The Military Thread

Well, the guillotine was adopted as a more humane alternative to beheading by hand.

Found a source saying that there were no botched executions by firing squad, at least in the US. Though, I'm not sure about other countries

Edited by minseok42 on Nov 30th 2020 at 10:25:34 PM

This is surreal: Iran's latest description of the assassination of one of their nuclear scientists a few days ago claims that it was conducted entirely by remote satellite-operated weapons.

This sounds awfully convenient when it comes to Iranian security's responsibility, compared to the previous version in which a dozen or more attackers on the ground were involved - and the article even points out that it gives authorities a reason why none of the attackers were captured - but I have no idea whether that automatically makes it implausible.

About those proposed attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, wouldn't that cause a nuclear disaster?

Assassinations by remote satellite operated weapons are standard issue for most modern nations, that's how drone strikes tend to work after all.

The question is more of a "why would you change your story so dramatically unless your trying to cover up for something"

Remotly flinging an explosive device or KKV into the target is a very diffrent mission profile then a ground attack, and ground attacks cant be conducted over satellite, trees, terrain, and debris have a nasty tendancy to get in the way and block signal.... which is why UCAV are in widespread service with most major militaries, while UCGV are not.

If its a power-plant? Possibly? The risk of a Chernobyl is almost impossible but it could contaminate the site itself like 3 mile island, nothing that would cause problems over more then just the area of the facility itself though.

Nuclear weapons? No, weapons are made sure that they dont do any thing unintentionally for a verity of reasons, not the least of which is you expect them to be in places that get shot at and you dont want them detonating on yourself.

Edit: Did some digging, the proposed target was a nuclear enrichment facility... which at the end of the day means that the worst that can happen is nuclear material spread around the sight by conventional explosives.... not.... a situation you want to happen, but also not like "large scale damage" causing either.

If it happened it would render the facility grounds unusable without very expensive cleanup, but it would be able to be cleaned up and not touch the surrounding area all that much if at all.

Still not something to endorse, like even beyond the stupidity involved with needless agression... let's not mix explosives and nuclear material

Edited by Imca on Nov 30th 2020 at 5:48:58 AM

I am going to sound like a broken record, but we are talking about a country that shot down a civilian aircraft that had just taken off from the main civilian airport of their capital and currently features one of the most disastrous COVID-19 outbreaks in the world. So I would assume that Iran is trying to cover up that they are totally incompetent at anything security-related.

"Attacking nuclear facilities" could mean a lot of things. Stuxnet, for example, totalled Iran's gas centrifuges through electronic means without the US or Israel physically laying a finger on Iranian facilities.

True, but from what I understood, Trump had the more conventional sort of attack in mind.

For the record, here is the FARS version of how the assassination went down:

Please try not to laugh too hard.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 30th 2020 at 8:35:32 AM

Hey, a UCGV.

Cross-posted from the Middle Eastern thread, Iran's Revolution Guards commander, Muslim Shahdan, has been killed in the Iraqi-Syrian border: https://mobile.twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1333439159944568832

Shit, what happened?

Isn't the IRGC's CinC Hossein Salami? Never heard of this guy before.

But was it the tech aspect you're laughing at, or just how conveniently face-saving the "no human attackers" version is? Because it was the former that caught my attention - but I don't actually know whether it's totally unbelievable.

Er, word choice. The guy was just a Revolutionary Guards commander. That's a lot different from "the" commander.

This sounds like just business-as-usual proxy warfare, honestly. Everything I can find about it is pretty vague and lacking in detail.

I think it's a combination of poor wording and the death of their top scientist putting some people on edge.

Edited by kkhohoho on Nov 30th 2020 at 9:10:37 AM

I think he's laughing because this dude's first instinct on bullets hitting his bulletproof windshield is exit the bulletproof vehicle and look for the attacker.

Russia is deploying its S-300V4 air defence system to the Kuril Islands, apparently as an anti-ballistic missile defence. Its range would theoretically allow it to reach as far as Hokkaido.

Got one in English to share around?

Fresh press release from the PVO, not much details at the moment. Wait a few days for it to hit the BBC or something.

Edit: Clips from the Russian MoD's TV channel.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Nov 30th 2020 at 7:44:21 AM

There’s the winner. If your security team’s counter-ambush plan is “stop and let the VIP out to take a look”, well, you need a new security team.

That said, I don’t really fully believe the claims about secret remote control turrets either. It’s not that it’s not technologically impossible, it’s just unnecessary and implausible. Why pay a bunch of guys to smuggle a remote control turret into a hostile country and set it up to kill someone when you could pay those same guys a little less to go kill someone themselves? Turrets don’t just set themselves up and there were clearly human attackers on scene, the story has a ton of holes in it. It seems like a halfhearted attempt to explain away the incompetence of this security team.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 30th 2020 at 7:46:37 AM

I dunno, you're seeing remote MG setups more often these days.

Even insurgent groups can tie a camera to a gun and wire that to a PS 2 controller. It really is that simple now.

Sure, but you have to consider the context of the usage. This wasn’t a brutal urban stalemate or tactical withdrawal, the remote platform didn’t offer much benefit here.

It’s not impossible, but I don’t rate the claim highly. If it’s true the Iranians should at least have some scraps to show off shortly as they usually do.

If this is supposed to be a cover-up, it's a really bad one. You generally don't want the cover-up to make your security team look utterly incompetent.

Either that or they're engaging in some truly egregious victim blaming by insinuating that Fakhrizadeh went out on his own and got himself shot.

Edited by M84 on Dec 1st 2020 at 12:04:36 AM

https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-security-apparatus-under-fire-after-top-nuclear-scientist-assassinated/30977004.html

Radio Free Europe has more details on how the VIP got killed.

I mean, TBF, it's not like there's any scenario here where Iranian security in general doesn't come out of this looking incompetent. The Israelis still seem to be able to operate with total impunity on their soil, despite the fact that they were (or should have been) well aware something like this was likely to be attempted.

And there I was speaking of Iran's security being totally incompetent just yesterday...