But Starling is a different story entirely.

It presents a problem for Russia that it currently and the foreseeable future has no means of countering.

It’s unjammable.

Unlike navigation satellites, Starling operates in low Earth orbit or LEO.

The satellites aren’t thousands of miles from the Earth.

They’re orbiting at roughly 341 mi above the Earth.

There are currently around 10,020 Starlink satellites in orbit.

The magical 10K number was reached on March 17th, 2026 after a Falcon 9 rocket launch from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California placed 25 more satellites in orbit.

Starlink has actually launched 11,529 satellites in total since May 2019, but some of these have been replacements for defunct deorbited spacecraft.

These satellites are hurtling around the Earth at close to 17,000 mph, forming a mesh that blankets the Earth and creating almost ubiquitous coverage wherever you may be on the planet’s surface.

This creates two huge problems for Russia, or for that matter, Iran, China, or any other adversary looking to bring down a Starlink guided drone.

Firstly, each Starink terminal isn’t receiving a signal from a single Starink satellite like an old school dish.

It’s constantly bouncing off different units in the mesh as they move across the sky.

At any given moment, each terminal is likely to be switching between satellites across short windows of time.

That means Russia doesn’t just have to jam a single signal on a single vector.

It has to hit the equivalent of a moving target placed on a moving network.

Secondly, because Starink satellites are much closer to the Earth than GPS satellites, the signal is much stronger at the receiver.

So, Russia needs a much more powerful jammer to interdict and drown out the signal.

That’s certainly not beyond Russia’s capabilities for a solitary satellite link, even with a more powerful signal.

But trying to jam an entire mesh of 10,000 plus satellites that are moving at speeds in excess of MAC 22 is a different level of problem entirely.

At this point, it’s also an unassalable one.

Jamming drones is no longer a park aer truck near the front lines problem.

You need a massive fleet of much more powerful jammers, especially if the terminal is using a directional antenna and modern signal processing as the Lucas is likely to.

Instead of jamming weak signals to solitary receivers, Russia now has to overpower frequency hopping, constantly switching multi-satellite link that changes the geometry before you can latch on.

It’s technically feasible at scale, but the scale required is almost certainly way beyond Russia’s capabilities for the foreseeable future.

Some Chinese military researchers ran simulations to assess how many jammers they would need to suppress Starlink connectivity over Taiwan.

Suppressing that network would likely be a critical component in any successful Chinese invasion.

The simulation concluded that it would require an optimal grid of at least 935 synchronized high-powered airborne jammers to fully suppress coverage.

Alternatively, if relying on lower powered systems, China might need closer to 2,000 jamming drones to achieve a similar effect.

Map that out onto Ukraine, where the front line is anywhere from 500 to 750 mi long, and Russia would likely need many thousands of truckmounted Germans just to touch sides.

Now factor in the millions of square miles inside its territory that Russia will need to protect from Ukrainian longrange Starlink enabled drone strikes and you can see how insurmountable the problem is.

The Starlink’s use of spread spectrum modulation already makes a much more complex process to jam signals than with GPS.

This transmission technique distributes the signal across a wide range of frequencies in a pattern that shifts constantly based on a cryptographic key shared only between the terminal and the network.

What that means is if you jam one slice, there’s a good chance you just hit noise.

Even if you gather enough units and the massive power required to jam the entire frequency spread, you still run into encryption and keybased modulation patterns that you can’t predict without access to the underlying key management.

and those, needless to say, are highly classified.

The bottom line is that Russia would need an expansive fleet of much more powerful jammers than anything it’s demonstrated in Ukraine.

That’s likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars at a minimum.

For a nation that’s already struggling to fund its war, that’s likely to be close to impossible.

Bear in mind that EW equipment is far from being destroyed by Ukraine.

In fact, the signals they give off make them to an extent low-hanging fruit for Ukrainian drone, missile, and artillery strikes.

The independent website Orexpion, which tracks Russian equipment losses using a visual confirmation methodology, records at least 94 Russian jamming and deception systems taken out of action by Ukraine since 2022.

So, not only would Russia have to mobilize gigantic funds, resources, and manpower to build the suppression architecture required, it would have to keep them active long enough to be effective.

These issues would only be compounded if the US were using the Star Shield network instead of Starlink.

Starshield is a specialized network built by SpaceX specifically for the US military in 2022.

According to a company spokesman, it offers additional security and encryption for government and military use in national security operations and uses satellites owned and controlled by the US government.

The network incorporates at least 183 dedicated Star Shield satellites featuring enhanced security, Earth observation sensors, and hosted payloads alongside secure encrypted communications over Starlink’s existing infrastructure.

If the US implements Star Shield links on the Lucas, Russia’s task in jamming them becomes even more impossible.

The encryption, authentication, and key management of Star Shield are more hardened and tightly controlled, making spoofing even more difficult, and jamming much more expensive.

But for Russia, it still gets worse, much worse.

That’s because it’s not just Lucas drones Russia has to fret about.

