Iran was waiting for America’s warships to arrive so that it could put its naval doctrine into practice.

What it got was a hoorde of powerful missiles, and Iran’s sinking navy never even saw the ships that fired them.

Then there was the follow-up.

Max Afterburner explains in his examination of America’s 48 hours of epic fury, stating, “With Iran’s Navy basically being a pin cushion at this point, soaking up these Tomahawk missiles, F-35s followed up, likely with JDAM bombs for precision cleanup.

This was a genius strategy by the US.

It subverted Iran’s expectations by striking Iran’s warships from afar.

And when those ships were already in disarray, the US got up close and personal in ways that Iran never expected.

This wasn’t a naval battle.

It was demolition of a force that had been set up specifically to counter a type of threat that the US never intended to present.

And it led to America negating every tactic that Iran had in just 48 hours.

As the US Naval Institute or USNI reveals, the US has been geared up for Iran’s naval tactics for years, which is what has led to America conducting such a destructive campaign against Iran’s navy.

Iran has flaunted this asymmetric naval force of missile submarines, naval mines, and anti-hship missile batteries in its threats to shut down the straight of Hmuz in previous years.

American naval forces in the region have been geared against these swarm threats, including hellfire armed seahawk helicopters aboard Abraham Lincoln, USNI says.

The mention of the Strait of Hmuz brings us back to what we mentioned about Iran’s strategy of constricting US warships and why it all fell apart for the regime.

However, what we’re now seeing may not quite be what you think you’re seeing.

On the surface, America’s firestorm of tomahawk fury seems to be about destroying Iran from a military perspective.

It isn’t, at least not entirely.

That’s according to Dr.

Andreas Bur, who is an expert on the Middle East working out of Switzerland’s University of St.

Gallen.

Bur tells the Telegraph, “If you compare their navy with Donald Trump’s big, beautiful armada, it’s more like a dwarf.

” He adds, “It’s been very much weakened by sanctions.

Its material is outdated.

And when you look at the Air Force, for example, mostly all the aircraft is from the SHA era and is US built.

It’s really old.

In other words, Iran is nowhere near as strong as it presents itself to be, whether that’s on the naval or aerial fronts.

So, what the US just pulled off wasn’t really about weakening Iran’s military, merely because that military and its navy never truly presented a threat to the US in the first place.

What America’s 48 hours of strikes are really all about is making sure that the straight of Hummus can be reopened as quickly as possible after Iran tried to shut up shop in the wake of the initial hours of operation epic fury.

The US needs that straight to stay
open as does most of the rest of the world.

And the reason why is that the straight of Hummus is among the most important transit routes.

Iran may not be capable of presenting much of a kinetic threat to the US, Bomb declares, but what they are capable of is asymmetric warfare.

And we can see this in the straight of Hummus where insurance prices have skyrocketed and companies are refraining from sending their ships through.

On the crude oil front, The Guardian reports that about 20% of all crude oil shipments have to pass through the straight of Hormuz at some point.

About 12.

5% of all the oil used by countries on the American continents transits through the straight which is dwarfed by the 45.

7% of oil that China receives from tankers that sail through the straight of Humus.

This single passage of water is a multi-billion dollar industry and Iran has been trying to take advantage of that fact by using its navy to lean on the one piece of leverage that it has in this entire conflict.

Ibrahim Jabari, who is a senior adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, made that abundantly clear on March 2nd when he said, “The strait is closed.

If anyone tries to pass, the heroes of the Revolutionary Guard and the regular Navy will set those ships ablaze.

” Jabari has also claimed that Iran will start attacking oil pipelines in the coming day and he claims that the price of oil will reach $200 per barrel.

This is obvious grandstand, but there is a seed of legitimacy to these claims given Iran’s control over the straight of moose.

However, maintaining that control requires warships, even if they are just the fast attack boats that Iran deploys.

The US has just taken those ships out of the equation.

Still, Iran’s attempts to blockade the straight of Hormuz have been successful up to this point.

Cappy army says that though some ships are going dark and trying to pass through, total transits via the straight are down by 80%.

This has always been their greatest leverage geopolitically speaking to inflict maximum pain on global markets.

Cap army adds by taking away that leverage the US also takes away the last scrap of hope that Iran had that it would come out on top in the war.

Not that you would know that if you listen to Iran’s propagandists.

They’ve already claimed that Iran unleashed a hail stom of ballistic missiles against the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is a claim that the US quickly debunked by releasing photographs of that aircraft carrier still very much in operation.

