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Satellite Photos Reveal Extent of Damage from Iranian Strike on Air Base in Iraq
- lm28469 7y agoAre these Iranian missiles supposed to be extremely accurate or is the lack of deaths pure luck ?
- iNate2000 7y agoWild speculation on my part: High-alert status allowed enough warning for effective evacuation.
- jannes 7y agoThe personnel apparently had an advance warning and took shelter. The Iraq government was informed in advance of the attack on their soil and passed it on to the foreign military stationed in their country.
- ceejayoz 7y agoMissiles show up on radar (and people near the launch sites posted video of them taking off, too), and military bases have hardened shelters for staff and critical equipment.
- Someone1234 7y agoThe US knew it was coming. They evacuated/bunkered down ahead of the launch.
- fooey 7y agoIt wasn't luck. Iran has a very modern and capable military, ranked above countries like Canada and Australia in strength. https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp
- Jamwinner 7y agoAs far as full military, sure. But their rudimentary guided srbm's are not the best by any measure. Their best still use infrared or standard gps for guidance. That is early 90s tech by american standards. Edit: wiki shows even lower tech ballistic style electromechanical guidance on their page. Thats 1960s tech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fateh-313 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fateh-313
- pjc50 7y ago... assuming that the publicly available information on Wikipedia is accurate? https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-threat-and-proliferation/todays-missile-threat/iran/fateh-313/ https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-threat-and-prolif... claims "GPS/unknown" https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-s-ballistic-missile-inventory/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-s-ball... "improved the precision of the Fateh-110 guidance system, which uses both INS and Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) with a projected CEP of 250 m."
- option_greek 7y agoSince its a surface to surface missile, does it really matter ? :)
- jackpirate 7y agoWho cares what decade the tech is from? Those missiles landed dead-center on buildings. (Seriously, look at the images!) This demonstrates an impressive operational capability to select which targets to destroy.
- coldcode 7y agoThe retired general who was Central Command leader at one point said their missile tech has become highly improved in the past few years. Here they missed on purpose.
- sswaner 7y agoI could not see any impact/blast marks in empty areas. If they missed, they missed wide of this photo. Every blast mark looked like it hit something. Especially the one that hit a hanger looks like it destroyed an airplane, probably a C-130?
- peer2pay 7y agoThe article also explicitly states that aircraft storage buildings were targeted over buildings with people inside.
- rjtavares 7y agoThat's not what the article says: > "There are other structures at the air base that would be exclusively for people so maybe they intended to strike sites with equipment over people." Maybe being a key word here.
- peer2pay 7y agoLet's not speculate about intent. Fact is that structures holding equipment rather than structures holding people were struck. This explains the lack of casualties
- rjtavares 7y agoYou used the word "targeted". Target implies intent: target /ˈtɑːɡɪt/ noun 1. a person, object, or place selected as the aim of an attack.
- detritus 7y agoThat sounds to me like a serious over-estimation of the capability and accuracy of these sort of ballistic missiles.
- jeffchuber 7y agoI dont think Iran wanted to kill any Americans. They knew that this strike helped them save face. Killing soldiers would have risked an escalation. The US also did not try to stop the missiles to allow the slap in in the face to happen. The US wanted to let them save face.
- lawlessone 7y agoi really hope you're right and this deescalates.
- jeffchuber 7y agoit did
- cronix 7y agoWe also had advanced warning, as did the Iraqis. They even knew the timing. I'm sure we moved troops out of harms way. Iran's not just going to lob some missiles into a foreign country without first telling them, because they (Iraq) weren't the target. We picked up on that chatter and/or the host country informed us after they knew.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoBack channels are important.
- jeffchuber 7y ago100% back channels are very effective and should be embraced in business and politics
- peterwwillis 7y agoThis is a "proportional response". They pick highly-rated but abandoned targets, because they have to respond, but don't want to escalate. From the show West Wing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtrX9rZl-j4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtrX9rZl-j4
- pjc50 7y agoThe previous probably-Iranian strike on Aramco also had no casualties. There is some suggestion that this is deliberate.
- ISL 7y agoThese images are CC-BY-SA, but I don't see a similar mark on the NPR article. Is that a CC violation? Edit: Thank you, Planet Labs, for making them CC-BY-SA!