Starlink or Star Shield links could conceivably be installed on practically every missile and drone in the US arsenal where aerodynamic constraints allow.

Imagine Starlink connected Tomahawks or highars.

The Russians have and turned a sickly shade of green at the thought.

As Russian military blogger Russian engineer laments, all these longrange strike systems will be able to be controlled anywhere on the planet and achieve the same precision as FPV drones literally through a window.

This isn’t just an evolution in military affairs, it’s a genuine revolution, the post notes.

And it’s hard to argue with that.

So, what can Russia do about it? Over the years, there’s been consistent fear-mongering that Russia is developing anti-satellite weapons that could take out hostile satellites in their orbit.

But even if such weapons exist, the sheer size and speed of the Starlink network mean it would require vast amounts of time and money to make a meaningful dent.

As prominent Russian blogger Dimmitri Konanikin notes, “Forget the Soviet tales about nails scattered in orbit sweeping away satellite constellations that might have work against hundreds but not tens of thousands of satellites.

So there isn’t currently a solution, and the panic is tangible.

Ryar demands that the Kremlin start developing means to destroy thousands of Starlink satellites now.

This must be funded as the highest priority.

However, where the money is supposed to come from, they don’t specify.

Obsessed with war gives a grim prognosis.

If within a year we do not find a solution against this satellite constellation, then things will go very badly for us, they wrote.

To be fair, Russia has been experimenting with Starlink jamming technology and may already have had some success.

In 2024, the Ukrainian military began reporting outages in Starlink connections with military officials attributing the disruptions to Russia testing different mechanisms.

Leaked US military documents suggest the disruptions might be due to a system called Toeball that was originally designed to protect Russian satellites from jamming.

Russia also appears to be developing a newer, more sophisticated system called Kolinka.

This system is specifically intended to detect and disrupt signals to and from Starlink satellites in order to interfere with Ukrainian drones and military communications.

Andre Bezukov, the director of the Russian Center for Unmanned Systems and Technologies developing the system, told state media that the so-called Starlink killer could also detect communication terminals connected to Star Shield.

We’ll have to wait and see whether these systems turn out to be effective or more like Russian tanks.

But it may well be that Russia’s and China’s most effective response will be of the if you can’t beat them, join them variety.

Both nations are frantically trying to get their own Starling analoges off the ground.

Russia is developing Zorki, a domestic Starink rival with serial production of terminals set to begin in 2026 and plans for over 300 satellites by 2027.

China for its part is developing laser and microwavebased anti-satellite technologies to counter Starlink and Star Shield and is also developing multiple large-scale satellite constellations.

The Kanfernan or thousand sales network already has about 100 satellites deployed with a goal of 15,000.

The Gul Wang or Satnet network is currently in testing with a planned 13,000 satellites and the Hongghue 3 network currently in the planning stages is expected to ultimately have around 10,000 satellites operational.

The US Space Force does wield the counter communication system, meadow lands, and remote modular terminals that can jam adversary satellite uplinks and down links.

But since these systems have yet to deal with Starlink like Russian and Chinese threats, it’s unclear how they’ll fare against them.

There is nowhere left to hide for Iran’s regime anymore.

With its air defenses shattered, the US has achieved a level of air supremacy that had yet to be seen in Operation Epic Fury.

How do we know? B-52s are in the skies and they’re flying over land.

They’re dropping something that Iran can’t come back from and they’re doing it over and over again to ignite a chain reaction collapse.

There are fireballs over Iran right now as B-52s hunt Iran’s last bunkers to extinction.

This is a huge change in America’s aerial strategy.

And it’s been announced by no less than the chairman of the joint chief’s US Air Force General Dan Kaine.

During a March 31st briefing to the Department of Defense, Kane revealed that the US is so confident in the air supremacy that it’s achieved in Iran’s skies, that it’s deploying B-52 bombers over land for the first time in the campaign.

These Cold War era bombers, which entered service in 1961, allow the US to carry out more intense bombing runs against Iran’s bunkers and military nodes than ever before.

And they’re able to fly because the first 30 days of Operation Epic Fury have done such a good job of shattering the layered air defense network that Iran built up to prevent the arrival of precisely this kind of aerial platform.

Kane made all of this very clear with his statement as he said, “Given the increase in air superiority, we have successfully started to conduct the first overland B-52 missions, which allow us to continue to get on top of the enemy.

” Those overland missions involve the use of GBU31 bunker busting munitions which deliver 2,000 lb of terrifying firepower.

Those bombs are dropping on key locations in Isvahan right now.

As you’ll soon discover if you keep watching, the BBC reports that eagle-eyed military watchers may have detected that something like this was coming.

It says that hints of this latest evolution in the American campaign were seen at RAF Bareford, where B-52 bombers are being stationed in preparation for attacks against Iran.

Just days before Kane made his statement, the BBC says B-52s and other aircraft were seen taking off from this UK air base loaded with the very types of JDAMs that we’re now seeing being dropped over Iran.