Iran has also unleashed around 400 missiles and 1,000 drones against Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

However, as Capy Army points out, this seemingly impressive number is actually far below what Iran unleashed in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer in the summer of 2025, which saw the US and Israel take out much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

It’s all starting to feel like what we’re seeing right now is the dying gasp of a regime that is trying to project power as everything that it’s built falls apart.

The Iranian naval doctrine didn’t work.

Scratch that.

Iran’s naval doctrine was so catastrophically flawed that it didn’t account for the possibility the US might use anything other than anti-hship missiles to attack the Iranian fleet.

As soon as the US changed just one piece of strategy that Iran expected it to use, Iran’s warships were toast.

And to make matters worse for Iran, the US is just getting started.

That’s according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who spoke to reporters on March 2nd to say that what Iran is dealing with now is nothing compared to what’s coming.

The hardest hits are yet to come from the US military, Rubio declared, adding that the US has done what it’s done so far to destroy the imminent threat that Iran posed.

Now, we’re seeing fronts opening up all over the Middle East as Iran’s proxies, such as the Houthis, go on the attack.

But for Iran’s regime, the damage has already been done to a navy that was expected to put up far more of a fight than it has.

Iran thought it knew what was coming from the US.

In just 48 hours, the US shattered Iran’s naval doctrine, and it’s well on the way to stripping away one piece of leverage that Iran has in this fight.

And deep in the heart of Moscow, there is one man who will be watching everything that is happening with increasing levels of distress.

Russian President Vladimir Putin knows that the collapse of Iran’s regime spells bad things for Russia.

Iran spent 47 years building its air force.

didn’t build a very good force, but it built something that it thought would at least allow it to maintain small pockets of air superiority over its own territory.

But that didn’t happen.

In just 24 hours, the US wiped out Iran’s entire air force.

It’s gone, evaporated.

A shock and all campaign has made even the prospect of an Iranian pilot taken to the sky suicidal.

And there isn’t a thing that Iran can do about any of it.

The footage reveals everything.

Shared by Max After Burner, a video released by US Central Command shows just one of the multitude of strikes the US conducted against Iran’s aging fleet of aircraft.

Sitting sullen and alone on an airfield, the Iranian jet is destroyed in a heartbeat.

And this has been happening over and over across Iran.

Every air base the US strikes results in Iranian airframes going up in flames.

And it’s gotten to the point where Iran basically has no options in the skies.

It can’t send aircraft to fight against America’s overwhelming force.

The few that it had that might be able to put up a fight are gone.

And what is left are the dregs of an air force that is decades behind the curve.

We’ll explain why in just a few minutes, but before we do, Afterburner explains what is happening to Iran’s air force right now.

They’ve completely dismantled Iran’s air force, hitting bases like Tre.

After Burner explains, looks like destroying even more F4 Phantoms, Su22 attack aircraft, ground attack aircraft mainly are being vaporized.

F-14 Tomcats, F5 Tigers, and drone sites before anything can turn a wheel.

Literally nothing is getting airborne at this point.

Aero Time adds that Israelis Air Force has confirmed that it destroyed an Iranian F4 along with an F5 at the Tre base as each of the aircraft prepared for takeoff.

So even the Iranian pilots who were willing to attempt the suicide mission of taking on the US and Israel didn’t get very far.

Both the US and Israel have also been targeting the support facilities that enable airframes to take off.

Satellite images revealed destroyed storage bunkers at the Conra base and a shattered radar system at Zahada.

These weren’t random strikes.

The US and Israel coordinated to Iranian air power before it ever had a chance to make itself known.

You’ll have already noticed that the aircraft the US is taking out would be considered old by any modern military standards.

But these airframes are the best that Iran has, and they’re being systematically destroyed by an American and Israeli bombing campaign that has already achieved the most important goal for the joint Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion, achieve complete air
superiority.

That’s according to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, who has confirmed that the US followed Israel’s lead when it came to striking Iran just a few days ago, and that the scale of these strikes has devastated Iran’s air force.

The US strikes have resulted in the establishment of local air superiority.

This air superiority will not only enhance the protection of our forces, but also allow them to continue the work over Iran, Cain declares.

For that to have happened, the US not only had to have ruined Iran’s airframes, but also destroyed the country’s air defenses.

As a little hint, the US has already done both.

We’ll be getting to Iran’s air defense situation a little later.

On the aircraft front, the US bombardments of Iran’s air bases have been so effective that not a single one of Iran’s pilots has taken off.

Iran hasn’t attempted any manned sorties during the 4-day war so far.

