In this edition:
– Radars hit -> missile defense failure -> strategic defeat
– AI targeting -> dead children
– Attacks on civil infrastructure -> in-kind retaliation
During the first phase of the U.S. war on Iran a lot of ammunition was spent (archived) for dubious value:
The first 36 hours of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran consumed more than 3,000 precision-guided munitions and interceptors, exposing a critical vulnerability in the supply chain. Much is unknown about the future of the war and its wider implications, but one thing is clear: the need to replenish munition stockpiles.
Iran responded to the assault by hitting at the most valuable and vulnerable U.S. targets:
Beyond the sheer volume of munitions, the loss of high-value assets introduces another layer of complexity. The destruction of two advanced U.S. radars, the AN/FPS-132 in Qatar and the AN/TPS-59 in Bahrain, highlights a problem where the total weight of the “mineral bill” is less of a concern than the extreme fragility of the supply chain and the extensive timelines for replacement.
Modern radars contain a lot of rare earth minerals which currently is only produced by China:
Per our analysis, for the AN/FPS-132, it will take five to eight years for Raytheon to build a new radar at a cost of $1.1 billion. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin will require at least 12 to 24 months and an estimated $50 million to $75 million to replace the AN/TPS-59, based on the original Bahrain Foreign Military Sales contract adjusted for inflation. The biggest issue for the defense industrial base will be sourcing the 77.3 kilograms of gallium needed for both systems, a material for which China controls 98 percent of the global supply. This is not to mention the 30,610 kilograms of copper that will also be needed, a commodity facing surging demand from the technology sector.
The AN/FPS-132 is a big stationary early warning radar. The U.S. has five of those for homeland protection and Qatar was the only other country which bought one. The AN/TPS-59 is a huge truck mounted aerial surveillance radar.
But probably more painful that the losses of those radars is the destruction of at least four mobile missile defense radar AN/TPY-2 which each are the core of a THAAD anti-missile air defense battalion. THAAD systems are the only ones which can somewhat reliable defeat Iranian ballistic missile attacks. Without AN/TPY-2 radar guidance the 48 missile a THAAD battalion carriers are more or less useless.
There are in total only twelve operational AN/TPY-2 radar systems available globally. The price for each of those radars was estimated to be about a half billion dollar. New ones, if they can be build, will likely cost more than a billion.
Five to six of those systems were stationed in the Middle East. By now at least four of them are confirmed as having been killed:
Here are the confirmation for the 4 Thaad systems taken out by Iran
Saudi Prince Sultan Air base – 24.074218, 47.681327
UAE – 24.677595, 54.697818 Abu Dhabi
24.061942, 52.717325 Al Ruwais
Jordan Muwaffaq Salti Air Base 31.801428, 36.758280
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Image of a key component of the US THAAD anti-missile system – specifically the AN/TPY-2 radar – stationed at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base (Azraq) that was targeted and taken offline by Iranian missile fire.
A fifth AN/TPY-2 radar is stationed somewhere in Israel’s Negev desert. It has been attacked but there is no news yet of how much damage was caused. A sixth THAAD battalion is rumored to also be hosted in Israel.
In total at least two third of the land-based U.S. ballistic missile defense capability in the Middle East is no longer there.
U.S. war cheerleaders assert that Iran has fired less missiles in recent days than during the very first days of the war. However – with THAAD mostly disabled – Iran will need to launch less missile now to achieve similar results as during the first days.
Besides THAAD there are also a number of Patriot air defense batteries active in the Middle East. These are however unreliable against missiles and too expensive to use against drones. A number of these systems, owned by the U.S. and U.S. allies, have been attacked and destroyed but there is no final tally.
As its missile and air defenses are failing the U.S. is facing strategic defeat:
If the United States cannot, either through direct denial or military coercion, suppress Iran’s attacks on its own assets and those of its allies and protectorates, that would constitute a strategic defeat for the United States.
…
By the same token, if Iran can continue its attacks and keep Hormuz closed despite whatever the US throws at it, until such a time as the US offers a ceasefire, it would’ve succeeded in reestablishing deterrence. That would constitute a strategic victory for Iran. This is not a definitional question; it is a question of the perception of adversaries, third parties, and disinterested analysts. The Western media spin won’t count; it would just be too blatantly obvious.
Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base (archived) – NY Times
The school at one point was part of the Revolutionary Guards’ naval base, according to satellite images from 2013 reviewed by The Times. Roads had led from other areas of the base to the school building that was struck on Saturday. But by September 2016, satellite images show, the same building was partitioned off and was no longer connected to the base.
Publicly available historical satellite imagery shows the structure bears the hallmarks of a school, including a sports field and other recreational areas that were added over time.
“Given the U.S.’s intelligence capabilities, they should have known that a school was in the vicinity,” said Beth Van Schaack, a former State Department official who teaches at Stanford University’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice.
The targeting of the school was based on old information. Any review of satellite images taken after 2013 would have show that the building had been changed to a school. Walls and guard towers which had protected the former base had been removed. There were new playgrounds and sport fields.
The question is why the U.S. military is no longer checking its targeting data. The answer maybe AI (archived):
The military’s Maven Smart System, which is built by data mining company Palantir, is generating insights from an astonishing amount of classified data from satellites, surveillance and other intelligence, helping provide real-time targeting and target prioritization to military operations in Iran, according to three people familiar with the system.
Embedded into the system is Anthropic’s AI tool Claude, a technology that was banned by the Pentagon last week after heated negotiations over the terms of its use in war.
Over the last year military planners have seen Claude, paired with Maven, mature into a tool that is in daily use across most parts of the military, according to two of the people.
…
As planning for a potential strike in Iran was underway, Maven, powered by Claude, suggested hundreds of targets, issued precise location coordinates, and prioritized those targets according to importance, said two of the people. The pairing of Maven and Claude has created a tool that is speeding the pace of the campaign, reducing Iran’s ability to counterstrike and turning weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations, said one of the people.
Current AI system, based on Large Language Models, are inherently unreliable. Their underlying algorithms guarantee that they produce errors. The percentage of errors increases with the size of the models:
OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The “smarter” models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.
Despite these known error the Pentagon continues to use these models for targeting people:
“It is notable that we’re already at the point where AI has gone from hypothetical to supporting real-world operations being conducted today,” said Paul Scharre, executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, and who has written about AI in warfare. “The key paradigm shift is that AI enables the U.S. military to develop targeting packages at machine speed rather than human speed.”
The downsides, he said, are “AI gets it wrong. … We need humans to check the output of generative AI when the stakes are life and death.”
No one checks each of the thousands of targets the Pentagon’s models provided. The weeks-long planning previously needed to clear the target list was not done at all. 165 girls are dead for it.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes have also hit at least 13 hospitals in Iran. Targeted – one hopes(?) – by Maven, Claude or similar systems.
U.S. attacks on Iranian infrastructure thus may become fatal for those Gulf countries which depend on similar installations:
Seyed Abbas Araghchi @araghchi – 14:13 UTC · Mar 7, 2026
The U.S. committed a blatant and desperate crime by attacking a freshwater desalination plant on Qeshm Island. Water supply in 30 villages has been impacted.
Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences. The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran.
The foreign minister of Iran is not joking. Many of the big cities in the Gulf region depend on desalination plants for their water supplies. Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh would have to be evacuated within days if its desalinated water supply, 90% of its total, would fail.
Israel’s five desalination plants, Ashkelon, Palmachim, Hadera, Sorek and Ashdod, produce a total of 50% of its potable water. These plants are non-movable, not-hardened targets.
How deep you believe have Maven and Claude ‘thought’ about that?
The report, completed about a week before the United States and Israel initiated the war on Feb. 28, outlined succession scenarios stemming from either a narrowly tailored campaign against Iran’s leaders or a broader assault against its leadership and government institutions, the people familiar with its findings said. In both cases, the intelligence concluded that Iran’s clerical and military establishment would respond to the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by following protocols designed to preserve continuity of power, these people said.
One did not need ‘intelligence’ to come to that conclusion. Some basic knowledge about Shia believe and Iran’s political structures was sufficient to predict this outcome.
I remember a quote by either Khamenei, Suleiman or Nasrallah which said something like “the strategic aim of the Islamic Republic is to remove the U.S. from the Middle East”. As search engines have become useless I now fail to find a reference for this. If you remember the source of that quote please send me a link.