a single AN/FPS-132 radar costs $1.1 bln, not $500m. And Iran stuck 17 of the CENCCOM sites hosting radars of all kinds across Qarar, Bahrain, Iraq, UAE, Saudi, Jordan, Israel, etc).
Total cost is so much bigger, it is staggering. The whole CENTCOM is blind basically, as well as Iron Dome which relied on these radars - all blind now, in addition to long-range early nuke detection to protect CONUS is also blind.
in addition to cost, they all require Rare Earth Minerals, and China has banned the export of these (they own like 99% of the market).
So not only CENTCOM is blind and incurred damage in high single digit billions, but also will be unable to repair the damage any time soon (probably for decades) even if the funding were made to be available
Government obviously pretty silent on all these failures and media doesn't want to dig and ask hard questions
>So not only CENTCOM is blind and incurred damage in high single digit billions, but also will be unable to repair the damage any time soon (probably for decades) even if the funding were made to be available
not just what i quoted, but your source does not say any of what you are saying.
your source says: Satellite images show damage near vital equipment on sites in at least five countrieshttps://archive.ph/QHNXW
If we are speaking of interception/penetration, these are also solved by Iran using several strategies that Israel/CENTCOM did not expect:
1. use of cluster munitions
2. exhaustion of expensive interceptor inventory (exchanging $7000 shahed drone for $3-5 mln worth of PAC-3 interceptors)
3. Use of penetration aids
4. Changing trajectory at the terminal stage
5. coordinating swarm attacks (let AD to intercept SRBMs, while the real damage is caused by abundant cheap Shaheds that fly too slow and low to be detected)
Both you and the Guardian are confused (or perhaps the Guardian is just trying to ride the popular understanding of the "Iron Dome" as a super catch all missile defense system vs reality). The Iron Dome has nothing to do with shooting down ballistic missiles. The Iron Dome isn't designed to target ballistic missiles: it targets short-range rockets and artillery like the ones fired by Hamas and Hezbollah, and has been modified to also target slow-moving drones (although the Iron Beam is intended to be the main drone defense system in the future). The Iranian missiles are targeted by different systems: David's Sling and the Arrow 2 and 3.
The Iron Dome does not depend on the American radar system in Qatar that Iran hit. It would be crazy for it to do so when it only targets short range attacks. If someone is telling you that the "Iron Dome is blind" because an American radar in Qatar got hit by a missile, you should probably update the amount you trust that source negatively, since not only is that not true, but it doesn't even pass the sniff test to anyone who knows what the Iron Dome is.
> The Iron Dome has nothing to do with shooting down ballistic missiles
This is not true, Tamir interceptors have been upgraded to target ballistic missiles. It is extremely visible when this happens, as the interceptors fly a very different path than usually.
you are arguing semantics, both me and Guardian using the term "iron dome" as a collective of all air defense systems in Israel (not that one system built to counter cheap rockets), because all these systems are integrated into one military network, including the GCC/CENTCOM radars that were destroyed.
if you replace "iron dome" with "air defense network" everything else would still be true
The problem is you do not understand how these systems work and are making claims that don't pass the sniff test to anyone who does know how these work. For example, you claim multiple times that Shahed drones have somehow exacerbated these Iron Dome missile interceptor issues, and now claim you're not talking about the literal Iron Dome — you're talking about who knows what (you don't specify any actual, concrete system and instead use a metaphorical understanding from the popular press). The problem is: actually, the literal, real Iron Dome does target Shaheds! So if it's the radar system that was the problem and caused the metaphorical Iron Dome to be "blind" — why did drones matter, if those are targeted by the literal Iron Dome that doesn't use that radar? Are you meaning to talk about David's Sling, which targets missiles and drones? But David's Sling is a medium range system that doesn't use the American radar in Qatar either! Arrow 3? Guess what — it has nothing to do with Shaheds, and has nothing to do with the American radar system either — it uses an IAI radar system.
