World finding out that many American (and Israeli) systems are not as claimed by their manufacturers.
2026 Iran War Strategy and Analysis
- Thread starter plawolf
- Start date
To be fair, Mossad and the broader Israeli intelligence community are generally speaking considered highly competent, especially relative to their size and budgets, as well as vis-a-vis the regional competition.
Their moral compass is a whole other story, but intelligence agencies tend to be rather amoral in their methods regardless of nationality.
The "real problem" here is that intelligence assessments get politicized in Israel, just as they do in the United States, Russia and elsewhere.
Between Mossad, Aman — which includes Units 8200 and 9900, among others — and whatever other agencies they got, plus the intelligence Israel receives from the US, UK, UAE, etc., the Israeli political leadership have access to all sorts of reporting and assessments that are frequently contradictory.
As a result, the Israeli political leadership — and to a degree the intelligence and military officials downstream — get to "pick and choose" what intelligence to embrace and what intelligence to ignore.
As you can imagine, they — like their peers elsewhere — will inevitably engage in cherry-picking for the sake of political expediency and career advancement at the expense of factual accuracy.
why are people still debating trying to prove body parts belong to Americans? this is rediculous. didn't you guys read what US drones did? they were blowing up any Iranian guy 12yo and up within a 3 km distance from the pilot.
yes you will see a ton of charred body parts. all likely belonging to random Iranian farmers who thought they could be the heroes that caught the American pilot. all these people likely got blown up before they even had the chance to fight.
the fact that the Iranian military had to offer a reward for farmers if they could capture the pilot implies the Iranian military was completely unprepared to capture the pilot themselves
'Capture Enemy Pilots Alive': Iran Channel Offers Reward After US Jet Downed
An anchor on the channel read out an announcement saying, "Military forces have launched a search operation to find the American fighter pilot who was hit earlier today. Dear and honourable people of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, if you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police and military forces, you will receive a valuable reward and bonus."
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imagine that. a large well trained professional spec op force backed up by airpower came in suddenly to an area. there are random Iranian farmers who thought it was like a movie. they went out and it was likely a one sided massacre in which these random farmers were killed before they even knew what hit them.
the aircrafts and helicopters were likely damaged by Iranian airdefence while on their way to the site. so they left these aircrafts and later bombed it.
You need to stop looking down on people willing to risk their lives to stop the invasion of their country. If the Americans follow your train of thought, there wouldn't be an United States today.
looking down? I'm just saying people should stop talking about "we found body parts here". fishing for pics of charred body parts on the internet in a war is rediculous.
There are a lot of plot holes in the story, which is actually pretty consistent for all American claims in this war so far:
- Pilots ejects at the same time after getting hit, and two pilots who ejected at the same time could not drift apart by a hundred miles.
- Iran found one ejection seat so they already know within a few km where both pilots were right away, there were never any need to offer public bounties.
- If US was able to extract the first pilot immediately there's no reason they couldn't grab the 2nd at the same time. There is no reason for one pilot to require much more effort to extract than the other when both ejected at the same time.
- As some already pointed out the claimed location of the 2nd pilot is 100 miles deeper inside Iran (site B) than location of the first close to the border (site A), it could just be misdirection and both were at location A or B, but its impossible for one to be at A and the other at B.
There are a couple of theories including some sort of uranium extraction op cover-up, but that doesn't make sense for obvious reason that you need a lot more than few guys to knock on doors to get to Iranian underground bases.
IMO what could happened was:
- Both pilots ejected at the same time at site A close to the border, which was also where the ejection seat was photographed.
- Iran got to both immediately, then killed the pilot while capturing the WSO to use as bait.
- Being close to the border US immediately recovered the body of the first pilot but claimed the guy's fine, as per their standard denial procedure. Iran also said US isn't telling the whole truth about the first pilot which would align.
- Instead of redeploying their own forces which is a massive undertaking, Iran drove the captured WSO 100 miles deeper inside Iran to site B, where their AD forces are already in position.
- Iran put out the bounty announcement to make Americans believe WSO hasn't been captured yet and there is no trap.
- US then made multiple attempt at extracting the WSO from site B, which is infact a trap and lost multiple jets in the process.
- C-130 were hit on the way in, made hard landings and couldn't take off again, then either destroyed by Iranians or themselves.
- Condition of WSO is critical because Iran beat him half to death before leaving him out in the open as bait.
In either case I think any theory on what happened can't ignore the fact Iran found the ejection seat right away, and physics does not allow a second ejection seat to drift hundreds of miles away.
As for killing random farmers, obviously Americans would do that, but it's also extremely unlikely for there to actually be random farmers at a place where Iran set up an ambush.
The "downed pilot" was a fake cover story for a failed US military operation to capture Iran’s primary stockpile of highly enriched 60% uranium, roughly 440–970 pounds. The primary stockpile is located at Isfahan, exactly where the pilot was "lost." This explains why the US heavily bombed the area while "searching" and why the C-130s were destroyed without loss of life. The C-130s were hit on the ground while the special forces attempted to secure the material. The entire operation became a massive rescue operation to extract the soldiers.
Evidence for the "Uranium Cover Story" Location: The rescue took place in the Isfahan region, which is home to one of Iran’s most critical nuclear facilities. Scale of Force: The sheer volume of aircraft & helicopters lost including heavy lift assets like the C-130J Commando units for a "snatch-and-grab" of enriched uranium stockpiles The 160th SOAR's helicopters MH-47 Chinook and MH-6 Little Birds that were on site would have extracted the pilot. It makes zero sense to land two C-130J for a pilot extraction. Instead, they would transport specialized ground units like Delta Force or Navy SEALs (DEVGRU), who are specifically trained for "Pathway Defeat" and the handling of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
The airstrip the 2x C-130J landed on is only 37km (22 miles) from the Uranium underground tunnel complex attached to the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center Also they used 3x C-130J to extract everyone.
It's still a plane. Not a tank.
Any plane armor since WW2 is chances thing; it doesn't guarantee anything, but it generally helps pilots commit, and in a long run helps better statistics. All that measured against threat - you can defend against several 23mm hits or MANPAD, or lucky splash from big missile far enough, with main splinter cone away from the plane.
There's nothing you can do against medium missile scoring direct hit, or making tofu out of you with main splinter cone. Plane armor doesn't stop that.
the fk? in what kind of alternate reality did that happen?
if people want to write fanfics then that is fine but a disclaimer should be written that this is just a fanfic not actual news.
rather than trying to twist oneself into a pretzel to try explain the events. it is more accurate to just look at the facts that we have. if this fanfic really was true. then Iran would have released some pics now after the US says they rescued the pilot to show he is dead.
He said IMO
Show pics of what exactly? A mangled up body mixed with twisted metal?
Speaking of facts, everything US stated is the fanfiction because all of it is devoid of evidence.
That leads us to speculation and probabilities. What is the probability that you send in multiple large cargo planes to rescue a lone pilot?
Best speculation so far is that the pilot rescue narrative is fake and this is likely a botched operation that attempted something else (I mentioned capturing a runway previously, while others say seizure of nuclear material).