USAF is lucky you are not in its leadership.Yes, they need to be in the region before a war, because once a war is declared those bases are destroyed by the Iranians.
History has shown how much bloody firepower concrete strips can take and be patched up in days, losing planes on the ground is far worse.
>multipleNo, it's actually based on the fact they have multiple underground missile bases. The U.S. and Russia don't have thousands of missile silos because they don't have thousands of missiles in the first place, given they are both signatories to arms restrictions treaties Iran isn't a part of.
>thousands
See the difference?
I see you are not done with your retarded word games and still think someone will actually fall for them.
Those missile bases are not missile silos according to your very own link.
Hence, your theory about thousands of missile silos is as much hokum as anyone who knows these things expected.
They are glorified underground parking garages for some number of TELs.
If only there was some kind of stealthy strike fighter (aka optimized for airstrikes) on US carriers with much longer range...The shortest distance (air line) between Tehran and Bandar-Abbas is 653.57 mi.
Distance from Tehrān to Hormozgan is equal to 629 miles.
Combat Range of an F-18: 444 nmi (511 mi, 822 km) combat radius for interdiction mission with 2 × 480-gallon drop tanks
No, the line originates from Oman Gulf, it's on the wrong side of Hormuz Strait to be in Persian Gulf clearly. I see your knowledge of geography is as terrible as it is on military topic.That's an odd claim, given the map you posted showed the line originating in the Persian Gulf. Beyond that, however:
I see you know less about interdiction missions than me then, and if you haven't realized yet, trying to play your favorite type of word games in topics you are epically clueless in has its dangers. Better at least read the relevant wikipedia article or go play a good flight sim before you humiliate yourself further by talking about what interdiction missions are or aren't.
How many bombs does an F-35 carry on an interdiction mission? I don't think you know what an interdiction mission is...
In stealthy, no external weapons configuration, the main bomb bay can contain 2 (in case of the massive 2,000lb bombs as in the above example) to 8 bombs (SDBs), depending on how big bombs these are.
When they slept in tents while air defense didn't shoot at the UAVs because it friendly non-IFF UAVs operated there...Well given a single UAV just killed three and wounded dozens more...
By trickery and lack of readiness. If you are interested, you will find this info yourself, if not, as the saying goes, i won't throw pearls before swine.So how did a single UAV get through?
As above, people on the internet explain it, and you are not worth my personal effort as it,So given a single UAV managed to do just that...
As above, are you stuck on trying to wink wink with recent news as if that constituted an argument?Well given almost 50 were wounded or killed just a few days ago...
You: the air base was down for sometime
The quote: " The U.S. defense secretary said the damage was limited to "tentage, taxiways, the parking lot, damaged helicopter, things like that, nothing I would describe as major"
More word games, for shame. Is this your one trick or do you have something else?
No, they have more explosive capacity than most non ICBM ballistic missiles. That 300k USD missile you mentioned for example? 500 kg warhead. Even some WW2 fighters could carry a 500 kg bomb, and that's far from getting into modern strike aircraft used by Israel and USA.Maybe, just maybe, airplanes have less explosive capacity than Ballistic Missiles? All of the attacks to date haven't been using Iranian missiles, but their own local versions using modification kits from Iran.
Say, that F-35 described earlier, carrying 2 2,000 lb bombs in internal bays alone, used both by USA and Israel.
Local versions or not, any important and technically complex parts of the missiles come in these "modification kits", without them there isn't anything to make "local versions" of.
OMG few damaged buildings, the base is gone, as if the base got nuked off the face of the planet!Good thing we have applicable experience from 2020:
Satellite photos taken Wednesday show that an Iranian missile strike has caused extensive damage at the Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq, which hosts U.S. and coalition troops.
The photos, taken by the commercial company Planet and shared with NPR via the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, show hangars and buildings hit hard by a barrage of Iranian missiles that were fired early Wednesday morning local time.
At least five buildings damaged? Wow, that base is totally gone!
At least five structures were damaged in the attack on the base in Anbar province, which apparently was precise enough to hit individual buildings. "Some of the locations struck look like the missiles hit dead center," says David Schmerler, an analyst with the Middlebury Institute.
Do you have more dumb word games to throw at me or can i stop pretending to be impressed?