Monday [6 to 8]

(0729) morning all … grey sky is up. (0729)

 

8. Steve’s late evening take

First an array of support for DJT’s action, then more from this Shanaka in Oz (see Mon 1):

“The Israeli Air Force released footage of strikes on the IRGC headquarters in Tehran. Millions are sharing it. Almost nobody understands what they are actually watching.

You are watching the largest Israeli air sortie in history. Two hundred fighter jets launched simultaneously as part of Operation Roaring Lion, striking five hundred targets across Iran.

The United States ran its parallel campaign under Operation Epic Fury, deploying Tomahawk cruise missiles, HIMARS rockets, and for the first time in combat, the Precision Strike Missile, a next-generation ballistic weapon that had only entered full-rate production months earlier. CENTCOM released the footage of its first operational firing.

A weapon went from production line to combat debut faster than most defense programs complete testing. The strikes were timed with intelligence precision that borders on the surreal. According to Reuters, the operation was launched to coincide with a high-level meeting at a secure compound in central Tehran where Khamenei was present with his inner circle.

The CIA had tracked his movements for months. When signals intelligence confirmed the meeting, the order was given. Israeli officials told Axios they were targeting the entire Iranian leadership, political and military, past, present and future.

Fox News reported the division of labor. Israel targeted leadership. The United States targeted military infrastructure and ballistic missile sites. This is not two countries cooperating. This is a single integrated kill chain across two sovereign command structures with shared intelligence and synchronized timing. The IDF Chief of Staff said the two militaries worked together for months with unprecedented cooperation.

The first wave was pure decapitation. CNN reported strikes on residences of Khamenei, Pezeshkian, the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, and the IRGC Commander. Iran International reported four intelligence officials killed: the head of foreign intelligence, the chief of the security branch, the director of counterterrorism, and the adviser overseeing the war portfolio with Israel.

This was not a bombing campaign. This was an organizational chart converted into a target list. Footage shows more than twenty one Tomahawk cruise missiles transiting Iranian airspace in a single sequence. A Reaper drone operated over Shiraz before twenty explosions were reported. Strikes hit Tehran, Karaj, Tabriz, Kermanshah, Bushehr, Qom, Isfahan, Chabahar, and Konarak.

The geography tells you this was not a limited strike. This was a nationwide campaign from air and sea simultaneously. Every defense ministry on Earth is downloading this footage right now. Not because it shows explosions. Because it shows what an integrated precision strike architecture looks like when the political decision is made to use it at full capacity. This was the demonstration.

The question every capital is now asking is not what happened to Iran. It is what would happen to them.”

|https://open.substack.com/pub/shanakaanslemperera/p/the-arithmetic-of-collapse-irans?r=6p7b5o&utm_medium=ios


7. Now outdated reports from my reading


6. That ole VAR issue

Monday [3 to 5]

(0606) Still dark of course. (0624)

 

5. Steve at 1309

  • Hanoi Jane Fonda Melts Down Over Trump’s Iran Strikes — Claims He’s “Accelerating Climate Catastrophe”
  • Iran Raises the ‘Red Flag of Revenge’ Over Jamkaran Mosque After Death of Ayatollah Khamenei
  • Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Reportedly Killed in First Round of Israeli Airstrikes: Iranian Media
  • Military Releases Epic Footage of B-2 Stealth Bombers, Armed with 2,000 Pound Bombs That Struck Iran’s Ballistic Missile Facilities
  • GOP Rep. Tim Burchett Reminds Democrats That Obama Bombed Eight Countries Without Congressional Approval
  • Twelve Israelis And Americans Killed
  • Violent Mass School Fight Which Left Teacher in Hospital and Injured Staff Was Caused by “Community Tensions”
  • Confidential Report Warns Against $10 Trillion Global Collapse If China Takes Taiwan
  • US defense and tech sectors face crippling shortages of key minerals controlled by China
  • Much more.

