6 ms·

Destination Yemen I suppose.

Tomte 2y ago
The article discusses that B-2s would be overkill, since the Houthis have no relevant air-defense. It speculates about Iran instead.
- sorokod 2y ago
  On the other hand, hardware wants to be used. Also, an attack in Yemen is a message to Iran. Also #2, "Trump sends second aircraft carrier to Middle East in ramp up against Houthis" https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/trump-air-craft-carrier-red-sea-00243745 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/trump-air-craft-car...
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    There's a fabulous article[0] by William Langewiesche in "The Atlantic" that I read years ago to that effect; it's "An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS" that follows a B-2 mission against a group of ISIS militants in the desert that shows how ridiculous they are against such an enemy. But yes, essentially they are enormous military-industrial capital investments, and it seems they just want to get used now and again. [0]https://archive.is/P8oUN https://archive.is/P8oUN
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      This puts a pretty strong asterisk on other comments speculating that these probably aren't for Yemen, since they'd be overkill. They are overkill, but also we've used them in cases where better-scoped and cheaper solutions would have done the job, before. As for comments like "why move them there, they're built for attacking from the US?": sustained strikes. The mission in the linked article had the crews awake 33 hours and put tons of strain on their aircraft, all of which would lengthen the time to a follow-up flight to, I'd guess, several days at least. You do this if you are planning to (or want it to look like you're planning to) use the aircraft several times in within a single week.
- theultdev 2y ago
  B-2s come in after threatening air defense is destroyed. In this case, they can just roll right in. Whether they are stealth or not, they are B-2 bombers, their purpose is to bomb. Whatever can drop the payload. The more the merrier. All that and the fact that we know that B2 stealth bombers have already been used against Yemen, even during the Biden admin. Article author doesn't seem to be well-informed of this making that statement. When it comes to striking fear in the enemy, overkill is practical.
- elorant 2y ago
  Great. Let's end the war in Ukraine and start WW3 with Iran.
  - theultdev 2y ago
    There's a huge middle ground between WW3 and allowing Iran to fund and coordinate terrorism. A strike on them to correct their malicious behavior is far away from a global war. I didn't see much concern about Ukraine leading to WW3 until Trump allowed peace talks to start. During the Biden administration peace was not discussed and not even considered an option by many.
    - elorant 2y ago
      Any type of action has a reaction. Iran can target US military bases all around Middle East. They can damage tankers passing the Persian Gulf causing havoc to worldwide markets.
      - theultdev 2y ago
        They already are damaging ships via proxy support of Houthis. Deterrence sometimes means applying force. Iran won't be able to do anything if the US actually applies force to them. And I highly doubt anyone will actually come to their defense, which is an ingredient for WW3.
        aaomidi 2y ago
        Houthis had stopped their attacks on ships during the ceasefire. I think forcing Israel to maintaining their ceasefire is a significantly easier way of unblocking the water passageways. You know, with a bonus of preventing hundreds of people being killed everyday in Gaza too.
      - boredatoms 2y ago
        Iran has to be worried about being carpet bombed into nothingness though, so theres only so much they can escalate