And frankly, any pilot who does try to take to the skies now will be engaging in a suicide mission given both the age of their aircraft and the sheer level of air superiority that the US has attained.

Iranian fighter pilots also know that it’s suicidal to go up against an F-15 Strike Eagle, F-16, F-18, or F-35.

After burner explains, America’s bombing campaign has been so successful over a 24-hour period that what was once a fleet of about 400 Iranian aircraft has been whittleled down to about 200.

In other words, what little aerial threat that Iran could have posed in the sky has been halved before a single one of its airframes could get off the ground.

And it seems likely that the US has focused most of its fire on the aircraft that could have presented something resembling a threat, which leaves Iran with an air force that is little more than a collection of poorly maintained airframes that were built decades ago.

This is what aerial domination looks like.

And the US planned it all well in advance.

That’s according to Business Insider, which reveals that the US and Israel did far more than fling missiles and bombs at Iran from its fighter jets during the opening hours of the war.

Both were much smarter than that.

They knew that for as little threat as Iran’s fighter jets posed, flying in without being prepared would still make their superior aircraft vulnerable.

The outlet reports on more comments made by Kaine, who said that the US campaign against Iran, which began on February 28th, was kicked off with the layering non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate, and respond.

What this translates to is that the US and Israel launched cyber attacks and even space commands that crippled Iran’s air force hours before the first US fighter jets took off in the direction of Tehran.

Kane says that the initial non-kinetic US approach targeted everything from Iran’s command and control facilities through to its ballistic missile sites and intelligence infrastructure in an operation that was designed to daz and confuse them.

It worked.

Before Iran even knew what was happening, up to half of its airframes were destroyed, and the air defenses that were supposed to protect them, along with other key military nodes, had completely failed to take down even a single American or Israeli jet.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio argues that the US went proactively in a defensive way with its initial round of strikes and that Iran has to get ready because the hardest hits are yet to come from the US military.

That’s the last thing that Iran’s regime wants to hear.

As it sifts through the wreckage of its destroyed fighter jets and other aircraft, the prospect of more coming when Iran is basically defenseless in the skies is terrifying.

Iran will be wondering how all of this happened.

How did it carefully laid plans for defeating the US fall apart so quickly? There are two answers to that question.

One covering Iran’s air defenses and the other that dives into the detail about the state of that air force the country had built.

We’ll come to the second answer a little later in the video, but on the air defense front, there’s no way to sugarcoat things for Iran.

Its entire air defense network has utterly failed to do anything about the combined US and Israeli strikes.

And that’s why dozens, perhaps even hundreds of Iran’s airframes are just craters in the ground right now.

US President Donald Trump has already declared that Iran’s air defenses are gone along with its navy, air force, and most of its leadership structure.

Trump also claims that Iran’s missile capability is being diminished, which presumably also accounts for missiles that would have been fired by the country’s air defense systems.

We’ve had a very powerful impact.

Virtually everything they had has been knocked out now.

Their missile count is going down,” Trump said on March 3rd.

Dan Kaine has emphasized this point when discussing the US and its air superiority, noting that Iran’s air defenses have been degraded to the point where American pilots can fly with near impunity over Iranian territory.

We’re starting to see this in the nature of the US airframes that are flying into Iran right now.

For instance, Asia Times reports that the US has started sending B1 Lancer bombers into Iran to conduct air strikes rather than the B2 Spirit stealth bombers that America sent earlier in the conflict.

This indicates a high level of confidence that Iran’s longrange surfaceto-air missile SAM systems are no longer a primary threat to non- stealth aircraft in certain corridors, the outlet reports, adding that the US and Israel are now focused on destroying as many of Iran’s transporter erector launchers to take out even more of its
air defense capabilities.

And naturally, weaker air defenses create more opportunities for American bombers and fighter jets to do their business, which will almost inevitably lead to the loss of yet more Iranian airframes beyond those that the US destroyed in just 24 hours.

The question has to be asked, how did Iran’s air defenses fail so catastrophically in the first place? We’ll get to that in a second, but before we do, you are watching the Military Show.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, now is the perfect time to hit that button.

Back to Iran’s failed air defenses.

We’ve already discussed how the US launched a non-kinetic campaign as a precursor to its early strikes, which likely took many of Iran’s air defenses offline.

However, Army Technology reveals that there are more reasons why those defenses utterly failed to do the one thing they were designed to do.

The outlet reports on the aggressive electromagnetic spectrum operations the US and Israel deployed, which would have shut down Iranian air defense radars, so they couldn’t see airframes and projectiles coming.

However, this approach was combined with a more kinetic approach that saw the US and Israel divide their responsibilities.

