2025 Israel - Iranian conflict

tamsen_ikard

Senior Member
Registered Member
So it was seven B-2’s in the strike on top of the other six that were reported on? If so, that represents a significant amount of the operational B-2 force deployed.

Outside of that, that is an impressive amount of range and endurance displayed by the aircraft and crew.
No B-2 was moving to Guam, it was all a decoy plane spoofing B-2 transponder.
 

iBBz

Junior Member
Registered Member
So based on what I'm seeing today, it appears this US strike was political theater. It achieved nothing. Iran is not defeated or degraded. There are multiple reports indicating Iran may have already evacuated these nuclear sites in advance and that nothing of value was damaged other than the buildings themselves.

Also regarding criticism of Iran not pivoting to Russia or China yesterday, Scott Ritter brought up a good point regarding why Iran refused a a military alliance with Russia. He referenced Putin's "Israel is almost an extension of Russia due to the millions of Russian speakers in it" speech, and determined that Iran did the right thing by not entering into an alliance with Russia due to the obvious conflict of interest. Regarding yesterday's suggestions of Iran pivoting to China, yea right. I don't know about the DPRK and what they can and are willing to do to help. Overall, Iran appears to be on it's own here and can only generate income via it's trade, mostly energy, which is very vulnerable to degradation through airstrikes.

In my opinion, Iran should not strike at US bases and give these rogue terrorists an excuse to to cry about Americans dying. Iran should just continue to strike at Israel slowly and methodically with very small salvos over an extended period of time in order to cause uncertainty and panic, and hope to cause a migration crisis or an uprising of some sort. I'm not sure how dangerous it is for Iran to blockade Hormuz. This may very well turn them into an enemy of the entire region, but if they do that, they also have the extra option to put forth an ultimatum to the Gulf losers, offer to kick the Americans out of their states or have their infrastructure (oil, gas, desalination) kicked out instead.

Feel free to delete this post if it's not allowed, or add to it if you like.
 

Sinnavuuty

Captain
Registered Member
No B-2 was moving to Guam, it was all a decoy plane spoofing B-2 transponder.
General Dan Caine detailed how the U.S. carried out the strike, saying it involved more than 125 U.S. aircraft, including dozens of aerial refueling aircraft, a guided-missile submarine, and the firing of approximately 75 Tomahawk missiles. Caine explained that around midnight on Friday, a “strike package” of seven B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman AFB in Missouri, flying east for 18 hours straight, with “minimal communications,” toward the “Target Area.” Caine said that at the same time, another group of B-2s took off west over the Pacific to act as decoys: reports emerged throughout the day on Saturday that a group of the bombers was headed toward the U.S. base in Guam.
 
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TK3600

Major
Registered Member
The B-2 weren’t flying unescorted. They were covered by a squadron of EW aircraft jamming any and all radars in vicinity (plus drone jammers) and loaded up with HARMs ready to take out any pop up threat at the blink of an eye. With effective jamming, the B-2s would be practically invisible to Iran’s radar. The range of the MOP is undisclosed, but likely in the range of 5-10km when dropped from high altitude for maximum penetration. Not like they could just point a radar straight up and get an instant lock on target, as the bombers wouldn’t directly fly over.
Choose one, B-2 flying unprotected undetected, or had jammers screaming all over the place it is coming.

If GBU is used it is 100% a direct flying over, not a long range attack. A random mig in the sky could have seen it with their eyeballs.
 

Sinnavuuty

Captain
Registered Member
Choose one, B-2 flying unprotected undetected, or had jammers screaming all over the place it is coming.

If GBU is used it is 100% a direct flying over, not a long range attack. A random mig in the sky could have seen it with their eyeballs.
It doesn't matter!!!!

Suppression is precisely about forcing the SAMs to turn off their radars. An escort that has jammed the entire air corridor from Iran to the B-2 is safer than simply sending a lone B-2 to bomb a sensitive/critical facility in a not entirely permissive environment, where the chances of being shot down are much higher.

