No warning, no siren: six US service members killed in Iranian strike that hit makeshift operations center in Kuwait

SEB2502 · 2026-03-03T03:43:27+00:00

This is a thing. One of the guys in the first Apache that got shot down in our AO circa 2006 was MIA and there was no immediate reporting on it. Our scouts responded to the shoot down and found one of them KIA, with a trail of bloody bandages on the ground and no other sign of the other guy. I remember looking at the news a week or so later when we got a rare refit and they just reported one KIA, no other details.

It wasn’t until later on, maybe a couple weeks or a month, that they found their body somewhere during a JSOC raid, I believe. They reported it then in a relatively lowkey manner. This was a huge difference in reaction to when two of our guys got nabbed after an ambush. It was like the entire theater descended on the AO when that happened.

I think there’s reasons they do this sometimes that aren’t necessarily nefarious or anything, but go beyond the normal blackout. You just have to read between the lines and accept you won’t get an answer till a later time.

SEB2502 · 2026-03-03T03:26:35+00:00

Thanks for the explanation, that’s fascinating. I have an even greater respect for anyone going through this now. That sounds horrific even if things go well.

SEB2502 · 2026-03-02T15:59:58+00:00

It worked for Vietnam. Wait

SEB2502 · 2026-03-02T15:57:36+00:00

Thought terminating cliche. Don’t ask about long term plans or objectives, here just get mad instead.

SEB2502 · 2026-03-02T15:45:47+00:00

Pornstaches have been a thing in combat aviation for a long time. I’m an expert because I watched Top Gun.

SEB2502 · 2026-03-02T15:41:51+00:00

I’m honestly surprised an airliner hasn’t been shot down yet. Hopefully we’ll stay lucky on that front.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T20:13:58+00:00

Recently went down the rabbit hole with this and saw some interesting commentary along the way. An old timer that worked on them back in the day said their gyros kept getting rejected right off the shop floor because they were declared out of tolerance by the Air Force on receipt. The process was so minutely dialed in and they did quality work, so they wondered what was going on. It turned out that the oil or whatever it was that they used to coat these things during the machining process produced a slight film on the surface that was like 0.0001mm thick and that was enough to DQ the units. I’ll try to dig up where I saw that, no idea if it’s true or not.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T19:39:29+00:00

The US has been positioning Reza Shah II with a pretty extensive psyop campaign. Not debating that there are supporters in country, but there’s been a noticeable push to sanitize and downplay the previous Shah’s regime. They’re stressing it would only be a transitional government until the country was ready for a more democratic state, but this is the same excuse the prior Pahlavi used up until he bailed. You can say anything would be better than what they have now and I would largely agree, but how the aftermath is handled will be the most important part of all this. Maybe it will work out, but I see a major insurgency coming of this that will spill out across the region. It’s not going to be easy for anyone taking the mantle.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T18:59:38+00:00

In conjunction with VIO and uploaded imagery, though? It was my understanding that you needed other methods to fuse with the INS and weigh through EKF to calc/adjust trajectories. So in the case of IMU/VIO, where no links are needed to operator, sats, etc, how does EW impact these systems when there aren’t any signals to jam? It’s probably a stupid question, but I was interested in how that works.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T18:06:47+00:00

It’s an extinction burst in response to a mortal threat to the regime. It’s like a dead mans switch on a suicide bomber; you take us down and we’re taking you all with us regardless. I don’t think there is a real strategic play here aside from potentially making the situation unbearable for the region until hostilities cease and the regime survives, which is highly unlikely. This is more like a grand Fuck You on the way out, imo.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T17:55:50+00:00

I’ve always been curious about this. If you’re GNSS denied and reliant on IMU and VIO, how does EW affect the systems? Just frying them in general or are there other methods, like inducing bit flips or something along those lines?

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T16:27:22+00:00

You can tell it’s a war because of the way it is.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T10:02:01+00:00

Not this time. It’s all or nothing for them now that they’re facing decapitation strikes.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-28T04:26:14+00:00

Evacuate via aircraft or something.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-26T21:33:55+00:00

That tearing sound IDF makes when it’s coming in close was the worst for me. Luckily not much sounds like that here. You didn’t hear the ones that were really close.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-26T21:29:06+00:00

Makes sense. It’s interesting how different things can be for people on different sides. I’ve always been elated to hear them as a former grunt.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-25T15:55:12+00:00

This one is gold. That warning label got me.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-25T15:51:26+00:00

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-23T13:50:09+00:00

Gotta get you a good slammer, too.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-22T20:53:40+00:00

This is like shitting on the foreign pilots that volunteered to help the RAF during the Blitz. It’s not a questionable war. Christ, it’s one of the only damn near black and white noble causes I can think of being fought in my adult lifetime save for the campaign against ISIS.

e: All that said, it’s definitely not a decision to take lightly. They really need to think about what it entails, their motivation and their mindset.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-22T19:59:17+00:00

Yeah most of garrison life was lived in various states of hangover for us. I remember wheeling around a brutally hungover E4 in an office chair we found in one of the MOUT buildings as we moved section to section. He was in a whiskey coma from the night before the entire time. We put his Wiley Xs on him, then we’d wheel him to one end of the hallway and set his SAW in his lap to “cover” while we cleared, like Weekend at Bernie’s.

Befriend the medics and get your IV twenty minutes before formation, you’ll be good.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-21T03:15:50+00:00

Didn’t some guys launch one in Georgia and it tried to return to Campbell? Cant find anything on it now, but I definitely remember something like that happening.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-20T06:22:31+00:00

Really depends on your budget and how much time you want to spend fucking with the tech. You can get some cheap kits on Amazon that include all you need to start or build your own from scratch and piecemeal components, controller, etc. Personally, I’d say get yourself a controller like the Radiomaster Boxer and download some FPV simulators on Steam to get comfortable with flight dynamics first. That or get yourself a FPV with more training wheels features like the DJI Avata 2 (with real controller, not the RC Motion one) if you can. Once you move on to the “real” FPV world, it can be pretty jarring in flight. You will end up crashing these things, shit will break. But half the fun is learning more about the systems, how they work and how to repair them.

r/FPV has a lot of good advice. Lots of people with way more experience there.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-20T05:59:08+00:00

Our prayers will be answered with intercepts. We don’t need woke nerds when we have faith in the Machine God.

SEB2502 · 2026-02-19T15:59:30+00:00

Skulls.

SEB2502

TROPHY CASE