Specifically, the US took charge of strikes against Iran’s air defenses, control centers, and much of the country’s military and logistics infrastructure.

Israel went after ballistic missile launchers and Iran’s leadership.

This was made a lot easier on the air defense front because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC had retained about 100 air defense systems, but likely didn’t have many of the missiles needed to use those systems to their fullest.

Another of Iran’s air defense problems comes from the fact that it’s deployed copycat systems throughout much of its network.

Yes, Iran has some Russian and Chinese air defense systems, but most of what it has are reverse engineered versions of those systems, Army Technology reports.

For instance, Iran’s Bavar 373 is just a cheap knockoff of the S300 systems that Ukraine has been destroying in massive quantities in its war with Russia.

Iran’s Yazar is just a reverse engineered version of China’s HQ7.

And something similar can be said of Iran’s Zubin system.

What we see here is that Iran tried to go up against two of the world’s strongest air forces with an air defense network filled with garbage copies of other countries tech.

That went about as well as you would expect.

Right now, after Burner says the US has achieved air superiority in Iran due to these many air defense failures.

Now, America’s goal has to switch to keep that superiority because there are certain surfaceto-air missile systems that are still alive and well, after burner claims.

They’ll pop out from a hiding spot and then launch a missile.

So, the US still has to take care in the skies.

Iran’s air defenses are crippled, but they’re not quite dead.

Still, they were useless enough to not be able to do a thing about America’s 24-hour shock and campaign unleashed against the Iranian Air Force.

and neither could Iran’s airframes, which brings us back to the second reason why all of this happened to Iran.

The simple fact is that Iran’s air force was too weak to stack up to what the US brought to the table from the start.

This was Mike Tyson delivering a haymaker to an old man with no arm, and you’ll have seen that in the age of the airframes that we talked about right at the beginning.

Aero time goes into more detail, noting that Iran’s belleaguered air force had zero chance right from the start.

The very best of its fighter jets include a fleet of 65 F4s, 41 F-14s, 35 F5s, and an assortment of Soviet era Russian platforms such as the Su24 and MiG 29.

Add a few tankers and special mission aircraft into the mix, and that’s all Iran had.

The country also has no airborne early warning fleet, which when combined with the utter failure of its air defenses, means that the Mike Tyson haymaker ended up being a sucker punch delivered right to the back of Iran’s head.

An ancient air force isn’t a good start when you’re going up against the US.

But an old air force that isn’t even being maintained is an even bigger problem.

There are roughly 400 or so aging aircraft that have been crippled by sanctions and they lack modern capabilities.

After burner says at least there were 400 aircraft in Iran’s air force.

There are a lot fewer now.

But that sums it up because even if Iran’s pilots were foolish enough to try to take to the skies in their older fighter jets, they wouldn’t even be able to trust those airframes to fulfill the limited capabilities that they’re supposed to have.

There were plenty of hints that this would be the case long before the US unleashed its firestorm against Iran’s air force.

Back in May 2022, Iran International reported that the volume of sanctions leveled against Iran was behind a space of air force accidents that had resulted in several deaths.

A pair of Iran’s pilots had died at Iran’s Desool Air Base in June 2021.

Both due to sudden glitches in their ejector seats that happened before they even got the aircraft off the ground.

Retired pilot Brigadier General Kiumar Haidider, who trained in the US and flew for the Iranian Air Force both before and after the 1979 revolution in the country made it clear why this happened.

Accidents happen everywhere and no one in the world has managed to decrease the number of accidents to zero.

But if the equipment is complete, it’s natural that the number of accidents will be fewer, he said.

In other words, ejector seats explode on their own when you don’t have the parts to maintain them.

By June 2025, the national interest was calling Iran’s air force a mess, as it noted that Iran had gone to extreme lengths to keep a handful of its ancient aircraft airworthy, but even those weren’t ever going to be effective against a modern air force.

Again, sanctions were to blame as Iran has to deal with the one-two punch of having an old fleet and the complete inability to maintain the majority of the aircraft that were in that fleet.

So, the fight was always going to play out in America’s favor.

The reasons why Iran’s pilots aren’t flying is that they don’t have the equipment.

They didn’t have it even before the bombs and missiles flew.

And they’ll never have it again now that the few airframes that might have been viable for Iran have been destroyed.

Even before the US struck, the national interest claimed that only 50 to 60% of Iran’s 400 airframes were even flyable, with the rest being set aside for the spare parts that the sanctions prevent Iran from buying elsewhere.

This was an unfair fight right from the start.