The Iranian hit on the American radar in Qatar hasn't left the "Iron Dome" blind, figuratively or literally, and your proposed mechanisms of actions don't make sense.
you have constructed a strawman argument and are arguing with it, mostly semantics and splitting hairs.
Perhaps a problem here is that we are mixing up two theatres: Israel and GCC.
Iron dome exists in Israel, but the radars and air defense network was degraded in GCC, it is these patriots there that are having interceptor issues and shahed drone issues.
Israel is not being bombed by shaheds, it is being bombed by ballistic missiles that they are having problems intercepting and alerting population in advance.
you can check with the sourc elinks I provided that confirm that the radars in GCC were part of the early warning system for israel, and hitting radars in Qatar has impacted directly AD network in israel (reduced alert time significantly)
None of your links support that claim or even try to make it. The Haaretz article is complaining about a day of unusually short missile notifications on March 7, a week later than the Iranian strike on the radar (and now a month-old claim, which lasted only a day — if that was due to the radar, why did it not start the day the radar was actually hit, and why did it only last a day when the radar remains ruined today?). One of your articles is about drones, which has nothing to do with the radar system, and you are now backpedaling all of your drone-related claims for Israeli air defense despite making many drone claims earlier (why is that?). The other is the Guardian article that doesn't make that claim, and one is about the American Patriot missile defense system, not Israeli ones.
Recent reporting has indicated that contrary to your claim that the American radar system getting hit has left the Iron Dome "blind," Israeli missile detection has actually improved over the course of the war:
ohh, they use AI... this sounds like a YC startup pitch, I bet they also use AI agents and Claude Code to improve air defense...
then why all these radars were even needed in the first place? why did US taxpayers spent billions procuring installing and maintaining these radars, if simpel fine-tuning with Claude Code would work just as well ??
Well, I see you've graduated from wishcasting the Iron Dome being "blinded" by a radar it doesn't use to being confused that shooting down missiles involves AI.
Depending on what you call AI, AI has been used for targeting for awhile. It's just usually called 'automated control' or something. This is more a re-categorizing of targeting algorithsm, and calling it AI.
not sure you are aware that you pass for the ignorant who's stuck in denial of reality.
you are arguing against official annoucements from the IDF explaning why the civilian alert system now only gives short notice and will do so from now on, and you argue on the basis of fallacious rhetoric.
"I am morally correct therefore I need not be factually correct".
Stop doing this: it completely undermines the political argument because it makes it clear you are as uninterested in reality as the current administration.
It's rich to declare "they're lying" while happily being disinterested in the truth or clear communication.
Iron Dome is a specific interceptor system, and you can trivially look up what it is on Wikipedia.
Iron Dome is still not a catch-all term for the entire Israeli defense system, and all the other claims the poster has made are not supported by their links or evidence.
As noted: Iron Dome intercepting ballistic missiles is an apparent new capability which it was not expected to be capable of: so it's kind of weird to turn up and say "Iron Dome can't intercept ballistic missiles anymore!" when no one except whoever developed the upgrades would've expected it to do that, and Israel has a number of other still unrelated to THAAD ballistic missile interceptor systems.
that after 4 years of Ukraine war where those tactics have been widely used, in some cases by both sides, and where Russia has even been using the same Iranian drones
I've read that NATO radars in Turkey were equally important to provide early warning to Israel. It's not far-fetched to assume that US radars in the middle-east did too. US THAAD in Israel would definitely be networked into those.
I think that there is a problem here - you're talking about the firing of the defense system at targets, whereas knowing that that radar needs to be readied because missiles have been detected is what the other radar system provided.
> Government obviously pretty silent on all these failures and media doesn't want to dig and ask hard questions
Some analysts are sure drumming up the severity [0]. In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not. The proposal by the current US Admin to increase defence spending by 40% to $1.5t is not a welcome sign for those opposed to heavy spending, for any number of reasons.
> In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not.
Honestly it's more than that. Propaganda and lies put out by ALL actors in this conflict. If you want to understand what's going on I think you have the expose yourself to as many competing sources as you can find. And still you're going to end up with a very shoddy picture. The term for this is epistemic collapse.
