2026 Israel-US vs. Iran conflict [Military updates/News Only]

CasualObserver

Senior Member
Registered Member
Something small enough for a tactical fighter to survive such a clean hit.
Majid perhaps?

Tbh interesting also that F-35 wasn't maneuvering out of the way. Did EODAS fail?
Regardless of whether the released footage is authentic or not, this is unequivocally an IR missile engagement, i.e., a passive hit. Even if the F-35’s DAS detects the missile before impact, the pilot who's being fed tons of info at the same time in while an active warzone has only a few seconds to react before impact.

In retrospect, they absolutely should have equipped the F-35 with a DIRCM , since it's a low observable fighter tasked with deep strikes; i.e., lobbing JDAMs and GBUs at stand-in distances. The Americans never directly target peer or near-peer countries anyway, so the only credible threat capable of shooting it down that those countries have fielded is dispersed IR-guided AD missile systems - even cheap missiles like a 358 or 359.

I see many people who do not question the American claims of air supremacy all over Iran. From what we've seen, the picture is actually quite transparent: the US and Israel have opened yet another corridor to a capital, but they do not have supremacy over anywhere else in Iran except the coastal areas. And most of the attacks are also focused on the larger Tehran area since Iran is such a huge country. You might've even noticed that we mostly get FLIR footage from drones, which get shot down in the countryside all the time.

-----------------------

 
Last edited:

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
View attachment 171892
First footage, and holy shit
It is a very interesting image that basically saying that in front of today's infrared sensors reducing heat of the exhaust is NOT making meaningful difference from not doing it at all. The fuselage is brighter and much larger than the exhaust in the image making the reduction of exhaust size and brightness irrelevant regardless F-35 or F-22 style.

This suggests that 6th Gen fighter must pay equal or even higher attention to reduce the fuselage heat signiture. It is much more chanllenging than reducing exhaust signiture.
 

Chevalier

Major
Registered Member
Re European allies refusing to join Trump and the U.S. navy in reopening the strait of Hormuz, why doesn’t Trump invoke Article V?
An attack on one is an attack on all and the destruction of the HQ of the US 5th fleet and other U.S. bases at the hands of Iran would count as such an attack, no?
The nation countries may not like it but they are bound by nato, are they not?
 

sheogorath

Colonel
Registered Member
Re European allies refusing to join Trump and the U.S. navy in reopening the strait of Hormuz, why doesn’t Trump invoke Article V?
An attack on one is an attack on all and the destruction of the HQ of the US 5th fleet and other U.S. bases at the hands of Iran would count as such an attack, no?
The nation countries may not like it but they are bound by nato, are they not?
Hard to claim article 5 when everybody knows you started it, though.

Is not helped by the amount of resources tied and wasted in Ukraine, so european NATO members will go for every caveat they can find.
 

Atomicfrog

Major
Registered Member
Re European allies refusing to join Trump and the U.S. navy in reopening the strait of Hormuz, why doesn’t Trump invoke Article V?
An attack on one is an attack on all and the destruction of the HQ of the US 5th fleet and other U.S. bases at the hands of Iran would count as such an attack, no?
The nation countries may not like it but they are bound by nato, are they not?
If Iran attacked them first it could be an Article V situation, but it has not.

Capabilities of Iran make a bunch of European countries in range of retaliation strikes.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 

Chevalier

Major
Registered Member
Regardless of whether the released footage is authentic or not, this is unequivocally an IR missile engagement, i.e., a passive hit. Even if the F-35’s DAS detects the missile before impact, the pilot who's being fed tons of info at the same time in while an active warzone has only a few seconds to react before impact.

In retrospect, they absolutely should have equipped the F-35 with a DIRCM , since it's a low observable fighter tasked with deep strikes; i.e., lobbing JDAMs and GBUs at stand-in distances. The Americans never directly target peer or near-peer countries anyway, so the only credible threat capable of shooting it down that those countries have fielded is dispersed IR-guided AD missile systems - even cheap missiles like a 358 or 359.

I see many people who do not question the American claims of air supremacy all over Iran. From what we've seen, the picture is actually quite transparent: the US and Israel have opened yet another corridor to a capital, but they do not have supremacy over anywhere else in Iran except the coastal areas. And most of the attacks are also focused on the larger Tehran area since Iran is such a huge country. You might've even noticed that we mostly get FLIR footage from drones, which get shot down in the countryside all the time.

-----------------------

Russian S-300 prob had a hand in this, a worthy riposte for the sinking of Moskva
 

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
With the frequency of strikes, there is probably repeated flight paths that those planes are taking in country. It's simply a case of camping out one of those spots with IR based missiles and springing an ambush during a flyover. I.e same playbook used in the shootdown of the F-117. A consequence of the drone attrition perhaps? Without constant overwatch the hidden AA have a lot more latitude to perform these types of attacks.
The size of a plane compared to even a small strike corridor is tiny so camping any particular place doesn't actually work.

An extremely thin 1 km wide strike corridor, for instance, is still 50x the wingspan of a 20 m span plane.
 
Top