, some of them controlled by the Chinese Air Force, have been using the 737-800 since 1999, a year after this model entered service. So no matter how much Russia upgrades the A-50 they are still stuck with an expensive aircraft that is much less capable than American models.
| By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, October 17, 2025 - 02:08 am: Edit |
"WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The admiral who leads U.S. military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, two years ahead of schedule, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Thursday, in a surprise move amid escalating tensions with Venezuela"
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, October 17, 2025 - 05:57 pm: Edit |
Fox news is reporting that the F.B.I. Has made an arrest.
“the arrest of Palestinian national Mahmoud Amin Ya-qub Al-Muhtadi, a resident of Lafayette, Louisiana.”
It is reported that Mahmoud Amin Ya-gub Al-Muhtadi heard about the Hamas October 7th attacks, and gathering several other people , entered Israel from Palestine to assist Hamas.
I imagine more details will be forthcoming, but as of now, that is all I have found.
| By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, October 17, 2025 - 07:33 pm: Edit |
From reading the criminal complaint, he looks to be a real piece of work, up well over his eyebrows in the NRB (one of the paramilitary outfits that took part in the 7 Oct 23 attacks).
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