Tag: military industrial complex

Ukraine Faces Growing Air Defense Crisis As Patriot Supplies Dwindle

  • Ukraine failed to intercept any of the 24 ballistic missiles and four Zircon cruise missiles Russia fired in the August 5 attack, underscoring the strain on its missile defenses.
  • U.S. Patriot availability has become a significant constraint after extensive interceptor use during the Iran conflict.
  • Kyiv is increasingly seeking European inventories, expanded production, and eventually licensed or joint Patriot manufacturing to secure its air defenses ahead of winter.

Ukraine’s failure to intercept a single Russian missile during a large-scale overnight attack this week has raised fresh concerns over Kyiv’s dwindling supply of air-defense interceptors as Moscow escalates its ballistic missile strikes on the nearly defenseless capital and other regions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that deliveries of anti-ballistic interceptor missiles from partner countries have fallen sharply, leaving Ukraine vulnerable to deadly attacks that are being launched by Russia with increasing frequency.

Following a meeting with Ukraine’s military leadership on protecting critical infrastructure on August 2, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had received only a third as many air-defense interceptors this year compared to the same period in 2025.

“Our partners have the missiles. What is needed are the necessary political decisions on deliveries and on accelerating production, including localization in Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.

Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze, who was in Kyiv during the most recent attack on August 5, condemned Russia’s latest strikes, which lit up the late-night skies with balls of flames from massive explosions.

“It was a vile attack on Ukrainians. I was hiding in the shelter along with a number of them and admiring their resilience. Russia is a terrorist state and needs to be contained,” she wrote on X.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha also urged allies not to slow military assistance.

Speaking on August 5, he said:

“Russian strikes take no summer vacation; support for Ukraine and pressure on the aggressor must not pause, either. Every interceptor counts. They are life-saving tools.”

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Trump Threatens To Jail Arms Shortage ‘Leakers’

President Trump on Thursday threatened “leakers” with jail time over reports about dwindling US military stockpiles as a result of the Iran war, and claimed the US had plenty of munitions available.

“The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the US as needed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history. The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” the president added.

Some of the most significant reports about the shortage of advanced munitions didn’t come from media reports but from analysis published by the think tank the Center for International Studies (CSIS), which used publicly available data to produce its estimates.

CSIS found that the US has used about 60% of its advanced Patriot air defense missiles and about half of its interceptors for the THAAD missile defense system, though sources told CNN that the US had actually used about 80% of its THAADs during the war.

While Trump says that US arms makers are working to produce more munitions, the current rate of weapons use far exceeds the rate at which they can be produced, and it will take years to significantly increase production.

Media reports have also said that the US has used up nearly all of its ATACMS missiles and Precision-Strike Missiles, which were both used extensively in strikes on Iran.

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Camp David Clash: Trump Hammered Hegseth For Misleading Him On Arms Supply, WaPo Reports

Following reports that US forces have “used up virtually all” of their precision, long-range missiles in futile attempts to first trigger an Iranian regime change and then to compel Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, now comes reporting that an angry President Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in recent days, accusing the Pentagon of misleading him on critical munitions shortages that leave Trump increasingly powerless in the five-month-old fiasco of a war. 

According to sources cited by the Washington Post, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to concern about retaliation, Trump’s ire erupted alongside a cabinet meeting held Friday at Camp David. Trump expressed consternation that he’d been assured that the weapon shortage “had been fixed” when that is apparently far from true.     

According to “multiple officials” who — reading between the lines — clearly seem to have had it with Fox News talking-head-suddenly-turned-Defense-secretary, Hegseth defended his own actions and tried redirecting the blame to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, a billionaire GOP donor whom Trump plucked out of his role as co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management to give him the number-two job at the Pentagon. Hegseth was said to have thrown Feinberg under the bus for both the shortages and failing to keep Trump fully informed.  