One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.
I like to think that I live in a free/liberal democratic portion of the world, but seeing the "other side" being more honest really puts a dent in things.
> One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.
The most recent example - I have been seeing reels/tik toks fronted by young women, that push Iranian talking points, they were saying that Trump's announcements on the conflict were timed to manipulate markets, and to "watch tomorrow"
They were referring to a Sunday before the Markets opened, and right on cue President Trump started making announcements that had a massive effect on market movements
Previously the USA government were downplaying (then retaliatory) Iranian drone attacks on bases in the middle east, claiming zero damage, and laughing at the attackers, the Iranians provided footage that showed real damage, and the US military released statement(s) that agreed with the Iranian claims.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that the Iranian regime is anything but a steaming pile of ew, but the lesson we were supposed to learn from the Vietnam war, and the Iraq war (II), was that hearts and minds are the key to "winning", and that's built on trust, which is built on transparency and honesty.
not only that, one big fact is that the Trump administration attacked twice Iran during negotiations. That sort of backstabbing gives you a sense of what their word is worth.
The easy example is that meta was full of influencers confirming the war was over, with the us having won, at a time Iran's own statements declared otherwise. That was a while back.
>One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.
Kek. Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble.
"Both are doing propaganda, but one side's propaganda is totally less propaganda" gave me a good laugh today, thank you
The multiple sources don't know either, the reason the picture is shoddy is it is necessarily composed of the primary information that is coming from ... people with the strongest incentive to lie. There aren't a lot of independent ways to assess the situation. And of course that is part of the fog of war - even the militairy struggles to put together a picture of what is going on. I'd imagine that defining where the front-line is presents a complex and uncertain exercise for the commanders involved.
The only thing I think can be said reliably is that this has been going on for weeks, the Strait seems to be more closed than open, Trump is clearly out of his depth and the US is sending more units to the area. All of those point to a serious problem for the US military.
> it's baffling the US wasn't more prepared in its gulf bases.
Probably want to drop the assumptions about it having anything much to do with US interests. Better to start looking at who has had the alliance that contained them damaged and their oil sanctions lifted.
Problem is that there was too much propaganda in that war, that parsing propaganda is too difficult even for military watchers, let alone general public. Only when american weapons are being destroyed that, US MIC is willing to acknowledge that may be million+ usd missiles are not solution to cheap drones.
...and how decisively Trump was prosecuted for the 6/1/21 attempted ~coup~ tourism, and for how thoroughly the Epstein child abuse ring was dismantled, and...
Yes, the only chance the US has going forward is to primary all current incumbents and hold both party leadership accountable for complicity in treason.
Haha, by whom? There are zero higher-ups who are actually getting institutional backing and are in favor of this.
Look at how Mamdani didn't even get any backing. Quite the opposite, he was obstructed. And he's 100x more palatable to them than the idea of prosecuting the traitors.
The US and Ukraine have a direct relationship. They don't need to parse anything. Have people on the ground to watch how they conduct war. And bring people to the US to teach their learnings.
It's not that hard, the US just didn't want to do it for whatever dumb reason.
This is the second time in 2 weeks I’ve seen a comment like this on HN. 37 years old. Been on here 16 years. Incredibly odd to me. Just announce “can someone else tell me if this is true?”
I watched an interview with a retired British military guy who said that the radar destruction does complicate things, but the US still has the other AWACs, so there is still early warning and visibility, just complicates things and reduced range/more risk.
The E3 fleet is aging and difficult to keep airworthy. Of the 32 or so planes the US has, it sounds as though they struggle to keep the operational number above 16, and moving more to the gulf means they have to pull them from other theaters. In short, they simply don't have enough to provide coverage of all the areas they want them.
This was completely foreseeable and is a situation that appears to have arisen entirely due to vest interests stifling procurement of a suitable replacement in order to spruik up business for their own competing, but unfinished offering. Prior to the war in Iran, total cancellation of the procurement of E7's had been announced.
that's true about assertions, but blindly saying "Fact check!" is still an attempt to offload a wished-for effort onto other people while simultaneously sowing seeds of discernment and distrust into the topic.
