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

obj 705A said:

About 200 U.S. troops injured since start of U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran: command

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Xinhua) -- About 200 U.S. troops have been injured since the United States and Israel launched massive attacks on Iran more than two weeks ago, a spokesperson with the U.S. Central Command said on Monday.

The injuries happened across seven Middle East countries, namely Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to U.S. Central Command spokesperson Tim Hawkins.

Among the injured, 10 service members were seriously wounded and over 180 others have been treated and returned to duty, said Hawkins.

A U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft on Thursday went down in western Iraq, raising the known death toll of the U.S. military to 13 since the U.S.-Israeli strikes were launched on Feb. 28, the command said.

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200 injured and 13 dead as far as the official figures go, so total 213 casualties in two weeks... this is an absolute disaster. the actual invasion didn't even start yet and already the US suffered that many casualties and Iran so far didn't seem like they were going after troop concentrations, rather they were going after air defence systems and airports. and these people want to invade and fight it out in those vast mountains?

forget about Iran becoming a quagmire for the empire. if they do invade the empire would be buried forever in Iran.

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BoraTas said:

Offensive munition use in the first 96 hours according to FPRI

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gwel said:

I am aware of the limitations, these missiles are only interesting because they constitute the bulk of the USN stockpile of SM's.
They are so short on missiles that even with that bulk of SM-2 they can barely fill every VLS cell on every ship, if you strip these SM-2 away then a lot of VLS cells would be empty.

So I presume that SM-2 are on board of most if not all ships and are used over the rare SM-3 and SM-6 whenever possible.
There is an extended capability SM-2 but it uses an SM-6 seeker which is production rate limited, so it doesn't really fix any of the ammunition shortage issues. Seems merely a capability extension.

I found some speculation and rumours and some very flimsy math on those SM-2 numbers which do not add up.
Apparently the 8,500-8,800 stockpile number is calculated from the baseline of 12,000 total produced SM-2 in some old report, minus all the expenditures which happened.
But it is questionable if these 8,500-8,800 missiles actually exist. A lot of "procurement" was actually modernisation of existing missiles, and they did a lot of seeker swaps and the like, it is not straightforward to tell.
Also the older Block I and Block II and even some Block III were build for arm launchers, not VLS cells and it is unknown how many got converted.

But I found no reliable citable source for this and you have to pull together many sources and do some flimsy math to get there.
Would explain the 2,500 number from the FPRI report though. It seems likely that SM-2 stockpiles are much lower than the big numbers which are floating around.

If anyone has more solid numbers, I would be interested.
Ironically we have pretty good numbers on SM-3 and SM-6 but this bulk of SM-2 has been a ghostly mystery to me.

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gwel said:

Full table and some additional info

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I find it curious that they lump SM-2, 3 and 6 together. SM-2 stocks should be in the high thousands, SM-3 and 6 in the hundreds.
On purpose maybe?

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