But that’s what happens when you have a fleet composed of predominantly old Western airframes and a regime that hates the West.

Rod, meet Iran’s back, built by the very regime that is now crumbling.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds.

With its air force practically gone, Iran only has a handful of aerial options left and almost all of them are unmanned.

Which means that Iran has not only lost millions of dollars of airframes to the US strikes, but it also has to deal with the sunk cost of training a bunch of pilots who aren’t ever going to fly.

Still, Iran’s drones are doing more than its airframes ever did.

Alazer reports that hundreds of Iran’s drones have targeted bases and military nodes in several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

The Russian news agency TAS carries comments by a supposed unmanned aircraft expert named Dmitri Kuzyakin who claims that economy as always is the main weapon of any war.

And here it’s on Iran’s side.

Iran can change war with drones literally indefinitely.

That feels like a stretch.

Granted, the US spends a lot more than the cost of building a drone on air defense missiles like those used in its Patriot systems.

But if we’re talking economy, combining existing sanctions with the US and Israel wrecking the Iranian means of drone production with their expensive missiles suggests that Iran’s drone reliance strategy may have a shorter shelf life than the Russian analyst suggests.

Oh, and it’s not like the US doesn’t have drones of its own.

If Iran’s regime somehow manages to survive the blitz that it’s absorbing right now, the US can easily rush one way and interceptor drones into manufacturing to engage in a tip fort battle if needed.

The reality that Iran has to face is that time is running out on its defense.

All it has left are drones and depleting supplies of missiles as its air force along with every other facet of the asymmetrical strategy intended to launch against the US lies in ruins.

Iran is still trying to maintain some sort of threat of course as fighter jets burn on the tarmac.

Iran was vowing to strike European countries if they dare join the war on America’s side.

But the US and likely Europe know that these threats are starting to ring increasingly hollow.

Iran is in no position to start throwing them around.

And if Trump is to be believed, whatever offramps that the US might have been offering a few days ago have been withdrawn.

They want to talk, Trump claimed of Iran.

I said, “Too late.

” But having said that, Trump is scheduled to speak with the remnants of Iran’s regime on March 8th, reportedly at the request of the regime itself.

A white flag will likely be present.

Whether the US chooses to accept Iran’s surrender and whether Iran’s regime is collectively pigheaded enough to believe that it will still be able to bargain for anything will only be seen over the weekend.

In the meantime, Iran will continue to make threats.

But with what force? Certainly not an air force, that’s for sure.

With half its fleet gone and the rest unlikely to be flyable, Iran has surrendered its skies to the US and Israel.

And all it took was 24 hours.

Iran can’t even console itself with the thought that the US unleashed the one missile that changed air combat forever against its jets.

How could it? Iran’s fighters never got off the ground.

Iran had already been shattered by the US stealth bombers and fifth generation fighter jets that had wrecked most of the country’s defenses.

Now comes the rise of the B-52 Strata Fortress.

Iran just learned to fear this 74year-old US bomber as it has unleashed a historically badass attack on Iran.

Tehran already knows the war is lost as the B-52s pulverize everything in their path.

This is genius by the US.

It shows us that America is planning for the long hall to take out Iran’s regime forever.

If you want to find out more about this genius move, then stick with us.

First, the arrival of the B-52s is the latest major news out of the Iran conflict.

The big ugly fat fellow is now flying with near impunity over Iran, signaling the tan regime’s air defenses are shot and they can’t do anything to stop the US from using one of its older non-stalthy bombers to cause even more damage.

Think about it like this.

US B2s kick the doors in with some help from dozens of American and Israeli fighter jets.

Now the B-52s have arrived and they’re already bombing what’s left of Iran’s military nodes into oblivion.

What we’re seeing right now is a transition from surgical efficiency to utter brute force.

That might seem strange to say after the US and Israel unleashed an insane 1,000 strikes against Iran’s defenses in the first 24 hours of this new conflict.

However, those strikes were indeed surgical.

They were preceded by cyber operations, including jamming and spoofing of Iran’s radar networks.

Once communications were disrupted, the first wave of US and Israeli strikes came in.

Air defenses were shattered.

Naval and aerial assets were destroyed.

Decapitation strikes focused on Iran’s leaders up to and including the now dead Supreme Leader Ali Kmin were carried out.

Those first 24 hours represented a massive firestorm that was more precise than anything that Iran saw coming.

What Iran never expected was that the US was simply laying the table for the arrival of something much bigger.

With surgery completed, the US is delivering sledgehammer shots to the wounds and Iran can do nothing about it.

