[Breaking News] US base in Iraq struck by Iranian and Iraqi militia missiles.

[Shadowferal]

Questions remain after Trump’s speech on Iran, experts say

[Breccia]

Fact-checking Trump’s address on the Iran missile attacks

Related:

Former national security adviser Susan Rice called him out on pretty much all of those, and also, the briefing Team Trump gave the Senate was so poor even the GOP feel insulted that Trump tried that shit.

A furious Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) emerged from Wednesday's classified briefing by the Trump administration on the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, calling it "insulting and demeaning" that briefers instructed senators not to debate the appropriateness of further military action against Iran.

Lee said that he entered the briefing "undecided" on whether to vote for a Senate resolution curbing President Trump's military action toward Iran and left the briefing "decided."

It's rare to see a Republican senator so harshly rebuke the Trump administration, but Lee — along with fellow libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — did not hold back on condemning officials for suggesting that members of Congress debating military action would further embolden Iran.

"They were asked repeatedly, what, if anything, would trigger the need for the administration to come back to Congress for a declaration of war or an Authorization for the Use of Military Force," Lee added. "At one point, I believe one of the briefers said something like, “I’m sure we can think of something.” But they struggled to identify anything."

"But surely he didn't say --"

They're appearing before a co-equal branch of government responsible for their funding, for their confirmation, for any approval of any military action they might undertake. They had to leave after 75 minutes, while they were in the process of telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public. I find that absolutely insane. I think it's unacceptable.

"Oh. Huh."

Yep. Remember for the last 1700 pages or so when we said "Trump doesn't listen to anyone and therefore will make mistakes"? And some of us even said "including starting a war via tweet"? Aaaaaaaaaaand scene.

[caervek]

Appears it wasn't a one night thing

[Thekri]

How strong do you think a jammer has to be to render a civilian drone useless? You could probably jam it with a garage door remote or a cellphone tuned to the right frequency.

Oh, I know this one. So I actually did a lot of counter-drone operations when I was doing security for an airfield. Primary threat was local idiots flying around the sort of quadcopters that you can buy on Amazon.

Turns out the answer is that it is really hard to jam the signals to those things, at least without screwing up a wide swath of city behind it. Yes, if you use a powerful military grade jammer, it will work, but you also sweep that across the city behind it, and fry every laptop, cell phone, and toaster oven in about 20 city blocks. Also jamming works across specific frequency ranges, so if they are using the factory default settings (Which are usually pretty close to Wi-Fi frequencies), you can target them okish. But if they changed the frequency, which is fairly easy to do, then it becomes a frustrating game of cat and mouse to figure out what to jam. Unless you do the military broadband jamming thing I referenced earlier, which has massive collateral damage.

Individual commercial drones are extremely challenging security threat. Most major airports uses birds of prey do bring them down, using hawks for the large ones, and eagles for the airports that can afford them (Keeping an eagle and a falconer that can use them is insanely expensive). Jamming has too much collateral damage and isn't reliable. Shotguns don't have enough range, heavier weapons have to much collateral damage. So there are no easy answers here.

[For_The_Horde]

Looks like those missiles definitely hit their marks, I'm seeing several damaged buildings/hangars.





Seems like a lot more accuracy than what we're being told.

[Thekri]

Looks like those missiles definitely hit their marks, I'm seeing several damaged buildings/hangars.





Seems like a lot more accuracy than what we're being told.

Nobody has denied the missiles hit the base (Well, some posters on here did, but no government sources). They said no casualties, because all the people were in the bunkers, not the buildings.

However this does seem to refute the "They missed on purpose" idea. Those definitely don't count as intentional misses.

[Kellhound]

Nobody has denied the missiles hit the base (Well, some posters on here did, but no government sources). They said no casualties, because all the people were in the bunkers, not the buildings.

However this does seem to refute the "They missed on purpose" idea. Those definitely don't count as intentional misses.

As far as I have been able to determine, only one permanent structure was hit. The hangers that were hit are really just oversized tents. Plus two hits to taxiways. While there is no word on any aircraft damaged, it would be hard to hit less important/safer targets on that base.

[For_The_Horde]

As far as I have been able to determine, on one permanent structure was hit. The hangers that were hit are really just oversized tents. Plus two hits to taxiways. While there is no word on any aircraft damaged, it would be hard to hit less important/safer targets on that base.

Yeah, really wonder what they usually keep in those things.

[Jessicka]

You have no idea what a Compass Call is....

There is more than one kind of jamming.

A soft kill is operationally as good as a hard kill.

I dunno man, announcing your positions like that to a recon/spotter drone seems like a bad idea. You’re doing it’s job for it.

I may be sketchy on a compass call, but you seem pretty sketchy on how drones work.

So to go back to the original question of whether they can be stopped with a simple RF jammer, the answer is not if it’s any more sophisticated than a £200 quadcopter, which is little more than a radio controlled aircraft. Once you give it autonomous control and pre-programmed commands, and actually have a drone, then the answer is probably no, and if it’s being operated in a way you can, are you sure you want to do that?

- - - Updated - - -

Nobody has denied the missiles hit the base (Well, some posters on here did, but no government sources). They said no casualties, because all the people were in the bunkers, not the buildings.

However this does seem to refute the "They missed on purpose" idea. Those definitely don't count as intentional misses.

There’s no “they missed on purpose” idea. It’s a “they avoided killing anyone on purpose” idea.

I mean, the whole concept of surgical strikes that take out assets with minimal casualties has supposedly been the American ideal since the first gulf war.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, really wonder what they usually keep in those things.