The officials characterized Trump as increasingly exasperated by Hegseth, whom they describe as one of the most enthusiastic supporters of launching a war on Iran, saying he persuaded Trump that victory would come quickly and easily. The war that the administration once projected to last three or four weeks is now in its sixth month. Iran has used both its sophisticated missile technology and its inexpensive but huge arsenal of drones to wreak havoc on US and allied forces around the Gulf. Hammered by a shock and awe campaign peppered with the multiple incidents involving mass casualties among innocents — including scores of elementary schoolgirls — the Iranian people have rallied around the Islamic regime, for all its faults. At least 18 US service members lay dead, several hundred have been wounded, and some estimates of the war’s cost to date exceed $100 billion.  

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Fresh Panic As Pentagon Has Used ‘Virtually All’ Its Long-Range Precision Missiles On Iran

US forces “used up virtually all” of their precision, long-range missiles during the course of the Iran war, and during the earlier heavy US-Israeli campaign of Operation Epic Fury, Reutersreported Tuesday.

This has raised serious “concerns about the military’s ​readiness for future conflicts,” informed sources told the outlet. In particular it is the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) which are said to be running critically low.

“Washington has used virtually all of these weapons,” two sources told Reuters, after several media reports and think tank studies had already sounded the alarm over dwindling missiles amid both the Iran war and in the years-long process of supplying Ukraine. Low Patriot defense missile supplies have also been a persisting issue in the headlines.

They are costly and time-consuming in terms of manufacturing replacements. For example a single ATACMS munition costs about $1 million.

One immediate consequence could be that if heavy bombardment of Iran starts up again, the US would have to conduct riskier piloted aerial bombings – instead relying on longer range precision strikes afforded by the land-based systems at safer distances.

And another, somewhat obvious consequence, is highlighted in the following: “But as ​the war drags on, the three people familiar with the matter expressed worry that the falling missile supplies could limit the U.S. ability to deter adversaries, including Russia and China.”

The report added: “A fourth person ⁠familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the ​world.”

President Trump has of late responded to these now widespread reports of badly depleted advanced munitions, explaining that “Our defense companies are, at this moment, making more munitions than they have ever made before, ​in addition to expanding their plants and equipment at record levels.”

Additionally,  Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took to social media to refute the report, calling it false news.

“That banner is NOT TRUE, CNN. Shame on you,” the Pentagon chief said in a post on X. “We don’t hate the Fake News media enough.”

Hegseth was specifically referring to a CNN on-screen banner that read: “Sources: U.S. has used nearly 80% of key missile interceptors in Iran war, top commanders warn stockpiles dangerously low.”

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How Lockheed Martin, Raytheon & Bae Systems Are Propagandizing Children To Support War Through Stem

Raytheon sponsors the Girl Scouts of America. BAE Systems is reading your toddlers their favorite fairytale stories. And Lockheed Martin funds children’s math and STEM festivals. This is done with great fanfare, supposedly to empower and inspire children to pursue their passion for science. In reality, though, these companies are attempting to launder their images and enlist the next generation to become cogs in the military-industrial complex.

All the while, these organizations’ products are being used across the world by the United States and Israel to commit war crimes – in Iran, Yemen, Palestine, and beyond – to target children.

MintPress explores the murky world of the arms companies training kids to bomb kids.

Normalizing War to Kids

When many Americans think of Raytheon (now officially rebranded as RTX Corporation), they don’t envisage rockets and cruise missiles; they think of math. For decades, the second-largest arms manufacturer on the planet has bankrolled a wide range of organizations aimed at getting children excited about STEM subjects.

Since 2009, Raytheon has been the title sponsor of MATHCOUNTS, a non-profit organization that provides engaging math programs for middle school students in every U.S. state, as well as organizing math competitions to find the brightest children in America.

In 2005, Raytheon launched its MathMovesU program, aimed, in its own words, “to inspire middle school students to get excited about math and science.” In addition to the materials provided, it has also spent millions on scholarships, grants, and study awards to thousands of students, teachers, and volunteers.

And its MathAlive! traveling exhibit promises, in rather outdated branding, to take math “2theXtreme”. MathAlive! Has also traveled to several countries in West Asia, including Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia – all of them among the biggest purchasers of Raytheon weapons technology.