Now, the B-52s have arrived, and in just a minute, we’re going to tell you precisely what they’re doing in Iran.

Before we do, let’s take a quick look at just how much power the newest arrivals to the Iranian theater bring to the table.

The B-52 differs from the B2 that we’ve already seen conduct 30-hour plus bombing runs over Iran.

Because the B-52 is a non- stealth bomber, in other words, it can’t sneak past enemy radars and air defenses like its much newer and far more expensive cousin.

But what the B-52 can do very well is help a country that has achieved air superiority to utterly annihilate targets on the ground.

The bomber has a payload capacity of around 70,000 lb and it makes full use of that capacity to load up on precision guided munitions that the US can use to shatter the remnants of Iran’s defenses and military nodes.

Max Afterburner explains more in his examination of the arrival of B-52s in Iran.

He says that is a heavy hitter.

I mean, 70 JDAMs can be carried in the B-52.

The number of JDAMs alone tells you everything you need to know about how much firepower the B-52 can bring to the table.

These guided air-to-surface weapons come in three flavors: £500, £1,000, and £2,000.

At 70 Jams, we’re assuming that Afterburner believes the B-52s sent into Iran would likely be carrying the 1,000 variety.

Though, as After Burner also reveals, this may not be the best choice.

Even though air superiority is established, you could have a one-off surfaceto-air missile system that lights up and could fire at a B-52.

He explains about the current situation in Iran.

So, Iran’s air defenses are wrecked, but not totally gone, as we’ll explain later in the video.

The possibility of these one-off strikes likely means that America’s B-52s are flying in loaded with Jassens, or joint air-to-surface standoff missile.

These subsonic missiles, which can travel between 230 and 575 mi, depending on the variant, allow America’s B-52s to take off and launch at targets from a distance, with the bomber staying well out of range of whatever mega air defenses Iran has left.

This consideration brings us back to what we mentioned earlier about what the B-52s are doing in Iran.

US B2s conducted the stealthy and surgical strikes, creating an environment in which the B-52s could operate in relative safety.

Now that the B52s have arrived, they are beating down on everything that Iran has left.

And right now, After Burner says the primary focus of the older US bombers is the command and control or C2 nodes that what’s left of Iran’s military relies on to coordinate its defense.

Coordination on Iran’s part is likely falling apart by the minute after Burner explains as he discusses what America’s B-52s are targeting.

Their launches get isolated once one of those command nodes are taken down.

Their reloads are incredibly slow with their production facilities being hit as well.

and now their rebuild times are basically non-existent.

In other words, the B-52s are going to destroy the very nodes that allow Iran to wave the one big stick that it has in America’s face, ballistic missiles.

We’ll come back to what’s happening on the Iranian missile front in just a second.

First, the war zone or TWWZ agrees with Afterburner that America’s B-52s are wreaking havoc on Iran’s C2 nodes.

It carries comments from Air Force General Dan Kaine who says that Iran’s C2 structures are in a bad way and the part of the reason is the switch from precision to power.

Sentcom is now shifting in day four already from large deliberate strike packages using standoff munitions at range outside an enemy’s ability to shoot at us now into standin precision strikes overhead Iran Kain says.

So maybe it’s more accurate to say precision and power is the new phase.

Regardless, Iran is feeling the pain of the arrival of the B-52 as the results are already immense.

We can see that in the strike numbers alone.

After the initial 24-hour spate of 1,000 strikes, the US along with Israel has doubled its strike load.

The first 72 hours of the conflict have seen the two allies combined to shatter 2,000 targets inside Iran.

B-52s will have played a big part in this escalation as they fire standoff munitions at targets that are no longer properly guarded by an Iranian air defense network that was far weaker than it should have been from the start.

PBS News reports that Iran’s health ministry claims that 920 people have been killed as of March 4th, though it’s unclear if these are civilians or military personnel.

Other estimates, such as those shared by the Jerusalem Post, claim that more than 1,000 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps died within the first wave of strikes.

So, we can safely assume that even more have been eliminated now that America’s B-52s have ended the frey.

This is a destructive force.

However, perhaps the biggest impact made by the arrival of America’s bombers came on the defensive front.

We told you earlier that the US B-52s seem to be mostly targeting Iran’s C2 nodes.

In a ground war, these nodes would be key to coordinating soldiers and logistics.

This isn’t a ground war.

And as we mentioned earlier, Iran’s biggest stick in this fight is its stockpile of ballistic missiles.

Iran Watch says that Sentcom, which is US Central Command, estimated this stockpile to be over 3,000 missiles back in 2022.

