Odessa Today.

 Lovely fireworks with very low efficiency of Ukie AD. 

And then one of (many) arrivals this night. Namely more than 10.  

Something big has been hit. 

So, here it is. A reminder of what the "leakers" are, and that Russia can ensure as many as she needs. 

Summary.

As if this hasn't been clear before. 

1. For "journos"--"explosions in Tehran" don't mean "explosions IN Tehran". Most of the time those are the work of air defense and "explosions in the skies OVER Tehran";

2. Salvo model and issue of "leakers" describe perfectly any SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense). Israel has NO resources to conduct this against Iran;

3. Whatever "leakers" there were--they were very few and, sadly, managed to kill 4 Iranian servicemen;

4. Whatever Israel launched--most of it was intercepted. I don't know the percentage but it is very high. NATO is reeling from recognition of the effectiveness of the Iranian AD, as is Israel;

5. Deterrence worked, that much is clear--Israel never recovered from tour de force of Iranian strike capabilities on October 1st, and now Iran demonstrated that it can defend herself--this is not what NATO and Israel are used to when killing defenseless civilians;

6. US President Joe Biden has expressed hope that the IDF strikes mark the end of the escalation in the Middle East.“It looks like [Israel] didn’t hit anything other than military targets. My hope is this is the end,” he told reporters in Philadelphia. He added that he’d been briefed on the matter by the American intelligence community.

That's right, the only thing which is left for Israel and Washington is hope that Iran doesn't retaliate because it could be much worse than October 1st and Israel better hope that Putin is engaged and is calming things down with his Iranian counterparts. 

That was feeble from Israel, to put it mildly--militarily it is not in the same league. I wonder if Iranians want to get THAAD which will be provided to Israel, if they decide (hopefully not) to retaliate. 

And here is the post in comments from evidently hugely successful discussion yesterday between Nima, Larry and me.   

As a Sunni Muslim, Andrei is correct about what’s going on in the Sunni world. About half are doubling down in their hatred of all things Shia and getting more entrenched in secular nationalism, but half are seriously considering a united Muslim world under the leadership of Iran. We Sunnis are starting to think Allah has blessed Iran.

Many people still cannot grasp a gigantic mental shift in Ummah against the background of Iran not talking but coming out swinging. It is really metaphysical. It is so gigantic that I cannot find proper terms to describe it--the Arab street took a note... big time.

About ATACMS And "Leakers"...

 ... to those who still think that ATACMS decide anything. I totally get where Scott comes from in his apprehension about Crimean Bridge safety but let's step back and think for a minute purely tactically, considering the fact that. 

1. ATACMS have been in use in SMO for a while now. Here is one example of many, this is from October 25, 2023.

"В течение прошедших суток перехвачены две оперативно-тактические ракеты ATACМS производства США", - говорится в публикации. Кроме того, за сутки были перехвачены зенитная ракета С-200, две противорадиолокационные ракеты HARM и два реактивных снаряда системы залпового огня HIMARS производства США. Ранее военное ведомство не сообщало о перехвате ракет ATACMS, которые TВСУ получили от Пентагона.

Translation: “Over the past 24 hours, two US-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles were intercepted,” the publication says. In addition, during the day, an S-200 anti-aircraft missile, two HARM anti-radar missiles and two US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems were intercepted. Previously, the military department did not report the interception of ATACMS missiles that the Ukrainian Armed Forces received from the Pentagon.

So, as you can see, those, including its longest range (300 km) version, are being successfully intercepted by Russian AD and militarily make no difference whatsoever on the theater of operations, EVEN if they are able to achieve one or two "leakers". 

2. "Leaker" is, of course, the missile or projectile which gets through. Considering well articulated overall effectiveness of Russian Air Defense of around 95%, as stated by no other than Mr. Putin himself (In Russian), which is very close to reality because all data points towards this astonishing effectiveness, we can easily assume that in order to get even two "leakers" (most likely through combined heterogeneous salvo--Scalps/Stormshadows, ATACMS, maybe even USVs et al), in air they will need: 

                            2/5 = n/100

                            n=40 missiles.

They will need 40 missile salvo to get two leakers to the Crimean Bridge. Let's turn our civil engineering and operational minds on. 

3. Crimean Bridge is not just the bridge--it is THE longest bridge in Europe (19 kilometers), it is also the classic Linear Target which is IMPOSSIBLE to completely destroy other than maybe one or two flights of it. The juiciest of those being its main flight with the length of 235 meters. 

If you get to this flight by couple of ATACMS, theoretically you can destroy it and that will require a much longer time to restore unlike it would be the case with other flights which are shorter and easier to restore. So, Scott is correct when worrying about those ATACMS, it is possible to damage the bridge but...

4. Here comes this issue: can 404, having real time ISR from the US, actually collect 40 missile salvo? Here is a rough range of ATACMS and where it can be theoretically pre-deployed for a theoretical salvo:

This yellow segment is under control of AFU, for now. So, the possible area for salvo is shrinking. So, the most likely target will be, yet again, Sevastopol. It doesn't mean that Pentagon wouldn't stop thinking about sabotaging any other objects on Russian territory or trying to kill more Russian civilians--this they know how to do--but this is how their thinking goes. You see, Russia is not Iraq and they don't teach real war at USMA at West Point or in Leavenworth, KS. They never faced one. 

So, are "leakers" possible? Absolutely. Will they change anything? Nope. The outcome is clear and now Khohol recognized that they will actually get something around $8 billion in... loans, not those $61 billion which go to Pentagon for replenishing stocks, filling pockets of lobbyists from MIC and continuing to finance propaganda about "the finest fighting force in history". They only know how to fight PR wars. Keep this in mind, including the fact that the Bridge is well defended.