The US has also shifted to a strategy of dynamic targeting, Kane reveals, which means that all of its aircraft are being given new targets as they fly, and in some cases they’re even being tasked with locating and attacking targets by themselves.

What all of this tells us is that the US no longer has air superiority over Iran.

It has air supremacy.

After all, this isn’t the first time that the B-52s have been used in Iran.

As early into Operation Epic Fury as March 4th, Military Times was reporting that the US had used its oldest bomber to attack Iran.

But if that’s the case, then what makes what we’re seeing right now so important? The answer is something that has changed Iran.

And that change can be seen in one key word that Kane used when announcing the arrival of more B-52 bombers, overland.

The earlier B-52s were armed with standoff munitions such as the AGM158 JSME cruise missile rather than the bunker busting bombs that they’re now dropping over Iraq.

This meant that the US still felt that it needed to be cautious with its older bombers earlier in Operation Epic Fury.

They needed to attack from range rather than get up close and personal.

What was likely happening before was that American stealth fighters loaded with sensors such as the F-35 and F-22 were finding safe aerial corridors for the B-52s, which would arrive, deliver their munitions, and then fly away before Iran’s air defenses were able to catch up to them.

Now, the situation is different.

B-52s are flying over land, which means that they’re penetrating Iranian airspace deep over the mainland.

The air superiority that enabled earlier B-52 strikes has evolved into air supremacy that makes these overland strikes possible.

And there is one city in Iran that is feeling the pain in the next phase of B-52 usage more than any other.

Isfahan.

The city is already famous for being the site of underground nuclear facilities that the US has struck with massive bunker busting bombs in the past.

Most notably, the US deployed B2 Spirit stealth bombers armed with 30,000 lb massive ordinance penetrators to take out the Isvahan nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer in the summer of 2025.

Those facilities survived well enough to make Isvahan the likely site of the enriched uranium Iran still has, which could be used to build a nuclear weapon.

But beyond these nuclear facilities, Isvahan is home to several other military nodes, and it’s those that we’re now starting to see the USB B-52s target as they move deeper into overland territory.

The footage shows it.

Several videos are emerging from Iran of bombing runs that are causing chain reactions of explosions throughout one of the country’s most important cities.

AP News has shared a compilation of some of these videos, all of which were shot by eyewitnesses in the city.

For over 40 seconds, we see the same thing over and over again.

Earth rattling explosions send enormous fireballs hurtling into the sky accompanied by huge plumes of smoke.

In some cases, we can see entire chain reactions of explosions suggesting either dropping of multiple bombs or secondary explosions caused by munitions that are being destroyed on the ground.

The US isn’t being shy about sharing this footage itself.

US President Donald Trump has used his truth social account to share footage of a chain reaction of strikes that are seen in brief in the AP news video.

This longer version of the video also potentially reveals the types of targets that the US has been hitting now that it’s deployed its B-52s over Isvahan.

Based on the size and nature of the explosions, it seems likely that America’s bombs have landed on a hardened underground ammunition depot in the Kranian city.

That implies the use of bunker busters, which we’ll get to in a second.

Sticking with Isfahan for a moment, the idea that the US just hit one of the city’s ammunition depots with its B-52s is supported by the fact that Isvahan is home to an enormous missile complex.

The nuclear threat initiative says that this complex is the largest missile assembly and production site in Iran and it was built in the 1980s with help from China and North Korea.

It’s here where Iran has developed the Shahab 4 system, which many in the West believe is designed to serve as a launch vehicle for Iran’s longrange weapons.

Iran also builds Mc-class missiles and Chinese HY2 silkworms in Isvahan, the nuclear threat initiative says.

All of which tells us that there is plenty of explosive ammunition lying under the ground in this Iranian city.

And that brings us back to the bunker busters.

According to Al Jazzer, the US hasn’t limited its B-52 bomber runs to Isvahan.

Thran and several other Iranian cities have also been targeted, such as Karage, which is home to several industrial areas.

However, it was the bunker busters over Isvahan, most likely the 2,000lb bombs we mentioned earlier, that captured all the headlines.

Beyond those seen in the footage we’ve shared so far, Alazer says that the US dropped several of its powerful bunker busters into the mountainous regions surrounding Isvah, leading to yet more secondary explosions, presumably as Iran’s ammunitions and missile stockpiles went
up in flames.

The same outlet adds that the US bombing campaign has also seen it target key parts of Iran’s industrial infrastructure such as steel manufacturing plants, prochemical plants, and even nuclear facilities.

So, the US is switching over from targeting military nodes alone to using its B-52s to snatch away Iran’s means of production.

Operation Epic Fury is transitioning into a more attritional campaign, and the B-52s are at the center of it.

However, they may also be at the center of something else which has caught everybody off guard.

But before we get to that, you are watching the military show.

If this is the kind of insight that you want to see, make sure that you are subscribed to the channel.

Back to what nobody saw coming in is Vahhan.