The company also enjoys a longtime partnership with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA). In 2017, for example, it launched the GSUSA’s first national computer science program and cyber challenge for middle and high school girls.“

The progress to diversify the STEM workforce needs to be accelerated… At a time when technology is transforming the way we live and work, we can – and should – show young women a clear path to taking an active role in this transformation,” said Thomas A. Kennedy, then-Raytheon CEO; “Working together, Raytheon and Girl Scouts will help girls build confidence to see themselves as the robotics engineers, data scientists and cybersecurity professionals who will create a better tomorrow.”

Raytheon also spearheaded the GSUSA’s “Think Like a Programmer” project, which encourages girls to explore the world of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and developed many of the programming badges available to the scouts.

GSUSA appears proud of this relationship. Its website profiles one former scout who now works at Raytheon as a success story and a model to follow. The article includes a step-by-step guide and a list of tips for those wishing to follow in her footsteps.

Unsurprisingly, Raytheon also works closely with the U.S. military on these matters, establishing four new STEM “centers of innovation” with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in Michigan, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Washington, D.C., all near military bases.

While some might be surprised by the closeness of the relationship between a children’s organization and an arms manufacturer, it is worth remembering that the scouting movement was originally established by Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell, as a stepping stone towards boys joining the military. Baden-Powell was deeply concerned that English boys would not be physically fit enough to fight for their country in any upcoming wars, and designed an organization that would train them both physically and mentally to do so.

Kirsten Bayes from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade was unimpressed by Raytheon’s attempts to improve their image and to train the next generation of weapons manufacturers. “Our view is that arms companies have no place in schools or colleges, and should certainly not be working with children’s educational charities,” she told MintPress, adding:

“Schools and other places of education should be places where children learn, grow and develop their full potential. They should not be a recruiting ground where arms companies whitewash their activities.”

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Canada’s new inclusive ‘spiritual reflections’ policy bans prayer at military ceremonies

A Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) member blasted a new “spiritual reflections” military policy direction that essentially bans using any religious-specific language or even references to God in most military ceremonies.

“We used to have a robust and inclusive prayer policy where we could pray in an inclusive way that aligned with our faith traditions,” a CAF member told LifeSiteNews under condition of anonymity.

The CAF member noted that the previous prayer policy is “very important in our tradition around commemorating the dead, Remembrance Day, Battle of Britain, Battle of the Atlantic, and (so on).”

“However, now we are not allowed to pray in public. The new policy means chaplains can only do a secular reflection in public.”

On July 29, the CAF officially released what its “Spiritual reflections in military settings” policy that provides direction to both military chaplains and CAF members on what is expected during military ceremonies.

The new policy mandates that when CAF members give public or even semi-public remarks at an event such as a Remembrance Day ceremony, they “shall uphold the principle of state religious and spiritual neutrality by not using words, actions, or symbols that are specific to a particular spiritual or faith tradition (SFT) on the part of the Government of Canada.”

“This does not include personal religious items of dress, which may be worn as authorized by the CAF Dress Instructions,” the CAF noted.

Instead, CAF members must offer a godless and “inclusive” spiritual reflection instead for the following:

  • graduation parades;
  • change of command ceremonies;
  • ship commissioning;
  • ribbon-cuttings/ dedications for infrastructure projects;
  • honours and awards ceremonies;
  • festive/ Seasonal or Mess dinners; or
  • other military institutional commemorations (e.g. Remembrance Day, Battle of Britain, Battle of the Atlantic).

At this time, it appears that military and state funerals are not included in the new policy. However, “Indigenous Cultural Practices” are afforded a wider berth than traditional faiths such as Christianity.

The new policy direction is not a surprise. In 2023, the CAF issued a directive that put harsh restrictions on public prayer. After public backlash, including from many CAF members. the orders were rescinded.

