US/Israel conduct airstrikes on Iran again

Attempted missile attack on Diego Garcia

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-us-israel-war-updates-2026/card/iran-targeted-diego-garcia-base-with-ballistic-missiles-rb7MdZW1CfwRTauDYHOt

Same distance as Iran to Ireland it is worth noting, especially for those defending attacks on non belligerents and neutrals in this war, treating it like some team sport

Trump is a lying idiot, it is known

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddq7j48p35o

VSWR, is this what you would have expected. Are does the extent of the damage surprise you?

If only there was some European country offering help to the Gulf states to defend themselves cheaply and effectively at below costs it takes this axis of 💩 to produce drones and missiles

having learned the hard way from 4+ years of defending themselves from swarms of Iranian drones and Russian colonialist invaders

/S

Correct, no point having a 'war industry' if you cannot deplete stocks and get lucrative contracts to replenish

Iranians reporting fresh attack on Natanz

Supplies of what though?

One legacy of the Shah is that he did create his own military industrial complex with the help of US companies like Gruman who trained a whole generation of missile engineers. All around the GCC there's Iranian engineers!

Those cheap drones are effective because they understood scalability.

I'm very much with you on this.
Indeed even without up to date satellite imagery of the radar sites for BDA, the impact and extent of the damage to the US sensor networks in the Middle East can be gauged by the huge reduction in advance warning available in Israel.
Warnings that previously gave 8 minutes plus, are now often less than a minute before intercept/impact.

Incirlik is AFAIK the only intact long range radar left in the region with coverage of Iran for missile launch AEW.

If they can fly the E2's over Iran, then yes they won't suffer much loss of coverage but, they aren't over Iran, they are over Iraq, the Gulf and GCC states and giving 400km+ of air space coverage.
That equates to about a minute for BMD and so far as I know, the ballistic phase of flight isn't detected by AWACS.
Launch/Boost is if it's within range and terminal phase if it's below 120k feet.

The E2's offer excellent Airspace surveillance for Drones, Cruise missiles and air breathing threats.
They offer almost zero capability for BMD, and the impact of datalink delays on a kill chain maxed at 400km versus 1 minute cueing and intercept time?
Offers no real advantage over the intact patriot, arrow and David's sling radars.

The advantage the long range radars in the Gulf that have been destroyed offered, was reliable launch detection and early proximate cueing for the BMD interceptors.
That data being shared over hard wired networks also kept datalink delays to a minimum.

Add to that the retirement over the past few years of platforms like JSTARS and other dedicated battlefield surveillance and management platforms that have yet to be fully replaced.
The rollout of more E2s is welcome, but it's a stopgap towards a capability that was not fully replaced as of yet by the US.

AEGIS is the BMD platform, Hawkeye is an additional spatial sensor that when orbiting on a patrol point above a CSG greatly increases it's volume search and sensor range.
It doesn't however operate in a dedicated BMD role.
It's primarily Air Space management and threat detection.
It's GMTI and it's Radar will of course detect TEL movement and launch/Boost phase if within range but, while off board processing may well allow a degree of BMD tracking?
It's still a 400km high fidelity track with at best a 650km indicative track.
Versus the 3000km + range of the TPY2s and other radars that have been destroyed.
The advantage offered by detecting the launch and boost phase of a ballistic missile, versus detecting it in its Ballistic phase offer huge advantage in cueing interceptors.

The E2's are in no way an adequate replacement for the MEW radars knocked out by Iran and can't be unless and until they orbit within GMTI range of Iranian Launch areas.

As for the E11 and other backhaul infill for the Datalink issue.
It's desperately needed, if the reports regarding Kuwaiti F18C shoot down of the 3 F15Es are to be believed?
Datalink delay and reliability issues are claimed to have contributed to the IFF failure that led to the missiles being released in that incident.
Well, it's that or the KAF pilot decided to try and shift the scoreboard for Iran 😉

If you search my posts on this thread there is one from me in June 2025 as to why the economics of BMD were in Iran's favour.
I also speculated at the time as to interceptor magazine depth (I may have done so again early in the current conflict).
The usual exchange ratio for interceptor to incept is 2 interceptors to 1 target.
There are reports from the current war that at least 1 interception in the Gulf resulted in 8 patriots being fired at a single target.
At a minimum $3 million (but closer to $4.5million) per shot.

The US being reluctant to dig into stocks implies that there is at least a viable war reserve of BMD capable missiles.
I would argue, based upon what we know has been ordered across PAC-3, THAAD and SM3 and SM6 over the years, that no such reserve exists and that the burn rates of all US & Israeli interceptors since the Iran misadventure began?
Has exhausted magazine depth and left the rest of the US allies, particularly in the far east grossly exposed.
South Korea has lost THAAD, but it at least has a robust alternative to patriot in the KM-SAM.
Japan uses AEGIS and has a a license to build patriots (30+ per year) but I don't know if they have a license for SM series missiles.

The big winners of the missile profligacy in the ME?
Is China, Taiwan is no more at risk than ever before and the US has shown itself to be a fickle and unreliable ally to all except Israel (So far, that may change when Trump TACOs).
And if course Russia, in so far as it's likely no more Patriot will be supplied to Ukraine for the foreseeable future.

Edit
added link to my post on magazine depth & costs from June 2025.
The issues I highlighted then, are only exacerbated now via the amount of interceptors fired in Israel & Gulf IMHO.

edit ... no energy anymore for trying to understand how they get away it ...it's a madness

Well apparently attacks against neutral or non belligerent/aligned neighbours is all ok according to the wisdom so far /S

failed attack on a refinery