That may have broader implications than just for Israel. My understanding from past reading is that the Iranian ballistic missile stockpile was of concern to other countries too, like Turkey, and why Turkey was pushing hard for having anti-ballistic-missile capability.

But if Iran’s ballistic missiles can’t reliably impact much closer to their target than this, absent nuclear warheads, it may mean that Iran has much less military capability against other countries in the region than expected.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, told the AP they assessed that 50% of the Iranian missiles failed at launch or crashed before reaching their target.

Assuming Iran targeted the hangars, the James Martin analysts measured the distance between the hangars and the impact zones of the missiles. That gave an average of about 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) for the “circular error probable” — a measurement used by experts to determine a weapon’s accuracy based on the radius of a circle that encompasses 50% of where the missiles landed.

That’s far worse than a 500-meter (1,640-foot) error circle first estimated by experts for the Emad. After a U.N. weapons ban on Iran ended in 2020, Iran separately advertised the Emad to potential international buyers as having a 50-meter (164-foot) circle — a figure that is in line with top missile specifications for systems deployed elsewhere, said Hinz, the IISS missile expert.

One of the more-hawkish takes I’ve read.

deleted by creator

https://archive.ph/NsUtm

A Russian company will export chickpeas and lentils in exchange for tangerines and rice from Pakistan

Pakistan is coming out way ahead on that one. Chickpeas and lentils are awesome.

Under an agreement signed at the Pakistan-Russia Trade and Investment Forum in Moscow on Tuesday, Russia’s Astarta-Agrotrading will supply 20,000 tons of chickpeas while Pakistan’s Meskay & Femtee Trading Company will deliver the same quantity of rice, according to state-run Tass.

The Russian side also plans to supply 15,000 tons of chickpeas and 10,000 tons of lentils in exchange for 15,000 tons of tangerines and 10,000 tons of potatoes from Pakistan.

Given that every single commodity there was traded at a 1:1 mass ratio, that doesn’t sound like people went to a whole lot of effort to figure out the relative worth of the two.

Given that that Iran’s the common factor with all the other targets, I’d imagine that that’s probably a pretty good guess, though looking online, we bombed targets in Syria yesterday as well:

https://apnews.com/article/syria-militants-killed-airstrike-us-central-command-8921f045b25d621143778730d78bd4e4?taid=66f93b79f602a500015dd02a

BEIRUT (AP) — Two U.S. airstrikes in Syria killed 37 militants affiliated with the Islamic State group and an al-Qaeda-linked group, the U.S. military said Sunday. It said two of the dead were senior militants.

U.S. Central Command said it struck northwestern Syria on Tuesday, targeting a senior militant from the al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group and eight others. They say he was responsible for overseeing military operations.

On Sept. 16, a “large-scale airstrike” on an IS training camp in an undisclosed location in central Syria killed 28 militants, including “at least four Syrian leaders,” Central Command said.

“The airstrike will disrupt ISIS’ capability to conduct operations against U.S. interests, as well as our allies and partners,” the statement read.

EDIT: Wait, no, that was one week ago yesterday. Wrong Tuesday.

It’s a quote from Snatch.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLsWMdxTMcw

I vaguely remember reading in my criminal law textbook, years back, that murder is one of the few exceptions to the doctrine of necessity (this would have been in the context of US law), so I don’t think that it’s ever legally-permissible to intentionally kill some random person to save yourself. IIRC the rationale was that it prevents thing like terrorist groups from coercing someone to do actions for them by threatening someone else.

That being said, there are obviously points where people are forced to take actions where either one group of people is going to die or another; in ethics, the trolley problem is a well-known example. For a maybe-less-artificial problem, closing hatches in a ship where not everyone is out of a compartment to prevent the ship from going down, say. I don’t know how law applies in the situation of weighing lives; my assumption is that it doesn’t mandate inaction.

Ehhhh…

Well, I can pretty much guarantee one thing – given the international situation, Russia is gonna veto any action against Iran at the UNSC, so Israel isn’t looking for UNSC action in calling for the UNSC to convene.

Countries don’t need UNSC signoff to defend themselves, though.

I think that there may be an obligation to notify the UNSC, though, if a country is taking military action in defense of itself or another country with which it has a collective security agreement.

kagis for the UN Charter

Ah, yeah, here it is.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

Article 51

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

So I suppose that it’s good odds that that’s what this is.

A top Iranian military commander has warned that his country will hit Israel’s entire infrastructure if it takes any action against its territory.