Iran has likely burned through a good chunk of that stockpile with its attacks against Israel and the US military bases, both before and during this current conflict.

As of the beginning of the war, the Israel Defense Forces estimated that Iran had about 2,500 missiles.

Either way, it’s a lot.

And thanks to America’s B-52s, Iran isn’t getting the most out of these stockpiles.

Taking out C2 nodes means that Iran can’t coordinate its missile launches.

When you combine that with other strikes that are focused on Iran’s missile launch sites, you get the crippling of the one piece of power that Iran can project.

And we’re seeing that in the numbers.

In a March 4th piece, CNN reported on more comments made by Kane.

and they revealed that Iran’s ballistic missiles are slowly being taken out of the picture.

As of this morning, US Central Command is making steady progress.

Iran’s theater ballistic missile shots are down 86% from the first day of fighting, Ka said during a brief statement delivered at the Pentagon.

He added, “There’s been a 23% decrease just in the last 24 hours, and as a nice little bonus, Iran’s one-way attack drones are shot down 73%.

” What we’re seeing here is the slow whittling down of Iran’s entire military strategy, and the B-52s that have arrived at the country are playing a key role.

But you may remember that we told you earlier in the video that sending in the B-52s was a genius move by the US.

This destruction of Iran’s offensive capacity isn’t the reason why, though it certainly helps.

There’s another reason.

Before we go deeper into that, if this is the kind of insight that you want more of, make sure you’re subscribed to the Military Show.

We break it down like this every single week.

So, what makes the arrival of the B-52s such a genius move by the US? US President Donald Trump gave us a little hint on March 2nd when he indicated that the Iran war could stretch on far longer than some might anticipate.

The US has projected four to 5 weeks for the conflict, though Trump added that the US military has the capability to go far longer than that.

In other words, the US is already assuming that it’s going to be a multi-week conflict.

And remember, we’re still in week one.

Plus, the US has to gear up for the possibility that the war could extend even longer, which means one very important thing.

The US has to focus on keeping costs down while battering Iran with as much firepower as it can muster.

And it’s here that the genius of using the B-52s instead of continuing to use the newer and stealthier B2s comes into play.

As tempting as it is to think of the US military as an overwhelming behemoth that has an infinite bankroll, the country still wants to ensure that it’s not blowing money where it doesn’t need to.

And one of the ways the US could have found itself pouring money down the drain in the extended conflict that it anticipates the Iran war becoming is by continuing to use the B2 for bombing runs.

1945 sums it up when explaining why the B-52s have entered the picture, stating, “Capable of carrying large volumes of precisiong guided munitions, the B-52 has a long loiter time and costs less per hour to operate than the B2.

” Basically, the B-52 is ideal for sustained bombardment once the skies are permissive.

and permissive is precisely what Iran’s skies are right now.

On the cost front, W explains that the B2 costs about twice as much as the B-52 simply to get into the air.

The combination of the B2’s stealth coatings and heavy maintenance means that the more modern bomber is best suited to the shock and or approach of the initial surgical strikes that we’ve seen in Iran, after which it withdraws and allows other bombers to enter the frey.

There is also the very important direct cost factor to consider.

A single B2 costs the US about $2 billion to build.

So if one happened to be taken out or malfunction in the skies over Iran, that’s a pretty big hole created in whatever budget the US has in mind for its Iran war.

Contrast this to the B-52.

The US has been overhauling its B-52 bombers, having spent $15 billion by 2021 as part of a 48.

6 billion program intended to keep these aging aircraft in the air until60.

Right now, the US has 76 B-52s in service.

So, even with that overhaul, it’s looking at around $640 million per unit, plus the cost of building the bomber over 70 years ago, which IG.

space says amounted to about $1.

14 billion when adjusted for inflation.

So, what you get here is less risk.

The B-52 going down is still an expensive loss, but it’s nowhere near as expensive as losing the far more costly and advanced B2.

Then, there are the running costs we mentioned earlier.

According to the national interest, a B2 bomber costs about $200,000 per flight hour.

As we mentioned, the B2s the US sent into Iran during the surgical part of his strike strategy were in the air for well over 30 hours.

That’s an expenditure of over $6 million right.

The B-52, on the other hand, costs about $70,000 to fly per hour.

Even when adjusting for inflation, this is right around half of what the B2 costs, just as W said.

From a pure cost perspective, the switch to B-52 bombers is a genius move.

The US gets to continue unloading enormous amounts of firepower on Iran using some of the most advanced weapons.

And it does it with a bomber that places a significantly smaller financial burden on America’s defense budget.