What happens when someone yells "Fact check!" at absolutely true things constantly? It erodes confidence. That's why "Person yelling fact check" isn't a typical or generalized role in normal discourse.
Yes, it's good to correct the incorrect. How does one do that typically? A rebuttal.
A supposed 'deferment to experts' on the internet is worth next to nothing, just a way to paint yourself a bit more altruistically while producing FUD.
I asked if anyone could rebut it. Normally I'd do the work myself, but I'm not very up to speed on this stuff and I wasn't in a good place to do a bunch of research, and someone who's been following it more closely could probably do a better job pretty quickly. The comment smelled like a possible propaganda account to me, making what I thought were some pretty wild claims, and the commenters that were there were piling on because tribalism, so I was trying to act like an antibody in HN's immune system against nonsense, and flag it. Sorry if it sounded like a demand, it was probably too terse.
And it's worse than spam when someone is posting incorrect things and people are downvoting people questioning it. As another user has already posted, the Iron Dome does not use the same radar they are talking about and is not "blind"
IMHO, people making claims should provide the evidence for them. One link is behind a paywall and the other clearly states that it is making informed speculations.
I could make all sorts of claims on the spot here. It doesn't create a duty for people reading this thread to go investigate them.
You're so close, just one more step, and it's easy, just have to step away from keeping it hypothetical.
<SPOILER>
Then it certainly does not create a duty for people to go investigate, when the only difference is "someone replied telling someone to fact check"
</SPOILER>
You're the one in this thread claiming people are responsible for "going and finding the evidence" of other people's unsourced claims. You could have just not replied since you didn't have something to contribute.
I apologize for not quoting you directly “Then go get some!”. That’s what you said in response to there being no evidence. Would you like a link to your comment?
"People are responsible for going and finding the evidence" and "Then go get some!" are not paraphrases of each other. They don't share a single word, or advance a similar idea. I am uncertain linking comments can change that.
I'm not sure what's going on: "People are responsible for going and finding the evidence" and "Then go get some!" are not paraphrases.
Best steelman I can come up with is you're seeing deep red, so it's hard to see "Then go get some!" is suggesting he could fact-check his own question instead of asking the room to do it for him.
Which is the opposite of your characterization that I think people are responsible for investigating strangers' unsourced claims. We violently agree, not disagree.
Making this exchange all the curiouser.
Are you inebriated? I only ask because it's unusual to see someone on HN choosing to say obviously incorrect things, aggressively, on purpose, just to talk down to someone. Much less making bullying attempts based on comment history.
Did a quick search, didn’t see confirmation that they’re blind/that all radars had been knocked out. Was asking whether others who know more about this topic than me would confirm.
Traveling with kids on spring break, I don’t have time to read all war related news, and it tends to set off my propaganda account alarm when someone registers a new account to drop a bunch of assertions on such a politically divisive topic. So I was asking whether someone could confirm things like “The whole CENTCOM is blind basically, as well as Iron Dome which relied on these radars - all blind now, in addition to long-range early nuke detection to protect CONUS is also blind.”
There’s a good reason new accounts are colored green.
No problem - Trump is asking for an FY 2027 1.5 TRILLION dollar military budget, and just said that Medicare and Medicare may need to be cut to afford it.
In a "rational" world the quagmire of Iran would make such a move unlikely, but with this administration the prospect of an "easy win" could have them just go for it.
After all, nobody's stopping them. The Constitution only remains so that the 2A fanatics can LARP at being patriots.
> Rare Earth Minerals... ...unable to repair the damage any time soon (probably for decades)
Look bro, if we can make SR-71s out of pizza ovens, I'm pretty sure somewhere in the CIA can scrounge up a few ounces of gadoluminium. Tankie dreams are placation for those who wait for somebody else to make the birdseed fall from the sky.