- floatingatoll 7y agoYes. You should ask that question of the NPR Public Editor. They may quote you, so be professional about it. I encourage citing the specific terms of CC-BY-SA that require the republished content to reference the license. https://help.npr.org/contact/s/contact?request=Ask-the-Public-Editor-about-ethics https://help.npr.org/contact/s/contact?request=Ask-the-Publi...
- augustt 7y agotop right of image?
- djmobley 7y agoA requirement of the CC-BY-SA license is that any works which build upon the material (e.g. this NPR article) must also be distributed under the same license.
- zozbot234 7y agoOnly if the article is a derivative work, in the copyright sense. And copyright doesn't protect facts, so figuring out something about the real world from these images and independently describing it would not create a derivative work.
- jdsully 7y agoThat would be true if they didn't include the actual images themselves in the article.
- pyb 7y agoAs far as I understand, the NPR article needs to be under CC-BY-SA as well.
- sct202 7y agoDon't we have anti missile weapons or something like Israel's Iron Dome?
- ceejayoz 7y agoSure, and the opposition works hard to evade such things. I'd imagine the Iranian state-of-the-art varies significantly from Hamas's state-of-the-art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket).
- throwlaplace 7y agoiron-dome shoots down bottle rockets comparatively speaking (i'm being hyperbolic). these missiles were ballistic missiles which have high arches. therefore they're hard to track (picture the difference between catching a fly ball and a line drive) and they have enormous kinetic energy coming down (tough to divert).
- vonmoltke 7y agoIron Dome doesn't work against ballistic missiles. It's designed for much smaller, much shorter range projectiles. One of the difficulties in ballistic missile defense is actually destroying the warhead. Because it is ballistic, hitting the missile and destroying the body during the terminal phase isn't good enough. The structure is essentially dead weight at that point; the warhead is still on track (roughly) to its target. That's why current ABM systems focus on boost-phase interception, because then a body hit completely throws off the missile trajectory.
- cerealbad 7y agoLockheed makes a mobile system called THAAD. I doubt there were any deployed in Iraq, and the effectiveness of these are dubious. The Russians put the S400 in Syria and it has performed well enough. These act more like a deterrent than an actual viable defensive grid.
- mcguire 7y agoTHAAD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...) is a bit of a big deal in Huntsville. I'm kind of surprised it's not deployed in the Middle East, although I suppose it wouldn't be much of a deterrent if it isn't shown to work better than it did in testing.
- throwlaplace 7y agoit's wild that there are enough high resolution commercial satellites flying that these took less than a day to capture (i.e. how long it took for one of Planet's swarm to be in position).
- wafflesraccoon 7y agoDoes the Ain al-Assad air base not have some type of anti missile/air defense? I tried to find out this information but I could not find anything off hand.
- ceejayoz 7y agoNot against medium/long-range ballistic missiles.
- bonestamp2 7y agoFor someone who doesn't know anything about this subject matter, can you explain why? I mean, is it a technical or legal limitation? Maybe a practical, statistical or strategic decision?
- ceejayoz 7y agoTechnical. They come in substantially faster and more vertically than cruise missiles.
- rascul 7y agoDo you know which missiles were used? I haven't seen that information anywhere.
- ceejayoz 7y agoI don't think that's been made public. Some speculation on possibilities in https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/iran-used-missiles-on-us-bases-to-save-face-after-us-killed-soleimani https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-s....
- duncancarroll 7y agoFor a minute I thought the helicopters on the ground were poorly-photoshopped impact marks...
- 0xff00ffee 7y agoI thought all US satellite companies had a strict set of rules regard where they could and could not point their satellites. E.g., Dick Cheny's house was off limits to Google Earth in the 2000's.
- retSava 7y agoAlternative link, eg for those that dislike that hard-to-navigate-"your choice"-of-npr: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/01/08/see-the-damage-at-al-asad-airbase-following-iranian-missile-strike/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/01/08/... The pics are from Planet Labs, but PL does not have anything on their blog about it. edit: I'm surprised how little damage each hit inflicted. Purpose more to say "we struck the US" rather than actually do damage, I suppose.
- dotancohen 7y ago> I'm surprised how little damage each hit inflicted. Purpose > more to say "we struck the US" rather than actually do damage, I suppose. I highly suspect that these missiles had no warhead.
