Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they'd be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
You should take better notes of the current and future balance of forces and capabilities in the pacific theater. Your scenario hinges on the assumption that the US will have the capability to militarily cripple and destroy chinas economy and infrastructure while taking massive losses in a calculus where the non replenishable damage inflicted on US forces and force projection is lesser in importance as well as duration and impact by what they manage to inflict on China.
This calculus is barely true right now, let alone in 5 or 10 years from now. No matter who sits in or out of it, soon the hard military reality will be that even if the US went full kamikaze mode attempting maximum damage on Chinese mainland with the full might of what they can realistically muster in the region, they will still be lose the exchange and basicaly sacrifice the entire military arm of global imperialism to manage infastructure and military damage that china will rebuild in 5 years. Any attempt to do what you describe will more likely result in a decisive Chinese victory , which together with the amount of US loses and the context of a likely takeover of Taiwan triggering or following this , will practicaly dislodge the US empire from SEA and cripple its force projection capabilities and global standing for a generation.
The thought that f-35s and B21s and US missiles can be employed in large enough scales and depth close or within mainland china to seriously damage chinese cities and industry, even if they went full sacrifice mode, will be laughable within the decade if it isnt already. At best they could content with a chinese blockade of taiwan right now with ambiguous results.
If the grand plan china should be affraid of is that everyone will stand around and watch while the US sacrifices hundreds of gen4.5+ aircraft and a good chunk of their carriers , destroyers and subs in order to take out an equal chunk of chinas (who will rebuild and replenish them about 5 times faster ) along with idk 5% of major industrial and military facilities in a single chinese province while every us base east of guam turns into a smoking crater then ok i guess. There are more industrial facilities that are or can engage in military production and more major energy and infrastructure nodes in idk Guangdong alone than there are missiles and bombs in the US navy and air force inventory.
The fact the US will TRY is set in stone, whether China wins doesn't depend on its inventory, it will of course weather the storm and decimate the US air forces; the win condition for China depends on the likelihood of the US dropping a nuke WHEN IT LOSES IT'S AIR FORCE in the Pacific
A mechanical analysis is fine, but you need to account for the deranged and delusional state of the American ruling class, which will get worse as time moves on
If the US hell-bent in instigating and getting into a hot conflict with china sooner or later no matter whatever else is happening around the globe and no matter the relative balance of forces in the pacific and they are also willing to push the "we nuke the earth button" when they start eating shit then nothing china can realistically do right now in the middle east, europe or elsewhere will change that. If thats not 100% set in stone, china's should decide what their best bet is to make the us unwilling or unable to do the above. Based on that they will prioritize things like maximizing their military and industrial/economic expansion and energy transition, managing or accelerating the rate of US disfunction, decline and global military commintments , securing global supply chains and trade ties etc. Maybe you are sure on the right path and balance and time table for the above and that china is shitting the bet by not going harder in overstretching the us by openly supporting and sustaining the fronts the us is expanding military and diplomatic capital right now but i dont think its that clear cut
There's nothing China (or any other country) can do if the US decides to nuke China outside of maybe nuking the US first (and this won't work anyways because of nuclear submarines). The main deterrent is building an ever more threatening nuclear arsenal and the assurance that if a single Chinese city gets nuke, China will exterminate the US through nukes.
This is the thought process behind every "China is playing the long game." China's rise and the US's fall are both inevitable, and when it happens, the US can either quietly concede defeat or go for nukes in a "if I can't be on the throne, no one can be on the throne" way. No country is responsible nor is to able to do anything to stop US leadership from acting like a deranged anime villain.
The uncomfortable truth Israel is employing much of the lessons learned by Ukraine and by extension the US in the last 3 years? Drone attacks, cyber warfare, deep intelligence. What you write sounds and reads exactly like the Russian propaganda in 2022. "Oh the Ukrainians will never amount to anything" turned out to be wrong, embarrassingly wrong and its likely the worst is yet to come for Russia. Its true the ground war is already decided, but the cost is already completely outside everyone's projections back then.
Your tone is of the same people who made the exact kind of confident projections about the Ukraine war back then. Its not convincing at all in hindsight. The US has not provided anything but intel and outdated European missiles and this is enough to make a difference.
Chinese military superiority should not be taken as a holy grail. The US will soon eventualy recognize the importance of hypersonic missiles too, they're already working on it. This is one of the key areas of Chinese advantage that could be gone.
The worst possible mistake one can do is to underestimate the hegemon superpower. US incompetence is a meme until it isn't. Nobody on hexbear is responsible for a whole country's military so I definitely fear and hope China isn't making plans on perpetual military superiority given they even refuse to fight a single war in decades.
I am very much afraid China is learning nothing from Ukraine/Israel tactics and right now all we have is speculation.
im not gonna lie and no offense this but idk to what i can respond to in this whole comment. "things may not be the way they seem because some other things also werent exactly like that and something opposite might have happened in another situations and some "bad" forces were underestimated and some good where underestimated and this tone sound like something some people who where wrong in another situation" is like, sure everything can and may be anything.
Any analysis that turned out wrong about some party's relative standing in military and intelligence strength in a specific theater and situation may sound like any other analysis that turned out right. Should i not say and analyse things as i see them based on concrete hardware and tech trends and development and logistics ? If any positive and confident acessment china's military development and relative balance of power (off its fucking shores no less) is unconvincing simply because Russia somewhat underperformed its "on paper" strength on some aspects of because mossad had spies and agents everywhere in shitass lebanese and iranian politics and everyday life and did looney tunes shit in incompetent, corrupt and split three ways arab states to fuck over axis of resistance groups i dont know if i can help that feeling and fear.
You can make your own judgements about the expansion, strength, hardware competency and technological edge of various PLA branches and PRC civil functions relative to american ones as it relates to a hot conflict on the pacific theater based on whatever you can find and on whatever assumptions and relavant lessons you think Ukraine or Israel teaches us. I never based anything of what i said in a percieved incompetence of the US military or any definite inferiority they hold on paper right now compared to China. On the contrary the US military holds many advantages on a lot if not most sectors still on paper. What i said relates to the specific most likely scenario of a US engagemnt with China and against some assumptions the original comments made. China would get its ass beat by the US 5 times worse in any engagement of american shores and in 80% of the world right now than what even an optimistic US defeat to china in the pacific theater in idk 2028 would look like. But it doesnt matter because my analysis only applies in a specific theater with specific innarguable advantages and disadvangaes, with armed forces and magazine build and massively expanded for specific purposes, based on hard numbers of trends in production, technology and all around capabilities
(exaggerating here) Sure the CIA could activate 10k shanghai and chengdu liberal secret cells and do operation spiderweb or whatever on Chinese airbases and ports and pla generals and pollituburo members may be car bombed by rigged BYD electric batteries. Sure the US navy lobbing tomahawks on Yemen and dodging drones and missiles a decade behind what China fields or them idk destroying some incompent arab state armies 20 years ago may actualy be the deciding experience factor against China. Or the US may reverse trends in missile development or any type of procurement with some big discovery and that makes some decisive chinese advantage or build up useless. I cant lie and do a disclaimer that china may in fact not be holding the decisive upper hand in the near future in any conlict in the pacific because of any of that