Iran’s armed forces joint chief of staff Gen. Mohammad Bagheri said Wednesday that the Revolutionary Guard was prepared both defensively and offensively to repeat its missile attack with “multiplied intensity.”

“If the Zionist regime, that has gone insane, is not contained by America and Europe and intends to continue such crimes, or do anything against our sovereignty or territorial integrity, tonight’s operation will be repeated with much higher magnitude and we will hit all their infrastructure,” he said.

Hmm.

Israel’s U.N. ambassador says his government will decide when and how to respond to Iran’s barrage of close to 200 ballistic missiles that forced Israel’s 10 million population into bomb shelters. “But I can tell you one thing, it will be noticed,” he said. “It will be painful.”

Hmm.

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on the escalating situation in the Middle East for Wednesday at 10 a.m., at the request of France and Israel.

Hmm.

Ryder said two U.S. Navy destroyers — the USS Cole and the USS Bulkeley — fired about a dozen interceptors to defend Israel in the latest attack.

He decried reports indicating Iran wants to de-escalate tensions in the region.

“You don’t launch that many missiles at a target without the intent on hitting something,” Ryder said.

Hmm.

literally tipped a fedora

That’s a trilby, not a fedora. Narrow brim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilby

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora

Turn-based RPGs I can understand, but “RTS” is “real-time strategy” – it’s intrinsically not turn-based.

You can get turn-based strategy games, but they aren’t RTSes.

It depends on what you’re looking for. There are more hard-warsim oriented games at Matrix Games, though a number of those are also available on Steam these days.

Steam has a “Turn-based Strategy” tag:

https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&tags=1741&supportedlang=english&ndl=1

According to the IDF, troops in the raids over past months silently reached around 1,000 Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon, some of them several kilometers from the border fence, including tunnels and bunkers where the terror group had stored weapons. The IDF said the sites were located both inside Lebanese villages and in forested areas.

The raids have been carried out since early in the Israel-Hamas war, after the IDF said it managed to push back Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force from the border area, enabling Israeli commandos to enter Lebanon with almost no detection. There were no direct clashes with Hezbollah operatives amid any of the raids.

I’m guessing that to be able to identify all these caches while Hezbollah was away and go destroy them, Israel had probably pretty deeply compromised Hezbollah, had to have known in advance where all their supplies were placed.

Hagari added that the Israeli military is “fully prepared to defend and retaliate” to the Iranian attack, stressing that it would be in a “timely manner.”

Plus, the US was talking about a response to any direct Iranian attack on Israel.

The IRGC also warned Israel that any response to the attack regime would be met by more severe Iranian retaliation.

Sounds like we’re liable to have a busy time as posting activity goes on worldnews.

The US has satellites that can count the hairs on someone’s head

Naw, there are physical limits significantly above that. US reconaissance satellites do get pretty close to the theoretical limits, though.

It came up back when Trump was in office and tweeted some satellite picture from one of his briefings at full resolution, was in the news for a bit in that he’d inadvertently exposed satellite capabilities.

kagis

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/trump-accidentally-revealed-the-amazing-resolution-of-u-s-spy-satellites/

Based on the resolution of the photo Trump tweeted, though, it appears USA 224 has a resolution of at least 10 centimeters, if not better as Trump appears to have taken an image of a printout.

That being said, no disagreement on the broader point, that the US probably has a pretty good idea of what Iran is doing with its ballistic missiles.

“In any event, the impact on oil prices will remain the key channel of transmission to the global economy,” Reilly added, noting Iran accounts for about 4% of global oil output. “An important consideration will be whether Saudi Arabia increases production if Iranian supplies were disrupted.”

I was just commenting on an article here the other day about how Saudi Arabia had just increased their production.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/saudi-arabia-abandon-100-crude-target-take-back-market-share-ft-reports-2024-09-26/

Saudi Arabia to drop $100 crude target to win back market share, FT reports

The official warned that any direct attack on Israel by Iran “will carry severe consequences for Iran.”

Iran readying ‘imminent’ ballistic missile attack against Israel, U.S. official tells NBC News

Well, I was guessing from the statements Iran made that they weren’t going to engage Israel directly, and I’d read several analyses saying Iran had stated that they weren’t looking for a broader conflict, but maybe it’s going to happen after all.

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/5a1aa6f3-259d-4204-814d-5536ca660b3f.jpeg

Yeah, same. If I were going to get a handheld console, it’s pretty much exactly what I’d want, but…I really don’t need another portable computing device.