We mentioned earlier that Isvahan seems to be the most likely storage site for the enriched uranium.

Some believe Iran is keeping that uranium so it can maintain its threat of developing a nuclear dirty bomb.

Iran has almost 1,000 lb of this uranium, which has been enriched to 60% of the explosive U235 isotope, and doesn’t need much more work to bring it up to the 90% level of enrichment needed to make a nuke.

The US doesn’t want Iran to have this uranium.

It wants to strip Iran’s nuclear capabilities so badly that rumors are surfacing that the US is preparing a daring ground campaign that would see it land special forces troops at Isvahan.

Those troops, the rumors suggest, would be targeted with extracting Iran’s uranium from the city’s underground nuclear bunker and then getting out again rather than holding the location.

It’s a daring plan that comes with a lot of danger.

Every minute that the US troops spend at the Isvahan site will be a minute where they’re vulnerable to Iran’s missiles and drones.

That’s where the B-52s come into play.

Wet news posits that pyrochnics that have accompanied the strikes in Isvahan are all well and good, but they may be designed to obscure America’s true objectives.

It suggests that what we might be seeing in the city right now is a concerted effort by the US to effectively bury the enriched uranium believed to be stored at Isvah.

The idea here would be to use bunker busting bombs such as those carried by B-52s to collapse the tunnels leading to Iran’s uranium storage sites.

If the US can pull this off, Wet says it will make those sites inaccessible to Iran for a year or more, which in turn means that the US won’t have to risk sending in special forces to extract the harmful material.

It’s a theory that starts to make sense the more you think about it.

The bunker busters, for which we have evidence, all seem to target explosive sites such as Iran’s ammunition depots.

Those designed to collapse the Isvahan tunnel networks would have been much harder to spot.

They would burrow underground and explode, causing obvious effects if you’re close to the site.

But massive fireballs don’t erupt into the sky when tunnels collapse.

You’ll see smoke and debris of course, but not the pyrochnics.

Could those headline grabbing B-52 strikes have been cover what the US really sent its B-52s into Isvahan to do? Wet seems to think so.

It claims that the US bombers carefully coordinated their strikes so that they collapsed tunnels without destroying the uranium itself, which the outlet says is now locked under 100 m or almost 330 ft of solid rock.

Perhaps the coming days will reveal that the US achieved a lot more than the already impressive and very obvious results we’ve seen so far.

Iran, for its part, has tried to respond to America’s B-52 onslaught in Isvahan.

In its March 31st report on the strikes, the Times of India said that Iran responded to the attacks by launching a barrage of missiles in Israel’s direction, though most of these were intercepted or landed in open areas and there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Al Jazzer says differently in an April 1st report that claims an Iranian ballistic missile launched at Israel hit its target, injuring 16 people in the process.

Iran is still trying to send the message that it isn’t going to back down, even as B-52s fly overhead unimpeded.

Though how realistic that message is is up for debate, given that the US is now claiming that Iran is seeking a ceasefire.

Before we get to that, we have to answer the question of how all of this is possible.

The destruction of Iran’s air defense network has already been widely reported.

It was less than a week into Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Line that the Israeli Defense Forces were reporting that 80% of Iran’s air defense systems were destroyed.

That was a good starting point, but it wasn’t quite enough for the air supremacy needed for the overland B-52 strikes that we’re seeing now.

That was a good starting point, but it wasn’t quite enough for the air supremacy needed for the overland B-52 strikes we’re seeing now.

So, the US and Israel continued to whittle away.

By March 10th, KA was reporting that most of their higherend surfaceto-air missile systems are non-factors at this point when speaking about Iran’s air defenses, adding that US fighter jets could now fly around with relative impunity.

That’s a real problem for Iran.

The impunity for fighter jets has evolved into impunity for much slower and larger B-52 bombers because those jets can take out Iran’s most advanced air defenses.

Iran did have air defense systems that should have been able to hit the B-52.

The Bavar 373, which Iran built itself, has a maximum detection range of almost 200 miles, which is a long way above the 50,000 ft flight ceiling of the B-52.

Army Technology points out the S300 PMU2 air defense batteries that Iran purchased from Russia should also be able to target America’s aging bomber.

The problem is they can’t.

And the reason they can’t is that almost all of them have been destroyed.

The US is now so confident in its air supremacy that B-52s can fly almost anywhere in Iran without fear.

We say almost because there will be isolated pockets of air defenses left in Iran.

Whether groundbased systems or shoulder-mounted man pads, these pockets could still present a threat.

But that’s where fighter jets flying with impunity help.

Loaded with sensors, they can detect these threats and destroy them or at the very least channel information to B-52 pilots so they know what areas of Iran to avoid.

Clearly, Iran has no real air defenses left in Isvah.

The volley of strikes that B-52s have been carrying out in that city are proof of that.

Upgrades to the B-52 may also be contributing to the overland strikes that we’re starting to see.

Key among them is the radar modernization program that the US Air Force has developed for the aging bomber.