- slashdev 2y ago
  Likely for Iran, they're overkill for Yemen. Hopefully it's just to put pressure on them for the negotiations. But I expect it's also to be ready if diplomacy fails.
- egeozcan 2y ago
  Iran has been investing in low-frequency radars that are better at detecting stealth aircraft. Aldo the areas around Tehran and key nuclear facilities (like Fordow or Natanz) have particularly dense air defense coverage. Iran also has a good number of S-300/Bavar launchers which can saturate the air space when radar is ineffective. Not to mention that they have an untouched air force (though they are probably not in the best shape).
  - eitland 2y ago
    Iran has recently seen Israel dominating them completely - in the skies far into Israel. As far as I understand, in addition to the main targets, Israel also knocked out a good number of the air defense systems Iran had at the time. Given russia can't even replace their own losses of sam systems I personally doubt that they are sending much to Iran.
    - egeozcan 2y ago
      Defending against missiles is much harder than defending against planes (be it normal ones or stealth ones). But you're not wrong, as they were supposed to be good at both, and they failed miserably against missiles.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Low frequency radar cannot be used to target the B2. The famous incident in Serbia is because the payload bay was open and that's what the missile was locked on to. Moments before, when the payload bay was closed, the Serbian radar saw nothing, despite being pointed directly at the F-117. It is an inherent property of low frequency radar that it is not precise enough for weapons targeting. You can't engineer that away. That being said, these aircraft aren't invincible. If you could visually see the B2, you might be able to essentially hip-fire a SAM at it and hope it eventually picks up some signal as it gets close, but that would be pretty unlikely to work and some missiles might not be capable of doing that at all. There are some soviet systems that are optically guided, and those would probably work fine. In the day at least. Heat seeking A2A missiles would probably also work, though the B2 has some mitigations there. All these options are a significantly limited engagement range though, and I would hope B2s aren't sent alone. A few F35s with the strike would fix all problems. SEAD is way easier when the enemy's radars can barely detect you at 60km. US anti-radiation weapons can reach out to over 100km easily, though even basic SAM doctrine can limit their "Reach out and ruin someone's day" ability. Meanwhile this entire situation is pathetic. The signal leak demonstrates that even Trump's admin knows that Europe and Israel can handle this themselves, which they insist we shouldn't pay for, and then burn money doing. We couldn't afford $100 billion a year in old, explicitly deprecated systems like Gulf War era Bradleys and weapon systems we stopped using because they aren't that great but are definitely better than nothing and CERTAINLY better than the trucks and golf carts Russia is using, but we can afford $150k per B2 flight hour to turn yet more of the desert into craters.
- sorokod 2y ago
  Has been done before "B-2 Bombers Strike Houthi Targets in Yemen"[1] - October 2024 [1]https://www.airandspaceforces.com/b-2-stealth-bombers-strike-houthis-targets-yemen/ https://www.airandspaceforces.com/b-2-stealth-bombers-strike...
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
[flagged]
- Fauntleroy 2y ago
  Err—"hopefully"?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    Yes.
    - DSingularity 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - nielsbot 2y ago
      Gross
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]