For me it’s kind of irrelevant whether they took out a few million dollars worth of Predators and Reapers with a few thousand dollars worth of ballistics they had gathering dust or not. They seem to have shown they are certainly capable of it.

I think that was the point the more hawkish people want to miss.

[Breccia]

Former national security adviser Susan Rice called him out on pretty much all of those, and also, the briefing Team Trump gave the Senate was so poor even the GOP feel insulted that Trump tried that shit.

Update: Mike Lee is not alone. Rand Paul is also insulted.

- - - Updated - - -

However this does seem to refute the "They missed on purpose" idea.

I'm nowhere near as familiar with military firepower and its capabilities as @Skroe is, but I'm getting an eerie parallel between this and Trump's much-self-celebrated pothole creation on a Syrian air base. "Missed on purpose" could mean "missed killing people on purpose"

Or, yeah, Iran could just be lying.

[Mormolyce]

You have no argument so you derail the conversation to a different topic, nice.

You have no response to my argument so you try to deflect lol. I'll take that as a concession of defeat.

[Fgalipios]

Nobody has denied the missiles hit the base (Well, some posters on here did, but no government sources). They said no casualties, because all the people were in the bunkers, not the buildings.

However this does seem to refute the "They missed on purpose" idea. Those definitely don't count as intentional misses.

Your credibility on this issue is somewhat dented by being the type of cunt who stands guard over proxy forces that rape kids.

[Mormolyce]

Have you ever been on the US side? When you have comments like this regarding 9/11 attacks on the US:

I have never been on any country's side in any serious sense. That would be stupid, countries are not people, they're cynical alignments of the short term, poorly thought out interests of certain wealthy people. They're pretty much all evil, insofar as they exist at all, it's just a question of degree.

Honestly my opinion on 9/11 has changed over time. I used to think the US was a corrupt country run by plutocrats, enabled by a public that's at least 50% either brain dead or evil, which exercised nothing but cynical self-interest on the world stage. It was supposed to be a beacon for democracy and freedom, but in reality it was the opposite.

That was pre-Bush Administration and pre-Trump. I now realise I had severely overestimated it.

[Orbitus]

Your credibility on this issue is somewhat dented by being the type of cunt who stands guard over proxy forces that rape kids.

I mean, how would you know? You literally created your account today.

[Fgalipios]

I mean, how would you know? You literally created your account today.

"Hi my names Orbitus, I like to deflect criticism from gut-wrenchingly stupid US militarists who enable paedophiles with tangential deflection. I'm a great human being"

[Orbitus]

"Hi my names Orbitus, I like to deflect criticism from gut-wrenchingly stupid US militarists who enable paedophiles with tangential deflection. I'm a great human being"

And thanks for playing, whatever account you had before, is going to have a longer time off the forums.

[Thekri]

Yeah, really wonder what they usually keep in those things.

Nah, those were maintenance hangers for the helicopters you see on the flight line next to them. The Drone squadron would have its own hangers and flight line.

Anyway, of the strikes we see in that picture, only the one on those hangers seems to be precise, and maybe the one on the ECP. Shooting ballistic missiles into hangers has a very good chance of killing someone, so the "Not aiming to kill people" doesn't really work. If you are trying to damage an airfield without killing people you hit the runways and taxiways, you don't hit buildings where people live and work.

So either they were precise, and the US was very fortunate that our early warning system worked, and we got everyone in bunkers, or that particular shot was rather lucky. My guess is somewhere in the middle, that the missiles were accurate enough to hit the populated part of the base, but not accurate enough to hit specific buildings with any precision (Hence the 3, possibly 4 hits in the first picture that don't seem to have hit anything important).

[GreenJesus]

Oh, I know this one. So I actually did a lot of counter-drone operations when I was doing security for an airfield. Primary threat was local idiots flying around the sort of quadcopters that you can buy on Amazon.

Turns out the answer is that it is really hard to jam the signals to those things, at least without screwing up a wide swath of city behind it. Yes, if you use a powerful military grade jammer, it will work, but you also sweep that across the city behind it, and fry every laptop, cell phone, and toaster oven in about 20 city blocks. Also jamming works across specific frequency ranges, so if they are using the factory default settings (Which are usually pretty close to Wi-Fi frequencies), you can target them okish. But if they changed the frequency, which is fairly easy to do, then it becomes a frustrating game of cat and mouse to figure out what to jam. Unless you do the military broadband jamming thing I referenced earlier, which has massive collateral damage.

Individual commercial drones are extremely challenging security threat. Most major airports uses birds of prey do bring them down, using hawks for the large ones, and eagles for the airports that can afford them (Keeping an eagle and a falconer that can use them is insanely expensive). Jamming has too much collateral damage and isn't reliable. Shotguns don't have enough range, heavier weapons have to much collateral damage. So there are no easy answers here.

Am I retarded? By "hawks" and "eagles" do you mean birds trained to take down drones? Cause if so that is fucking epic. I want to see video.

[Jessicka]

Am I retarded? By "hawks" and "eagles" do you mean birds trained to take down drones? Cause if so that is fucking epic. I want to see video.

There are loads of videos. But those aren’t drones; they’re not autonomous. They have cheap fly-by-wire systems that let idiots control them without crashing instantly, nothing more.

There’s a world of difference between those, the survey drones I use (which are autonomous) and military drones armed with Hellfire missiles which are mostly autonomous aside from asking for authorisation to kill people.

[jonnysensible]

Hey @Thekri you ever do anything involving that gorgon stare drone??