Business Insider says that the radar upgrades the B-52 is receiving are making it more effective against electronic warfare techniques, which takes another arrow out of the Iranian defensive quiver.

The first ferry fight of a B-52 with this new radar system took place in December 2025.

So, the bombers currently flying in Iran’s airspace may have been equipped with it.

What all of this means for Iran is that a bomber that its layered air defense network was meant to make mince meat out of is able to fly anywhere it wants because that network is no more.

That was already a problem when the B-52 was being deployed as a carrier of standoff munitions.

With its 70,000lb payload capacity, America’s oldest bomber, can deliver more firepower in one sitting than anything else in the country’s aerial arsenal.

But now, the massive payload is being combined with the versatility that makes the B-52 so famous.

The US Air Force itself states that the B-52 is capable of launching the widest array of weapons of any aircraft in the US inventory along with being able to deliver more.

Gravity bombs, precision guided missiles, JD dams, bunker busters, cluster bombs, mines, and even nuclear warheads can be loaded into this beast of an aircraft.

So having B-52s flying over land means that Iran never knows which problem it’s going to face next.

Earlier in Operation Epic Fury, it was standoff munitions.

In Isvahan over the last couple of days, it seems to have been bunker busters.

Tomorrow, it could be something else.

There’s no real way of guessing until the firepower hits home, and that’s a major problem for Iran’s regime.

This sort of thing is precisely what the B-52 was built to do.

It’s not the flashiest aircraft in the world.

Nobody is looking at it with the same level of admiration that they reserved for the F-35 or B2, which are both sleek, stylish, and stealthy.

But they are the scalpels of the US Air Force.

The B-52 is the wrecking ball.

And when a country is so utterly bereff of air defenses as Iran, that wrecking ball can swing over and over again with its versatility giving it the option to take part in the dynamic targeting aspects of Operation Epic Fury.

Kane says the US is now starting to execute.

Iran doesn’t have any real options left for dealing with America’s B-52s, and this is where we might see another shift in the operation.

We mentioned earlier that US President Donald Trump has claimed that Iran is looking for a ceasefire now that it knows the B-52s are in the skies.

He’s taken to Truth Social to say as much, stating, “Iran’s new regime president, much less radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a ceasefire.

” Trump says that the US will consider a ceasefire if Iran reopens the Straight of Hummus.

So, the B-52 sorties will at least continue until then.

But there’s a twist.

just as it did when Trump claimed that negotiations had started with Iran when it claimed the US was negotiating with itself.

Iran’s regime says there has been no request for a ceasefire.

In a March 31st report, AA said that Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Arachi said that his country isn’t seeking a ceasefire.

What Iran wants is a complete end to hostilities combined with guarantees against future attacks and compensation for the damage that the US has done so far during Operation Epic Fury.

It seems very unlikely that the US will agree to those conditions.

So perhaps talk of any halt, be that a ceasefire or something more permanent, is premature.

Or maybe it isn’t.

In yet another twist, Trump has declared that no deal may be needed.

In an April 1st report, the BBC says that the president believes that his country will be able to finish the job in Iran within the next 2 or 3 weeks.

That appears to mean that the US will be happy to withdraw once it’s sure that Iran isn’t able to build a nuclear weapon.

Regardless of whether Iran’s regime wants to come to the table, “We’ve set them back 15 to 20 years.

They have no navy, no military, no air force,” Trump claims, leaving only the nuclear question left over.

“Perhaps the B-52s are the answer to that question.

If their bunker busters have been deployed to cave in Iran’s tunnel network, as wet claims, then Iran may no longer be able to access its enriched uranium.

Another two or three weeks of B-52 strikes could take out production facilities and centrifuges while causing yet more damage to a military that Trump claims has been set back for decades.

Maybe now all that’s left is for the B-52s to hunt the last Iranian bunkers to extinction.

If they succeed, a deal won’t mean much to the US.

The B-52 is far from the only older aerial platform that the US can deploy in Iran right now that it’s achieved their supremacy.

Layered air defenses were supposed to be the key to Iran’s success.

With those defenses, it could limit the US to only using its stealth bombers and fighter jets.

Anything else would be shot down, but those plans are long dead.

Now, the US has AH64 Apaches and A10 Warthogs operating in Iran.

They’re raining hell down on Iran’s military, playing their part in wiping it off the map with strikes so out of this world that Iran never thought it could be hit like this.

And how is this happening? Because the US has achieved air supremacy in Iran.

If you know him, you love him, US Secretary of War Pete Hegath said on March 26th when declaring that Apache choppers and A-10 warthogs are flying with impunity in Iranian airspace.

And Apache helicopter gunships are flying strike missions inside Iranian airspace and throughout the straight of Hormuz at will, HEGs have added.

And what this tells us is that Iran has no air defense answers for the air strike problems that the US is posing.

These airframes aren’t stealthy.

Far from it.