4. Cyborgs need R&R too


3. DAD at 1309

Today there are two themes, The bizarre effects of Ramadannyboy and the thought processes of the ‘Far Left’. Firstly, the Strange Green Party (EELV in France) and the Neo Communist LFI..

a) Poitiers (86) : Convicted as a repeat offender for drug trafficking, Chiacap Kitoyi is in fourth position on the list of the outgoing EELV mayor Léonore Moncond’huy. [Poitiers has been Green for years – perhaps it is the large Student population.]

b) Clichy (92) – sentenced to 30 months in prison for kidnapping, Ibrahim Diallo remains on the LFI municipal list. “We pledge that he will not take any responsibility” – they say.

c) Marseille – Around 150 people gathered on Friday evening, February 27th, in Font Obscure Park, in Marseille’s 14th arrondissement, to share Iftar, the meal that breaks the R*m***n fast. The gathering was marred by mortar fire and clashes, leading to the arrest of seven individuals.

d) Doubs: He cited “R*m***n” to explain his refusal to comply and the 70 km chase with the police… A one-year suspended prison sentence with electronic monitoring for this driver already known to the justice system.

Monday [1]

(0458)(0525)

 

Sidelights on Persia

Shanaka Anslem Perera, author of The Ascent Begins. Independent Analyst. Money, geopolitics, AI, science, and sovereignty. Mapping the collapse and the reconstruction of order. (Seems Indian, lives in Australia.)

On July 16, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth held up a drone at a Pentagon event. It had a delta wing, a pusher propeller, and a silhouette that anyone who had watched the war in Ukraine would recognize immediately.

It was a copy of the Iranian Shahed-136, the kamikaze drone that Russia had fired (by the thousands into Ukrainian cities)*, the weapon Iran distributed to Houthi proxies in Yemen, the airframe that humiliated Western air defense systems through sheer volume and cheapness.

*(JH: This is not so … by his own admission, they had coordinates, they flew there, they took out targetted infrastructure. The Russians retaliated after 2014 after NATO, CIA, US pollies, plus Britain and others, had no intention of a peace process, were trafficking, using biolabs and Russian speakers were being targetted. This Perera is being disingenuous … see text in my brackets.)

Except this one was American. Built by an Arizona startup called SpektreWorks from a captured Iranian airframe. Seven months later, on February 28, 2026, CENTCOM confirmed that the Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System flew in combat for the first time during Operation Epic Fury. Against Iran.

The country that designed the original. CENTCOM’s statement was direct: “Task Force Scorpion Strike, for the first time in history, is using one-way attack drones in combat during Operation Epic Fury. These low-cost drones, modeled after Iran’s Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution.”

Task Force Scorpion Strike was established in December 2025 with an explicit mandate. A US official told The War Zone the unit was created “to flip the script on Iran.” On December 16, a LUCAS drone was test-launched from the Littoral Combat Ship USS Santa Barbara in the Persian Gulf. Ten weeks later, the script was flipped.

Here is the economics. A Tomahawk cruise missile costs approximately $2 million. LUCAS costs $35,000. For the price of a single Tomahawk, you can launch 57 LUCAS drones. A Shahed-136 in Russian production costs approximately $80,000 per unit at the Alabuga facility. The American reverse-engineered version costs less than half the Russian licensed copy of the Iranian original.

SpektreWorks received a $30 million initial production contract. That buys 857 kamikaze drones for what the Navy spends maintaining a handful of Tomahawks.

But cost is not the (real) story. The original Shahed-136 navigates by pre-programmed GPS and inertial guidance. It flies to a fixed coordinate and detonates. It cannot be retargeted in flight. It cannot communicate with other drones. It cannot adapt. LUCAS integrates with the MUSIC mesh network, a multi-domain unmanned systems communications architecture that allows each drone to function simultaneously as a strike weapon and a communications relay node.

Some units carry Starlink terminals, specifically the military Starshield variant, enabling beyond-line-of-sight satellite communications, real-time human oversight, and autonomous swarm coordination in GPS-denied and electronically jammed environments.

The original Shahed is a flying bomb with a coordinate. The American version is a networked intelligence node that happens to explode. Russian military commentators are already sounding alarms. The integration of Starlink with a mass-producible airframe represents a threat class that existing electronic warfare cannot reliably counter.