- ping_pong 7y agoIran wants this to end, which is why they didn't target areas that would cause a lot of loss of life. Iran is in no position to engage the US in protracted skirmishes, if the US hits its refineries, etc, Iran is hosed. The memes of WW3 occurring are absurd even for Twitter.
- excerionsforte 7y agoThose memes were indicative of the feelings around the seriousness of the US attacking another govt. It is very rational to feel scared that a war with another country, a UN member, with backings of two other UN security council members wouldn't extend farther than Iran given their vested interests in that country and the region. I don't believe for a second that they would not intervene if their economies are affected by another Middle East war where this time it is one of their significant business partners.
- ping_pong 7y agoWhat does UN membership have anything to do with this? Iran is a terrorist state, openly funding terrorist attacks on Israel. They have a repressive, horrible government, admittedly made worse by the US themselves through the overthrow of the Shah decades ago. The idea this would cause an escalation from Russia and China is also absurd. Of course they are backing them now because it's politically convenient, but when push comes to shove, they won't fight. As long as the US doesn't try to expand its geopolitical aspirations in the Middle East, which has been a complete and utter disaster ever since George W., nothing will come of this skirmish.
- excerionsforte 7y agoIran a terrorist state? You mean the country whose twice had US intervention and you expect the leadership there to embrace the US with open arms. Right, makes sense. What in your mind makes a country a terrorist state. It sure seems like the US has a pretty darn terrorist mind set when it came down to spreading fear about communism. > The idea this would cause an escalation from Russia and China is also absurd. Of course they are backing them now because it's politically convenient, but when push comes to shove, they won't fight. The best surprises are the ones you do not see coming. You can say what you want. You don't make the decisions. Furthermore I stated my opinion that they would intervene. It was not a prediction as you take it. I strongly dissented from your opinion. > if the US hits its refineries, etc, Iran is hosed This one makes me laugh! To believe that one country would be hosed from striking at oil. There's an elephant in the room that indicates it would not be in the best interest of anyone to stifle turmoil in an OPEC state given that other countries will have to deal with the offsets and refugees. Think we've all seen the effects around the world with these wars. Very funny!
- anon007 7y agoOT - My analysis is Iran's attacking a US base directly and ensuring of no US casualty was its best strategic option to avoid war. 1 - Iran had to save face domestically and regionally so had to attack. 2 - Most importantly, Iran had to immediately attack. With the calculation that many types of false flags or attacks against US personal by other entities would instantly be attributed to it. A - Their foreign minister Zarif, made it clear that Iran will retaliate "direct and promotional" and not through any proxies, which was the same message signal by their Supreme leader[0] B - After the attack ended, Zarif made it clear Iran is done with their retaliations[1]. So to avoid being blamed for any further attack that may take place in future date against US forces or interests. Iran calculus probably was to avoid a high likely hood of attacks possibly orchestrated by Saudis or other entities (who benefit from a Us-Iran escalations) disguised as Iranian. Having quickly retaliated, ensuring no US casualty and made it clear they're done, they're closing the door for getting blamed for false flags and trying to avoid additional escalations against US. This signals a very rational and calculating player who doesn't want to escalate against US. The question is how much US media would now push the narrative of crossing "red line" and forcing Trump to take escalatory military action. One can even argue even this article uses a language like, "Iranian missile strike has caused extensive damage" and *"...show hangars and buildings hit hard by a barrage of Iranian missiles" to set the stage for US to take re-retaliatory steps. [0] http://archive.is/tqv8M http://archive.is/tqv8M [1] https://www.newsweek.com/iran-says-it-has-concluded-its-response-us-strike-does-not-seek-escalation-1480956 https://www.newsweek.com/iran-says-it-has-concluded-its-resp...
- Deleriumm 7y agoIt really does look more like a show of force than an effort to kill. That's some pretty impressive accuracy by the Iranians. Those were not random impacts.
- sitkack 7y agoA show of force for the situation and a show of accuracy to the Pentagon.
- mywittyname 7y agoThey sure did show those empty tents what for.
- cheez 7y agoJust FYI, there was backchannelling specifying the target of the attack would be said empty tents. At least that's the rumor mill.