Absolutely. A big part of the western Ukrainian defense was solely to drain the Russian military apparatus and drain they have. It will take Russia decades to rebuild their fighting force. Now Russia and China are doing it right back to us and the intelligence gained from this conflict is extremely valuable. Come to find out the US has been sitting on ego in its military more than actual might. The previously untouchable machines of war in the sky are now very much touchable. All that's left is for them to sink a battle ship. If Iran can shoot them down, you can bet China can inflict exponentially more harm. Drain our intercept missiles, destroy radars, corrode relationships, etc. At this point, China has the world on a silver platter if they want it.
Russia has rebuilt their military, which was neglected at the beginning of the war. The Russian and Ukrainian armies have adopted to drone warfare, which the rest of the world lags behind.
They haven't rebuilt the manpower. They've lost no less than a few hundred thousand fighting age men over the course of the war. It will take them 20-30 years minimum just for those births to occur and those newborns to make it to military age.
In case you haven't been following Ukraine, that's what it's doing. It has multiple cheap long range drones (FP-1, FP-2, etc) plus more expensive ones (FP-5), and it's making them in the millions a year, I think.
They just took out 40% of Russian oil export capacity.
no, the million or two is small battlefield drones, mostly quadcopters carrying an RPG warhead or similarly sized payload. The long range drones - and they carry only relatively small, like 20-50kg payloads - are well under 100 thousands. FP-5 was declared 1 per day half a year ago. By now i think we've seen may be 10-20 such missiles used - they use real turbo jet engine, there isn't much of them available, and they are expensive.
>They just took out 40% of Russian oil export capacity.
Yes, Ust-Luga and Primorsk. Very successful hits. Painful for Putin. Yet it isn't a knock-down. Russia is like a big drunk guy in a street fight - just delivering painful blows to him doesn't help, you have to deliver a knock-out blow, and unfortunately Ukraine still seems far from it.
That works for Iran because US air-defense is still comprised mainly of advanced and expensive systems (like the Patriot). It doesn't work as well in Ukraine or Russia because both have figured out drone interceptors quite well. Both countries do the type of attack drone clustering you suggest. I read somewhere that a strike like from Russia that might include 60-70 drones + ballistic missiles in the hopes that one or 2 get through.
you miss that i was talking about 650km/h "drones" (because, yes, it was already 3rd year of war, and 200km/h drone like Shahed became much easier target - this is why Russia has started to also use the 600km/h modification of Shahed with RC jet engine). There is related discussion under that comment addressing your point about interception.
>Both countries do the type of attack drone clustering you suggest
Ukraine still isn't completely there. They do attack Russia with up to 200 drones/day. They seem to never cluster more than a few, and the drones they are using are comparably small - 50kg warhead - and slow, 100+ km/h, almost always less than 200km/h. So they are easy to intercept/shoot down, almost never penetrate Moscow air defense, and do noticeable damage only when hitting flammable targets like oil/gas industry related.
For the United States, the government doesn't have the capability to extricate Israel from its political system, but the feds can create blowback for Israel which makes them less capable to influence the US in the future while achieving other strategic aims in the region. US war planners know plenty about blow back and I think this is being done on purpose. I am terrified for innocent Israelis, Iranians and Gulf state residents that have been led into this. Most of the states and peoples in the Middle East who have been destroyed used to be allies with the US. That isn't on accident.
Nope, that would take congressional approval and congressional leaders are all bought by the people that paid for the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. At this point only DoD and CIA can make it happen, thus why I mention any of this.
Total cost is so much bigger, it is staggering. The whole CENTCOM is blind basically, as well as Iron Dome which relied on these radars - all blind now, in addition to long-range early nuke detection to protect CONUS is also blind.
in addition to cost, they all require Rare Earth Minerals, and China has banned the export of these (they own like 99% of the market).
So not only CENTCOM is blind and incurred damage in high single digit billions, but also will be unable to repair the damage any time soon (probably for decades) even if the funding were made to be available
Government obviously pretty silent on all these failures and media doesn't want to dig and ask hard questions
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/world/middleeast/iran-str...
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-radars-airstrikes/