Bulletins and News Discussion from October 21st to October 27th, 2024 - Swimming Back To The Titanic - COTW: Moldova

is Israel’s strategy really just “bomb everyone and everything till the other side gives up”?

That's probably their ideal, but I think their real strategy is to continue to escalate/goad the Resistance into escalating to the point where the US has to intervene directly to bail out the zionists, and the only way that is likely to happen is if a wider regional war starts. Getting bogged down and eventually kicked out of Lebanon by itself wouldn't be enough to pull in the US, they need an outright war with Iran in order for that to be a possibility.

Historically, has a military campaign that is almost exclusively bombing ever succeeded?

No. Wars cannot be and have never been won by air power alone. It is a fundamental basic military fact that air power by itself can't take and hold ground, which is what is ultimately required to win a war. As we are also seeing in Ukraine today, all of the fancy tech that today's militaries have is still secondary in importance to the basic infantryman who is the backbone of any war. Second is artillery by the way. Air power, missiles, drones, etc. are tertiary at best.

And if they really think that they will succeed with this approach where everyone else in history who has tried this failed (if sheer scale of bombing won wars then the US would have won Korea and Vietnam, but they lost the latter and fought to a stalemate in the former, and only because they actually deployed very large amount of ground forces for the Korean war) shows an utter illiteracy in military understanding. It shows that they have fully bought into their own bullshit, drank their own koolaid about American air supremacy having been what won the Iraq war rather than what it really was that did it which was massive amounts of CIA bribes.

If they want to win any kind of war they will have to deploy boots on the ground and we've seen very clearly not just over this past year but ever since a much weaker Hezbollah first kicked them out of Lebanon that nowadays the Zionist genocide forces are godawful when it comes to ground combat. Once upon a time in the 60s and 70s that may have been different as they still had a lot of Soviet WW2 veterans but all they've done for decades now is bully and murder an occupied population armed with sticks and stones and homemade weapons.

but is Israel’s strategy really just “bomb everyone and everything till the other side gives up”?

That really depends on what is being targeted in Iran. If Israel target a few above ground facilities of minimal value, there is a path to de escalation. If Israel target Iranian air defences in a large operation to try open up the possibility for a prolonged bombing campaign, then yes they just want to bomb Iran into submission.

I agree with your assessment on Israel's operations against Hezbollah, they are looking to inflict a large and disproportionate amount of casualties to try cause division within Lebanon and get the people to abandon Hezbollah or to get Hezbollah to stop because the cost to life is too great. Ground operations have also been quite unsuccessful, and a lot of that comes down to the bizzare tactics used by the IDF in their counter insurgency operations in South Lebanon. Tanks without air or infantry support, small probing teams to minimise losses and involvement, etc. No other military would do this, it's suicidal against an enemy as well equipped as Hezbollah.

As for the response, it's interesting to note that all the weapons Israel have prepared for their attack on Iran so far, are "indigenous" weapons systems. The ROCKS and Golden Horizon ALBMs are Israeli equipment, and appear to have been fitted to 4th gen aircraft like the F-15, and not the 5th generation F-35. I guess this is what Biden means when he says that Israel is capable of "going at it alone" in their planned attack against Iran. Any further air campaign will require US made bombs though, and likely the use of F-35 aircraft.

I think the closet thing there was to a war "won exclusively by air power" was the first Gulf War, where NATO air operations inflicted the majority of losses. But such a war still required a very large ground force from NATO to actually hold territory. So I don't think the Israelis intend to do that yet. Any operation against Iran on such a scale would require US and NATO forces, Israel can't go it alone in that regard.

Me, an idiot: Saturate the area around your defenses at like 10:1 with irrelevant radar signals to make them less likely to target the right location.

What will probably happen: Something else that's bad instead.

The key to avoid being destroyed, as shown by the Serbs, is shoot and scoot tactics. Turning on your radar for a very short period of time, shooting at anything that appears, and then changing position. If this can be combined with a multi-layered air defence defence system, with point defence SAMs such as the Tor and Pantsir actively defending the major S300 SAM batteries and shooting down incoming missiles and bombs, along with mobile electronic counter measure and decoy units frustrating incoming anti radiation missiles, that would give the air defence system a solid chance of survival and a chance to carry out its mission.

The problem is, as also shown by the Serbs, that if air defence operators dedicate so much energy and time to avoiding detection and destruction and end up in a stalemate with the enemy SEAD/DEAD campaign, the air defence is practically suppressed as they cannot carry out their primary mission of engaging enemy aircraft and denying them access to their airspace.

The problems Iran face are that these anti radiation ROCKS ALBMs would be launched from a stand off distance over 200km away from the target. Such a distance is outside of the firing range of Iran's air defence systems, meaning that they won't be able to engage the aircraft firing the ALBMs directly. To stop them, they'll have to shoot down the ALBM itself. Then there's also the question of how mobile Iran's main SAM batteries can be, if they're set up to defend a certain area in a stationary manner and can't move easily, then they are more vulnerable.

That is part of the strategy to protect against DEAD, but if you are turning off your radars, then at the very least you are supressing your air defenses so in that way the SEAD mission is being successful.

The problem with keeping radars off is that SEAD weapons are usually paired up with something intended to hit the site if it stays dark, such as a cruise missile, drone, or long range glide bomb.

Iran's threat to bomb the oil fields with their ballistic missiles is basically their version of Mutually Assured Destruction for the region, which is why so many countries are denying Israel the right to use their airspace for an attack against Iran. Hell, the UAE of all places even had pro Lebanese public awareness campaigns using their highway billboards recently! No one wants their oil facilities destroyed. The thing is, with the "Golden Horizon" ALBM, Israel can likely carry out limited attacks on Iran without having to even leave Israeli airspace, so there is no way to completely shut them out.