In fact, Hegath describes them as slow and lowf flying, at least when compared to the likes of the F-35 and B2 Spirit stealth bomber.

And that fact alone tells you just how badly Iran’s air defenses have been degraded.

You only send these slow, low-flying, closeair support platforms when the enemy has no meaningful air defenses left, Hexath said during his statement.

And while this may seem like a bold statement, it’s mostly true.

Apaches and A-10s are able to fly because Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion have done a real number on Iran’s air defenses.

By March 5th, the Israeli Defense Force or IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Al Zamir, was claiming that the destruction or disabling of 80% of Iran’s air defense systems had been achieved within the first 24 hours of strikes against the country starting.

What this means for Iran is that it’s left with isolated air defense nodes, often little more than soldiers operating shoulder-mounted defenses in response to strikes that are over faster than those troops can react.

The layered Iranian defenses have been rendered practically irrelevant by the US and Israel.

However, Zamir’s comments don’t tell the full story.

Iran’s air defense problems started long before Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion were launched.

As far back as December 12th, Forbes was reporting that Iran faced critical air defense gaps against Israel and as we later found out the US.

The country’s former president Hassan Rouani was scathing in his assessment of these defenses as he said, “The skies over Iran have become completely safe for the enemy.

We no longer have real deterrence.

Our neighboring countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, all have airspace controlled by the United States and Israel.

” In other words, the US and Israel had bases close enough to Iran to enter practically at will, even before Operation Epic Fury began.

That was a problem, as was the fact the US and Israel had already dominated Iran’s air defenses once before.

During June’s Operation Midnight Hammer, which led to the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, a lot of Iran’s air defenses were destroyed in hours.

That’s the problem behind the problem for Iran.

As impressive as taking out 80% of the country’s air defenses might sound, the real reason why Iran has failed so spectacularly to prevent A-10s and Apaches from flying in its airspace is that those defenses were compromised before those platforms ever arrived.

By the time Operation Epic Fury began, Army Technology reports Iran’s regime had only 100 or so air defense launchers left, and it seems unlikely that these launchers would have been compatible with all the missiles Iran would have
wanted and needed to use against the US as its air strikes commenced.

Iran was onto a loser from the start.

A little over half a year was nowhere near enough for it to get its air defense network back up to the strength that it was when Israel and US had hobbled it back in June.

That fact is why Apaches and A-10s are now able to wipe military targets off the map all over Iran.

If Iran had air defenses, this wouldn’t be possible.

The Apache alone is an easy target for modern air defense systems.

With a service ceiling of just 20,000 ft, it should be strikable even by the older Russian and Chinese air defense systems that are supposed to make up Iran’s air defense network.

The S300, for instance, which we know is in Iran, is reportedly able to strike targets as high as 19 mi in the sky.

Granted, that figure applies to the most modern version of the S300, but it’s still about five times the altitude than an Apache can reach at its absolute maximum, and older variants of the system can fire missiles that also far exceed the Apache service ceiling.

The fact the Apache is flying in Iran at all indicates that Hexath is right on the money about Iran’s air defenses.

At least he is for the most part.

We can’t ignore the fact that 80% isn’t 100%.

Iran still has some air defense systems, though what they are and where they’re located isn’t known.

Still, as army recognition points out, A10s and Apaches operating over the Straight of Hormuz indicates that the US has at the very least created large localized pockets of air superiority, and it’s likely able to keep those channels open through a combination of electronic warfare, forward basing, and the suppression of any air defenses that Iran tries to deploy to counter the US aircraft.

Superiority is also evolving into supremacy, which would mean that the US has even greater control over Iran’s airspace.

But before we get to that, let’s focus on how the US is using its A10s and Apaches in Iran.

Heath’s remarks suggest that the primary focus for both has been repeated sorties over Iran’s waterways with a particular focus on the straightfor.

If that’s the case, then these are definitely platforms that come with capabilities that make them perfectly suited for that particular job.

The A10 with its titanium armor, multiple redundant flight systems, ability to fly low, and of course, its steel shredding GAU8A 30 mm cannon seems almost purpose-built to deal with the fast attack boats that Iran has been using against merchant ships attempting to sail through the straight.

Though originally designed as a tank killer that could provide support to ground forces, the A-10 has come into its own as an allrounder platform that can be deployed when an enemy’s air defenses have been taken down.

Fast boats are being crippled by the A-10’s cannons, but we also can’t underestimate the airframe in terms of its usability and strikes against targets on the Iranian mainland.

After all, we’ve already seen footage of an A-10 using its cannons to shred through a base used by an Iranian proxy militia group in Iraq.

So, we know that it’s attacking targets on land as well as at sea.

That attack saw the A-10 use its cannon.

Others have likely seen it use the standoff munitions that can be loaded onto the platform.

This is a war plane that can rattle off AGM65 Maverick missiles and both laser and GPS guided bombs, both of which are designed to be launched miles away from the intended target, which minimizes the threat posed by air defenses at those targets in the process.