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The Pentagon’s Hidden Housing Scandal: Outsourcing Duty Of Care

Sen. Jon Ossoff released a report on July 8 documenting lead exposure in a newborn, mold-related emergency room visits, and a cockroach infestation living inside a family’s oven, all in privatized military housing at Fort Benning and Fort Stewart. Read it and you’d think it was written in 2022. It wasn’t. That’s the scandal: the Pentagon outsourced a duty of care to private landlords and never enforced the contracts meant to keep it intact.

I’ve spent thirty years in institutional investment management and now serve as an expert witness in fiduciary litigation. The pattern is one I recognize immediately: an institution hands a core obligation to a private operator, collects a fee for oversight it doesn’t actually perform, and treats the delegation itself as if it discharged the duty. It didn’t. Outsourcing a duty of care doesn’t outsource the duty.

Congress created the Military Housing Privatization Initiative in 1996 to fix decrepit on-base housing without loading the capital cost onto the Pentagon’s books. Private companies would own, renovate, and maintain the homes under leases running as long as fifty years, with servicemembers’ Basic Allowance for Housing flowing straight to the landlord as rent. The Pentagon would keep oversight, backed by incentive fees for good performance and penalties for bad. On paper, a clean alignment of interests. In practice, a guaranteed revenue stream with an oversight function nobody actually staffed.

Fort Stewart’s housing has been run by Balfour Beatty Communities since the base was privatized. In December 2021, Balfour Beatty pleaded guilty to one count of major fraud against the United States, agreeing to pay more than $65 million in criminal fines, restitution, and a related civil settlement. The company’s employees falsified maintenance records and destroyed resident comment cards between 2013 and 2019 to fraudulently collect incentive fees they hadn’t earned. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the fraud was “a consequence of BBC’s broken corporate culture” that put profit ahead of servicemembers’ welfare.

Four months later, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the conduct hadn’t stopped. Its bipartisan staff report on the mistreatment of military families in privatized housing documented that Balfour’s post-2019 behavior mirrored the misconduct behind its guilty plea; in the same period the company was under active federal investigation. A company can plead guilty to defrauding the government over housing conditions and keep collecting Basic Allowance for Housing checks from the families living in the homes it failed.

Fast-forward to this month. Fort Stewart is still Balfour Beatty’s. Fort Benning’s housing is run by a different company, the Michaels Organization’s Villages of Benning. Ossoff’s report found nearly identical failures at both: mold, lead, cover-ups, families told their complaints were handled when they weren’t. That detail should stop anyone from treating this as one bad company. Two operators, two installations, the same pattern. The failure sits in the oversight structure, not the logo on the leasing office.

The government’s own auditors have said as much. In an April 2023 report, the Government Accountability Office made 19 recommendations to improve DOD’s oversight of privatized housing, including a priority recommendation that the Pentagon set clear, consistent, department-wide home inspection standards, after finding that comparable maintenance problems were getting graded differently depending on who held the clipboard. As of GAO’s most recent public status update, that priority recommendation was still open, with DOD not expecting signed guidance until mid-2025 at the earliest. Congress had to legislate the fix GAO had already recommended.

This is the same structural failure I’ve written about previously in public pension governance, wearing a uniform instead of a suit. A pension trustee who delegates asset management to an outside manager doesn’t delegate away fiduciary responsibility for the outcome; the law is explicit that the duty stays with the trustee. The Pentagon’s relationship with its housing contractors works the same way as a matter of principle, even though the enforcement mechanism is a lease rather than ERISA. Both share the same defect: an incentive-fee structure that pays out on paperwork instead of results, and an oversight office too thin to catch the difference until a senator’s staff does the job for it.

That fix is now in the books. The Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in December, directs the Secretary of War to establish a standard inspection and audit program for privatized and government-owned housing using independent, qualified inspectors, and separately tightens the rules on when a housing company may close a maintenance work order. Falsified paperwork closed BBC’s work orders and inflated its bonuses for six years before anyone with subpoena power looked at the underlying data; an inspector who doesn’t answer to the landlord closes that loophole.