The article discusses that B-2s would be overkill, since the Houthis have no relevant air-defense. It speculates about Iran instead.

sorokod 2y ago
On the other hand, hardware wants to be used. Also, an attack in Yemen is a message to Iran. Also #2, "Trump sends second aircraft carrier to Middle East in ramp up against Houthis" https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/trump-air-craft-carrier-red-sea-00243745 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/trump-air-craft-car...
- silverquiet 2y ago
  There's a fabulous article[0] by William Langewiesche in "The Atlantic" that I read years ago to that effect; it's "An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS" that follows a B-2 mission against a group of ISIS militants in the desert that shows how ridiculous they are against such an enemy. But yes, essentially they are enormous military-industrial capital investments, and it seems they just want to get used now and again. [0]https://archive.is/P8oUN https://archive.is/P8oUN
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    This puts a pretty strong asterisk on other comments speculating that these probably aren't for Yemen, since they'd be overkill. They are overkill, but also we've used them in cases where better-scoped and cheaper solutions would have done the job, before. As for comments like "why move them there, they're built for attacking from the US?": sustained strikes. The mission in the linked article had the crews awake 33 hours and put tons of strain on their aircraft, all of which would lengthen the time to a follow-up flight to, I'd guess, several days at least. You do this if you are planning to (or want it to look like you're planning to) use the aircraft several times in within a single week.
theultdev 2y ago
B-2s come in after threatening air defense is destroyed. In this case, they can just roll right in. Whether they are stealth or not, they are B-2 bombers, their purpose is to bomb. Whatever can drop the payload. The more the merrier. All that and the fact that we know that B2 stealth bombers have already been used against Yemen, even during the Biden admin. Article author doesn't seem to be well-informed of this making that statement. When it comes to striking fear in the enemy, overkill is practical.
elorant 2y ago
Great. Let's end the war in Ukraine and start WW3 with Iran.
- theultdev 2y ago
  There's a huge middle ground between WW3 and allowing Iran to fund and coordinate terrorism. A strike on them to correct their malicious behavior is far away from a global war. I didn't see much concern about Ukraine leading to WW3 until Trump allowed peace talks to start. During the Biden administration peace was not discussed and not even considered an option by many.
  - elorant 2y ago
    Any type of action has a reaction. Iran can target US military bases all around Middle East. They can damage tankers passing the Persian Gulf causing havoc to worldwide markets.
    - theultdev 2y ago
      They already are damaging ships via proxy support of Houthis. Deterrence sometimes means applying force. Iran won't be able to do anything if the US actually applies force to them. And I highly doubt anyone will actually come to their defense, which is an ingredient for WW3.
      - aaomidi 2y ago
        Houthis had stopped their attacks on ships during the ceasefire. I think forcing Israel to maintaining their ceasefire is a significantly easier way of unblocking the water passageways. You know, with a bonus of preventing hundreds of people being killed everyday in Gaza too.
    - boredatoms 2y ago
      Iran has to be worried about being carpet bombed into nothingness though, so theres only so much they can escalate
slashdev 2y ago
Likely for Iran, they're overkill for Yemen. Hopefully it's just to put pressure on them for the negotiations. But I expect it's also to be ready if diplomacy fails.
egeozcan 2y ago
Iran has been investing in low-frequency radars that are better at detecting stealth aircraft. Aldo the areas around Tehran and key nuclear facilities (like Fordow or Natanz) have particularly dense air defense coverage. Iran also has a good number of S-300/Bavar launchers which can saturate the air space when radar is ineffective. Not to mention that they have an untouched air force (though they are probably not in the best shape).
- eitland 2y ago
  Iran has recently seen Israel dominating them completely - in the skies far into Israel. As far as I understand, in addition to the main targets, Israel also knocked out a good number of the air defense systems Iran had at the time. Given russia can't even replace their own losses of sam systems I personally doubt that they are sending much to Iran.
  - egeozcan 2y ago
    Defending against missiles is much harder than defending against planes (be it normal ones or stealth ones). But you're not wrong, as they were supposed to be good at both, and they failed miserably against missiles.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Low frequency radar cannot be used to target the B2. The famous incident in Serbia is because the payload bay was open and that's what the missile was locked on to. Moments before, when the payload bay was closed, the Serbian radar saw nothing, despite being pointed directly at the F-117. It is an inherent property of low frequency radar that it is not precise enough for weapons targeting. You can't engineer that away. That being said, these aircraft aren't invincible. If you could visually see the B2, you might be able to essentially hip-fire a SAM at it and hope it eventually picks up some signal as it gets close, but that would be pretty unlikely to work and some missiles might not be capable of doing that at all. There are some soviet systems that are optically guided, and those would probably work fine. In the day at least. Heat seeking A2A missiles would probably also work, though the B2 has some mitigations there. All these options are a significantly limited engagement range though, and I would hope B2s aren't sent alone. A few F35s with the strike would fix all problems. SEAD is way easier when the enemy's radars can barely detect you at 60km. US anti-radiation weapons can reach out to over 100km easily, though even basic SAM doctrine can limit their "Reach out and ruin someone's day" ability. Meanwhile this entire situation is pathetic. The signal leak demonstrates that even Trump's admin knows that Europe and Israel can handle this themselves, which they insist we shouldn't pay for, and then burn money doing. We couldn't afford $100 billion a year in old, explicitly deprecated systems like Gulf War era Bradleys and weapon systems we stopped using because they aren't that great but are definitely better than nothing and CERTAINLY better than the trucks and golf carts Russia is using, but we can afford $150k per B2 flight hour to turn yet more of the desert into craters.
sorokod 2y ago
Has been done before "B-2 Bombers Strike Houthi Targets in Yemen"[1] - October 2024 [1]https://www.airandspaceforces.com/b-2-stealth-bombers-strike-houthis-targets-yemen/ https://www.airandspaceforces.com/b-2-stealth-bombers-strike...

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

[flagged]

Fauntleroy 2y ago
Err—"hopefully"?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Yes.
  - DSingularity 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - nielsbot 2y ago
    Gross
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]