A9 Sidewinder missiles can also be packed into the A10, making it an air-to-air threat against Iranian drones and the older aircraft in Iran’s air force.

Versatility is the key with the A-10.

While its work in the straight of Hormuz may be the most important in terms of stripping away a key lever that Iran has been trying to use to force an end to Operation Epic Fury, the A-10’s versatility means that it can be used anywhere in Iran.

Yes, it’s vulnerable to modern air defense systems such as the S300 we mentioned earlier, but that’s where America’s air superiority comes into play.

As long as the A-10s stay in the pockets of safe space that the US and Israel have created, it’s a destruction dealing machine that comes loaded with so much firepower that its targets must think that the end times have come every time they’re hit.

As for the Apache helicopters, they’re not quite as versatile as the A-10.

However, they do come with Hellfire missiles and 30 mm chain guns, which again make them very useful in a straightfor Apache is fast enough to track and strike Iran’s fast attack boats.

Plus, it’s a chopper.

That means it can hover and fly slowly enough to serve as an escort to US Navy and merchant ships attempting to make their way through the straight.

Sustained operations in contested airspace will be risky for this attack helicopter as its range, speed, and vulnerability to both infrared and radar guided threats make it a target.

But like the A-10s, America’s Apaches aren’t being hit.

Iran just doesn’t have what it needs to strike them.

And that perhaps even more than the percentages that the IDF has been throwing around is proof that control over Iran’s skies now belongs to the US.

What we’re now seeing is a highintensity campaign that is being reinforced by these non-stalth platforms.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that we cover here at the Military Show.

If this is the sort of insight that you want more of, make sure you’re subscribed to the channel so you never miss a video.

As of March 25th, the US has struck at least 10,000 targets in Iraq.

That’s struck targets, not fired 10,000 munitions.

This is an air campaign on such a scale that it would be impossible for the US to pull off with just a handful of different airframes.

Highcapacity platforms such as America’s older bombers and the A10 are needed to maintain sustained firepower that supports fighter jets and stealth bombers running more surgical sorties throughout Iran.

The impact on Iran’s military has been devastating.

Leaders have been getting killed left and right.

Starting with former Supreme Leader Ali Hane, who was one of the first victims of Operation Epic Fury.

The US claims that 92% of Iran’s naval vessels have been taken out of the equation and that its missile launches are down by 90% due to a concerted campaign to take out its missile launch sites.

Command and control centers are being hit hard and the same goes for production facilities and the A10 seems to be at the center of it all.

The fast boats in the straight of Hormuz have to deal with a combination of this versatile attack aircraft and the Apache chopper.

On land, any military node that doesn’t have air defenses, which seems to be most of them at this point, is likely to get a visit from an A10 at some time.

Iran’s missile infrastructure in particular has taken a severe beating from the US and its air power.

On March 29th, the Washington Post published satellite images that showcase the damage done to some of Iran’s most important launch sites.

At least 29 of Iran’s ballistic missile launch sites have been wiped off the map since Operation Epic Fury began, the outlet says, which is a huge contributor to the sharp decline in Iranian missile launches that we’ve seen since early March.

The US has also been attacking
sites that are critical to the production of Iran’s ballistic missiles.

An entire network of these sites exists in Iran, all of which are overseen by the Iranian Ministry of Defense and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

So far, the US has struck four of the most important sites in that network.

All of which make fuel for the ballistic missiles that Iran wants to produce.

Shahude, Parchin, Kier, and Hakima have all sustained damage that is even greater than what was inflicted upon them during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel.

These are smart targets.

Even the most well-built missiles aren’t going anywhere if they don’t have fuel and launchers.

And as Iran’s air defenses have been degraded, America’s A10s have been flying along with many other airframes and delivering bombs and standoff munitions right to the hearts of these types of facilities.

But it gets even better than that for the A-10.

Do you remember earlier we discussed how the groundwork for the destruction of Iran’s air defense network had been laid before Operation Epic Fury began? The A-10 seems to have been involved in the obliteration of what was left of Iran’s air defenses from the very early days of Operation Epic Fury.

Army recognition explains, noting that a key factor for why Apaches and A10s are in Iran right now lies in America’s early establishment of air superiority.

Stealth platforms like the F-35 and B2 Spirit grabbed all of the headlines during the first few days of the operation as they were able to fly into Iran undetected to deliver firepower to critical military nodes.

F-22s were also part of earlier waves again because they have the stealth capabilities to ensure that they’re not shot down by Iran’s air defenses.

All of that makes sense, but the presence of A10s during this period doesn’t.

But what has happened is that the US was able to combine the use of these stealth platforms with cyber and electronic warfare or EW to degrade Iran’s air defenses even when the systems themselves hadn’t been destroyed.

The disruption of Iran’s radar and sensor networks, which the US pulled off with everything from space-based operations to EA18G Growler aircraft loaded with EW equipment, created temporary corridors where the threat from air defenses was reduced.