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CCP Bans Sale Of Retired Military Equipment, Citing Security Risks

The Chinese regime’s military and public security authorities have jointly issued an order banning the sale, assembly, and marketing of retired military equipment, citing “security risks to military secrets.”

The Notice on Prohibiting Sales Activities Involving Retired or Scrapped Military Equipment was issued on July 28 by the Chinese regime’s six central governmental departments, including the top defense command and decision-making body of the Chinese military – Central Military Commission’s Logistics Support Department, Equipment Development Department, and Political and Legal Affairs Commission, along with the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

The notice acknowledges that, in recent years, some vendors have openly sold – both online and offline – retired or scrapped military equipment containing sensitive information, resulting in “adverse effects” and creating “security risks.” It also said one of the purposes of the ban is “to uphold the positive image of the people’s military.”

The notice stipulates that no entity or individual may sell retired or scrapped military equipment. Such equipment – as defined by the military – encompasses various types of hardware, ammunition, devices, related components, and materials that have been officially retired from service and designated for disposal as scrap.

The notice also prohibits any unit or individual from using dismantled parts of decommissioned equipment to produce, modify, and re-assemble them, and then sell them as imitations of military equipment that the public might believe was real. Commercial marketing and promotion of decommissioned and scrapped equipment and related imitations are also prohibited.

The official notice did not disclose the types, quantities, or sources of decommissioned equipment currently on the market, nor did it state whether any military information had been leaked.

Li Yuansong, a Chinese military equipment and memorabilia collector, told The Epoch Times that Chinese military-issued gear has long been collected by enthusiasts.

“Much of the Chinese weaponry is derived from technology dating back to the former Soviet era [1922-91]. While a small number of firearms produced after the ‘Reform and Opening-up’ incorporated Western technology, the majority remain updated versions of Soviet-based hardware,” he said. “The craftsmanship is crude and hardly advanced. If Western weapons experts were to dismantle and analyze them, they would likely laugh about them.

“The real fear isn’t so much about leaking secrets, but rather that foreigners might discover just how backward China’s conventional weaponry actually is,” Li said of the new ban.

Li Xiangyang, a Chinese military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that in recent years, individuals have been reselling military equipment online.

“Some components bear serial numbers, model designations, and signs of use. In the eyes of the authorities, these could reveal information regarding production batches, maintenance standards, and quality,” Li said.

“Regulations dictate that many decommissioned items must be destroyed, with metal materials collected and melted down. This notice is primarily aimed at enforcing the Anti-Espionage Law, as the authorities do not want foreign entities to gain insight into the Chinese regime’s military-industrial technology.”

Su Pei, a China-based military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that the mention of upholding “the positive image of the people’s military” in the ban notice shows that the Chinese regime is concerned about more than just so-called secret leaks, but also about hiding the backwardness of the Chinese weaponry.

“It also worries that individuals within the military might sell used military equipment through underground channels – goods that could ultimately be resold to foreign adversaries. Such incidents have already occurred in coastal regions,” he said.

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Section 219: More Than a Defense Provision – The Battle Over the Future of US-Israel Relations

Somewhere in the thousand-plus pages of America’s annual National Defense Authorization Act sits a provision that started out as Section 224 and later became Section 219 in the House version. On paper it looks straightforward: expand technological and defense cooperation between the United States and Israel. In practice it has turned into one of the more revealing fights in current U.S. politics. The reactions on both sides make clear that this is not really about joint research projects or sharing a few more technical papers. It has become a proxy for bigger arguments about how far American security commitments should go, what role Israel should play in Washington’s strategy, and where the Republican Party is headed on foreign policy.

The House kept the language when it passed its version of the bill. Representative Thomas Massie, a consistent America First voice, tried to strip it out. His effort never even made it to a full floor vote. That alone told you something: for now, the coalition that wants deeper strategic ties with Israel still has the numbers in the House.