For SEAD/DEAD, they had:

Electronic warfare (EW):
➡️ G550 Shavit SIGINT/EW
➡️ EA-18G Growler (active jamming and radar suppression)

Standoff munitions:
➡️ Tomahawk (EW variant)
➡️ Delilah (precision standoff SEAD)
➡️ Rampage (supersonic standoff)
➡️ AGM-142 Have Nap

Kinetic delivery on target:
➡️ F-16 (AGM-88 HARM)
➡️ F/A-18E/F (HARM)
➡️ F-35I (Spice 1000/Delilah in direct SEAD roles after initial jamming)

It is worth noting that there are EW Tomahawk variants used in SEAD to be paired with real-time ISR (e.g. MQ-9, G550) to manage adaptive radar frequencies.

Also, I believe the MOP range is something like 5-10 km, considering the altitude it launches the GBU-57, but because of GPS/EM interference, I believe they advanced even closer to Fordow and Natanz to bomb the facilities.
 

jiajia99

Junior Member
Registered Member
General Dan Caine detailed how the U.S. carried out the strike, saying it involved more than 125 U.S. aircraft, including dozens of aerial refueling aircraft, a guided-missile submarine, and the firing of approximately 75 Tomahawk missiles. Caine explained that around midnight on Friday, a “strike package” of seven B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman AFB in Missouri, flying east for 18 hours straight, with “minimal communications,” toward the “Target Area.” Caine said that at the same time, another group of B-2s took off west over the Pacific to act as decoys: reports emerged throughout the day on Saturday that a group of the bombers was headed toward the U.S. base in Guam.
Must be a costly exercise that cannot be repeated very often, I mean think about how much resource and money it would cost just to make Iran close of an important choke point, sounds almost beyond stupid at this point. If the USA really wanted to make a real statement, it would’ve used real nukes and actually struck the locations that really process actually nukes or nuclear power station, not an obvious mark up that in reality didn’t really impact much. Some people were literally saying that Iran would surrender just from this and lo and behold, the truth is that it did jack shit. Maybe these people should exercise the time old statement ‘wait and see’ before descending into all out sensationalism that makes them look positively stupid. In the end, playing this card early means that countermeasures will eventually develop to render such a strike less likely to work in the future, not a very good look from some that says that he intends to not take the USA into war
 

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
It doesn't matter!!!!

Suppression is precisely about forcing the SAMs to turn off their radars. An escort that has jammed the entire air corridor from Iran to the B-2 is safer than simply sending a lone B-2 to bomb a sensitive/critical facility in a not entirely permissive environment, where the chances of being shot down are much higher.

For SEAD/DEAD, they had:

Electronic warfare (EW):
➡️ G550 Shavit SIGINT/EW
➡️ EA-18G Growler (active jamming and radar suppression)

Standoff munitions:
➡️ Tomahawk (EW variant)
➡️ Delilah (precision standoff SEAD)
➡️ Rampage (supersonic standoff)
➡️ AGM-142 Have Nap

Kinetic delivery on target:
➡️ F-16 (AGM-88 HARM)
➡️ F/A-18E/F (HARM)
➡️ F-35I (Spice 1000/Delilah in direct SEAD roles after initial jamming)

It is worth noting that there are EW Tomahawk variants used in SEAD to be paired with real-time ISR (e.g. MQ-9, G550) to manage adaptive radar frequencies.

Also, I believe the MOP range is something like 5-10 km, considering the altitude it launches the GBU-57, but because of GPS/EM interference, I believe they advanced even closer to Fordow and Natanz to bomb the facilities.
It does matter though.

Jamming is EM loud. The plane emits noise or fake signals. If your radars are jammed you know something is there and the rough direction based on bolometry, just not what it is.

Stealth is EM quiet. The plane doesnt emit signals and redeflect signals that come to you. Your radars work, they just see nothing over the noise limit.

The 2 approaches conflict.
 

Aegrotare

New Member
Registered Member
It does matter though.

Jamming is EM loud. The plane emits noise or fake signals. If your radars are jammed you know something is there and the rough direction based on bolometry, just not what it is.

Stealth is EM quiet. The plane doesnt emit signals and redeflect signals that come to you. Your radars work, they just see nothing over the noise limit.

The 2 approaches conflict.
only if it comes from the same plane and that is not even fully true. If not they are highly potent combination .
 
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