If a sustained campaign, even a 4 to 5 week one, is what the Trump administration is anticipating, this switch was vital to ensure that the campaign could continue.

All of this brings us to the situation as it stands right now.

Iran isn’t in a good place.

We’ve covered bits and pieces of that already, particularly on the ballistic missile front and the state of Iran’s air defenses, but it’s worth digging into the latter problem a little more.

Their integrated air defense system is nowhere near as advanced as Western nations.

After Burner says of what Iran had even before the bomb started flying, and as we’ve seen, Chinese surfaceto-air missiles and radars, Russian surfaceto-air missiles and radars being completely decimated by these B-52s and other bombers.

Iran was on the losing end of the air defense game before the war even started.

Army Technology explains more in a March 3rd article where it discusses how the air defenses that Iran has aren’t even necessarily the Chinese and Russian units that After Burner highlights.

Iran has some of those, sure, but much of its air defense network is made up of cheap copycats of the Russian S300 and the Chinese HQ7, which Iran has reverse engineered into its own versions that until now were untested in combat.

Now they’ve been tested, these knockoffs have been found wanting.

Plus, reverse engineering without any innovation means that the systems that Iran built for itself carry the same weaknesses as those that they’re based on.

For instance, Iran’s S300 copycats are vulnerable to Israeli weapons, such as the Icebreaker missile, which are designed to take advantage of the electronic warfare vulnerabilities of the radars used for the S300 systems.

Iran didn’t do anything to fix these vulnerabilities in its versions of the Russian and Chinese systems that it’s copied, and it’s paying the price now.

Now, Iran is in a situation where its weak air defense network is worse than it already was.

Newsweek says that the country has likely started moving air defenses from the east to the west as it anticipates more attacks from the western direction.

That’s not exactly a power move.

Just means that Iran’s east becomes territory that America’s B-52s can use to launch their standoff munitions from the side of the country that Iran leaves unguarded.

Thran and Isvahan may be a little better guarded than they were following the initial spate of strikes, but it just isn’t enough to do anything notable to stop the US and Israeli strikes.

What’s most likely, as After Burner said, is that Iran will fall back to hoping that it gets lucky with the occasional strike caused by American complacency.

That’s not an air defense strategy.

It’s a gamble that doesn’t have anywhere near the payoff that Iran needs it to have.

As for the US, it has total air superiority.

That doesn’t mean that it has air supremacy, which is when a country is able to operate with 100% confidence that it will be unopposed in an opponent’s airspace.

But it’s as close to achieving that supremacy as it needs to be to start sending non- stealth bombers into Iran.

This is a sign of American confidence that Iran absolutely did not want to see because it signals that Trump isn’t lying when he says he anticipates this campaign going on for several weeks.

A lot more strikes are going to be coming from America’s B-52 fleet.

And that’s even without mentioning the carrier groups that the US has operating in the Persian Gulf region along with the dozens of fighter jets and supporting aircraft they bring to the equation.

As for what happens next, the scope of the war expands.

It’s already heading in that direction inside Iran itself as Afterburner says that the arrival of B-52s represents a clear shift toward even greater volume and persistence in the campaign.

However, the scope is broadening in terms of where the US is conducting attacks and what it may be planning next.

For instance, March 4th saw the US torpedo the Iris Dana in international waters off Sri Lanka’s southern coast.

That’s a long way from the Persian Gulf, and it suggests that the US is expanding the range of its attacks to cover military assets that Iran has stationed outside of its own territory.

There’s also the looming spectre of the US sending boots on the ground to Iran.

According to Chattam House, that will be needed if America’s goal is indeed to take down Iran’s regime.

Trump’s plan of helping the Iranian people rise up again and topple the theocracy sounds more like hope than a real strategy.

There are no signs yet of any effective domestic opposition or of defections from the regime, the think tank claims.

And if that’s the case, it suggests that the Iranian people don’t have the required confidence in their own abilities to topple the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and what remains of Iran’s senior leadership.

So that brings us to an interesting prospect.

Perhaps the arrival of the B-52s and what looks set to be weeks of sustained strikes are setting up for a third phase of the Iran war.

First came the surgery, then the sledgehammer.

What follows next might be the overwhelming of the Iranian regime by US soldiers heading onto the ground.

What we know for certain is that Iran’s regime has been rocked to its core and it may never recover fully.

That’s bad news for the regime, of course, but it’s also terrible news for Putin, who has been gambling on the strengthening of the relationship between Russia and Iran to position himself as a global geopolitical player.

If the Iranian regime falls, Putin takes a massive blow.

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