What the section actually does is instruct the Defense Department to expand work with Israel in areas like artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, quantum technology, cybersecurity, electronic warfare, drones, and joint research programs. Supporters say this is common sense. Facing serious competition from China and Russia, they argue, the United States cannot afford to go it alone on the technologies that will shape the next generation of military power. Israel has real strengths in these fields. Formalizing and deepening cooperation, they insist, does not create new combat commitments. It simply builds on relationships that have existed for years.

Opponents see a different trajectory. They worry the language is less about discrete projects and more about gradually knitting the two countries’ defense industries and military structures closer together. Once those ties become denser, they argue, American decision-makers may find their options more constrained when the next Middle East crisis arrives. Massie’s objection sits squarely in this camp. He believes the United States should stop creating new mechanisms that pull it deeper into security obligations connected to Israel

The fight is not really about one paragraph in a defense bill. It reflects deeper shifts already underway. The war in Gaza, the scale of civilian deaths, and the protests that spread across American campuses have made traditional support for Israel less automatic, especially among younger people. Inside the Republican Party a visible split has opened. Traditional conservatives still treat a wide network of allies as essential to American leadership. The America First wing wants fewer overseas commitments, fewer expensive wars, and more focus on problems at home.

So Section 219 is not just about Israel. It is about how America defines its own interests. Should Washington keep deepening alliances as the price of remaining the dominant global power, or should it start redirecting more energy and money toward rebuilding at home and competing economically with China?

The fact that opponents could not remove the section shows the old consensus still has real weight in Congress. But the intensity of the pushback shows that consensus is no longer automatic. What used to be a quiet assumption has become one of the sharper dividing lines in American foreign-policy debates.

Nothing is final yet. The bill still has to move through the Senate. If the two chambers produce different texts, a conference committee will have to work out the differences. House passage was a clear win for the provision’s backers, but the ultimate language depends on what happens next.

What is already obvious is that Section 219 has stopped being just another clause in a giant spending bill. It has become a rough test of the direction American foreign policy is likely to take. Will the United States continue leaning on ever-closer strategic partnerships, or will it gradually pull back toward a more limited, domestically focused approach?

For decades the relationship rested on a familiar mix of shared values, intelligence cooperation, technological overlap, and common adversaries. That foundation has not vanished. Israel remains a capable partner in missile defense, cyber operations, and advanced research. Supporters of the section keep returning to these practical advantages and argue that tighter cooperation is a logical response to a more competitive world.

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China To Arm Iran With Hundreds Of MANPADS Despite Trump Warnings: Report

President Trump has repeatedly said that China’s President Xi Jinping has directly assured him that Beijing will not supply Iran with weaponry or military support.

But this week these ‘assurances’ have been called into question by an Reuters investigation. “Iran is expected to receive within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers, three sources familiar with the deal told ​Reuters, as it rebuilds its defenses amid war with the United States,” the fresh report says.

“The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air ‌defences since the outbreak of its war with the U.S. and Israel, which exposed gaps in Iran’s ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure,” it adds.

The fresh report cites three anonymous sources and did not receive comment from the Iranian side. Some of the assertions of the Reuters report are surprisingly specific, such as in the following:

The contract covers the purchase of between 300 and 400 man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), including Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 missiles, the sources said.

The deal was signed with Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment, a Hong Kong-based company that the sources said was acting as an intermediary between the Iranian ​side and the Chinese supplier.

The reporting even explores options being considered for delivery of the weapons, at a moment Iran is urgently seeking to replenish its air defense supplies after months of grinding tit-for-tat conflict with the US military.

“Two Western intelligence sources and an Iranian official said Tehran had also explored the use of overland routes to move Chinese military supplies and dual-use components ⁠more discreetly and ​reduce the risk of disruption,” Reuters continues.

MANPADS could prove especially dangerous for US helicopters and other low flying aircraft, and for Iran can serve as layer of short-range protection.

The opening days of Operation Epic Fury saw much of Iran’s anti-air units get taken out, especially across the Western part of the country, giving US-Israeli jets air superiority. However, at times the Iranians have claimed to shoot down some aircraft, and since then the US has seemed to operate from further afar.

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