You cannot jam a mesh network the same way you jam a GPS receiver. The drone that does not reach its target still relays targeting data for the drone behind it. Every unit the enemy shoots down costs the defender more in interceptor ammunition than the attacker spent building it.

That is the Shahed math, the logic Iran invented and Russia perfected in (the) Ukraine. The United States just applied it to the country that wrote the equation. Seven months from Pentagon debut to combat deployment.

For context, a traditional major defense acquisition program takes seven years to reach Milestone B. Iran spent a decade refining the Shahed-136. The United States reverse-engineered it, improved it, networked it, and sent it home in under a year.

|https://open.substack.com/pub/shanakaanslemperera/p/the-arithmetic-of-collapse-irans?r=6p7b5o&utm_medium=ios

Sunday [16 till close of play]

(1615) Almost evening all … twas a lovely Sunday at this end. You?

 

21. Persian restaurant time

20. Steve at 1309:2

Hearts of Oak: The Week According To . . . Richard Taylor (from Welsh Wales).

19. Moo corner


18. The real people of Britain?

17. Declaring war


16. Analysis of that strike

Jazz time

 

Just happen to have eight nice tracks in the queue … at three per Sunday, I could add maybe an older Tuba Skinny in the third week … so three weeks of good jazz. For some time, first track up has been “look at this one, see if you like”, second has been a nice set piece, third has been the rip-roarer finale.

Sun Mat

 

In a slight bind … two wunnerful films but which Sunday and which Monday? The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935 version). 🤔 Former now and t’other tomorrow. Jazz is at 1430 today.

“After seeing the horrendous remake of this film, it made me go back to the original. This is a movie with a great message, and while it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, it has a human message. What makes it differ is that perhaps the response to power as significant as this first wave force may be tempered by a hesitation to destroy. Also, the aliens are benevolent and confident. Klatu is there to save the Earth and its people, not to make it a new central park for his future generations. Gort is an enforcer, but never acts unless provoked. It isn’t that there is no cynicism in this film. Obviously, when threatened, the military types want to respond with carnage. Once it is established that this is of no use in a huge demonstration of power (done in the most “humanitarian” way. Michael Rennie has some personality, despite his bewilderment as a stranger in a strange land.. Patricia Neal is really caught in unfamiliar territory, but does a very good job in her role. This is an early treasure of the sci fi genre.”

Sunday [11 to 15]

(1111) Elevenses with a vengeance, if the time is owt to go by. (1142)

 

15. Enjoy Sunday lunch, readers


14. It all seems a bit Bath and Wellsish to me


13. Now and Next

Rolf has this up about war:

“Who voted for the slaughter to begin? Nobody. The electorate comprised 5.2 million men (some 60% of all adult males, and no women at all), but they were not consulted. Instead, the order was given by King George V at a Privy Council meeting in Buckingham Palace attended by only two court officials and Lord Beauchamp.”

I’m in two minds on war. For an enemy within or nearly at our gates, you’d see me at the local recruiting office, doctor permitting. For some faroff war, it again depends how it affects us. I quite agree with Donny doing the deed in Persia … in this chess game, if only for the masses of humans beings slaughtered as well, plus for the promise he made, plus for Christian eschatological reasons (endtimes scenario) … there’s certainly a case, zionist ashkenazi or no zionist ashkenazi.

The red line is boots on the ground … firstly for the US, then as ally … us. The problem with it in our case is that the mussy cells are primed to slaughter in every village, right now. For this reason, I’m far more in Rupert’s camp. No way, esp. no coercive callup for overseas duty. It comes back with my first comment … if intel put it beyond doubt, for an enemy within or nearly at our gates, you’d see me at the local recruiting office, doctor permitting.

12. Wars and rumours of war


11. IYE has posted a “semi-revealer”

There is, in general, copy that does not make it to square one, some which of course reaches the inbox but I have to bury and vaguely signpost it, copy which is “semi-revealed”, copy which is just signposted and lastly, copy I blog on. The criterion is simply political sensitivity … copy that will see us hit more than the average.