That opened the door for A10s and later Apaches to move in, strike what they needed to strike, and get back out again before Iran’s air defenses came back online.

This approach also creates the possibility that A-10s were being deployed to conduct direct strikes against Iran’s air defense units that have been compromised by cyber and EW operations.

There’s a level of irony in that approach.

The very sort of platform those defenses should be able to counter is also responsible for their destruction.

A10s and Apaches are now flying with impunity over Iran, which tells us that the air superiority that we’ve talked about is on the verge of transforming into true aerial supremacy.

Some already think that that is the situation in Iran, including former commander of US Central Command or Sentcom and CIA director David Petraeus.

We’re not concerned really at this point in time about air and ballistic defenses of Iran as long as you stay above heavy machine gun range and that means you can really just pour it on, Petraeus claims, adding, I would argue that we actually
have air supremacy now, not just air superiority, but I think folks are rightly cautious about those kinds of assessments publicly.

Caution is indeed important.

Iran’s main air defense network may be out of the game, but it still has the machine guns and shoulder-mounted anti-air rocket launchers we mentioned earlier.

Those high up in the US chain of command may still prefer to claim air superiority rather than air supremacy.

But the reality seems to be that outside of isolated threats, the US can send almost any aerial platform that it wants into Iran’s airspace and face virtually no resistance.

The best that Iran has been able to muster is the damaging of an American E3 Century, though even that required a missile strike against a base in Saudi Arabia rather than a missile fired from an anti-aircraft system.

Perhaps former SenCom commander and US Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie sums it all up best when describing the state of Iran’s military right now.

I think we’re accomplishing the objectives that we set out.

SenCom is executing a long, prepared campaign plan.

We’ve been able to take out Iranian air defenses to the degree that I would argue we have effectively air supremacy over most of Iran.

And what that has given us the opportunity to do is go hunt for ballistic missiles, McKenzie tells the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

That’s two former SenCom commanders using the words air supremacy rather than air superiority.

They’re saying what the top brass in the US military structure right now won’t say.

This is where we’re going to see things start shifting for Iran.

The US is going to use its aerial bombardment, so they won’t be at the sheer scale we’ve seen up to this point.

They don’t need to be.

Most of Iran’s military infrastructure has already been hit.

As McKenzie notes, Iran’s ballistic missile launch, storage, and production sites are now the big targets.

And hitting those is a task the A10 is ideal for, given its use of standoff munition.

A10s will be sent into safe aerial pockets near Iran’s missile sites, where they’ll unleash their payloads and then head back to base.

Those that aren’t flying over the Iranian mainland are going to be spending their time dealing with fast boats in the straight of Hormuz along with the Apache helicopters that Hexath has mentioned.

The Wall Street Journal says that these two platforms are so important they’ve essentially kicked off the battle for the straight of Hormuz.

It will likely take several weeks for the US to clear the straight of the anti-hship missile sites, fast boats, and other military assets that Iran has deployed in the water.

The A-10s and Apaches are operating on the straight southern flanks, says chairman of the joint chief of staff, General Dan Kaine.

America’s allies are also using Apaches to handle one-way attack drones, Kane claims.

Combine those two aircraft with the fighter jets that the US is deploying in the Straight of Hormuz, and you get a heady combination of firepower that makes it much riskier for Iran to conduct its Hormuz blockade.

Riskier, yes, but not impossible.

The straight is still very much blockaded with only a small trickle of merchant vessels making it through.

President Trump has extended Iran’s deadline to fully reopen the straight until April 6th.

So, the next week will likely see more A-10 and Apache strikes to serve as reminders to Iran of how much firepower the US brings to the strait.

Whether Iran capitulates to Trump’s demand is the big question.

If it does, the A-10s and Apaches will have done their job of degrading Iran’s straight of Hummus posture to the point where the regime feels that it has no other point.

Iran has been hiding something so dangerous that the US has to get its hands on it.

This something is one of the reasons why Operation Epic Fury was launched and it can’t be allowed to step.

Enriched uranium is sequested away in some of Iran’s underground bunkers as we speak.

And this massive threat could prove the pathway to nuclear annihilation.

The US is preparing to risk everything on one mission in Iran that could save the Middle East.

That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that US President Donald Trump is currently weighing his options when it comes to launching ground campaign in Iran designed to extract the country’s enriched uranium.

No decision has been made yet, but there is nearly 1,000 pounds of this uranium in Iran, and allowing it to stay in the country provides Thran’s increasingly desperate regime with the other option of further enriching its uranium to the point where it could build bombs capable of wiping out major population centers all over the Middle East.

Trump doesn’t want to send boots on the ground.

He’s pressing his advisers to make Iran’s agreement to surrender its nuclear materials one of the key conditions for ending Operation Epic Fury.

the Wall Street Journal reports.

There are elements of this in the 15-point plan that’s been floating around the media, though it’s uncertain how accurate that plan is to what the US actually wants from Iran.

White House press secretary Caroline Levit has already cautioned reporters about believing everything they see in the plan.

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