What is the US up to with regard to Iran?

I guess, payload, speed and operational range. Drones in this context usually mean lightweight UAVs, which cannot do too much damage.
Still they say it have cut Saudi Arabia´s oil production\export in half?
Weird that, and the USA seems to be really certain about just who the culprit is?
Time to police the world again? Not too sure it´s what the US of A is so great at doing.
I´m pretty fed up with their right and might overall, politically speaking that is.

Edit: Trump says this and that i meant. "Perhaps" it´s a good idea to keep it separated and not screw around with the rhetorical words here since "the truth and nothing but the truth" i am a fanboy of. Or old fart of, not that young anymore i guess.

Good day!
 
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Still they say it have cut Saudi Arabia´s oil production\export in half?
Weird that, and the USA seems to be really certain about just who the culprit is?
Time to police the world again? Not too sure it´s what the US of A is so great at doing.
I´m pretty fed up with their right and might overall, politically speaking that is.
From what I read, SA cut their oil production about in half in response to the attack, not sure if it was purely technical issues or politics also involved.
Blaming Iran seems obvious, because no one else in the region has both incentive and capability to do this kind of strike.
I thought it exceeds Iran's capabilities either TBH, but I'm not a specialist. If it's a signal from them, looks impressive.
 
So i just saw now on the CNN channel:
"Accounting for 5% of the SA oil production" and allegedly Houthi rebel (spell check), Iran supported attacks. But the drone attacks, the number of drones and the damage made does not seem to add up.
Trump waiting on further information on just what´s what and is in a state of being quote: "Locked and loaded".
Well, easy now cowboy (Trump), and lets see just what this will develop into in the end.
 
5% of world oil production and ~50% of SA one. Brent is up from 60 to 67 already.
 
From what I read, SA cut their oil production about in half in response to the attack, not sure if it was purely technical issues or politics also involved.
Blaming Iran seems obvious, because no one else in the region has both incentive and capability to do this kind of strike.
I thought it exceeds Iran's capabilities either TBH, but I'm not a specialist. If it's a signal from them, looks impressive.
Cruise missiles would have done a lot more damage and it's a lot easier to evade air defenses with a drone than a cruise missile as well.
 
I demand you change back your avatar!

I heard that there were 17 different impact points on the refinery which makes it even less likely that this was a cruise missile strike. That's a full submarine's worth of missiles and something tells me that Iran doesn't have the kind of cash (much less technology) to spend on an attack of that level. Drones, on the other hand, are cheap and plentiful.
 
I'm confused by the president's tweet. More so than normal, I mean. Is he implying that the United States has some type of obligation toward Saudi Arabia?
 
I demand you change back your avatar!

I heard that there were 17 different impact points on the refinery which makes it even less likely that this was a cruise missile strike. That's a full submarine's worth of missiles and something tells me that Iran doesn't have the kind of cash (much less technology) to spend on an attack of that level. Drones, on the other hand, are cheap and plentiful.

The attack easily pays for itself. It is hard to tell how much oil exactly Iran exports, but it should on the order of a million barrels a day. If the price rises by 10%, they probably have already made more money in the last few days with this attack than 17 cruise missiles cost. I don't doubt that Iran has the capability to produce 20 cruise missiles and from an Iranian point of view, there is little that would be more lucrative than disabling half of the Saudi oil production.

That doesn't mean they must have done, of course. They might just have produced a bunch of cruise missiles and handed them to the Houthis - maybe even with a set of coordinates. Or someone wants to frame the Iranians.
 
Indeed where does a drone become a lite cruise missile.
Refineries are not designed and made to be attack resistant.. if you know where to hit... it is fire all over.
Perhaps local sabotage groups placed some well located bombs as well and the deployed drones were for the headline news.

Not being in the Court of The Hague...
Does it matter in how far Yemen or Iran was responsible ?
Can you really find out where weapon and intelligence supply of Iran ends and operational execution of Yemen rebels took over ?
Does it matter for a sustainable armistice or peace ?
Is it not to the advantage of both Yemen as Iran that this is and stays vague ?


I do not understand the Saudis
Their economy is so much easier to damage with small scale sabotage than that of the Houthis.
refineries, electricity grid, water grid, luxury resorts and skyscrapers, etc.

The workers of the Saudi economy are mostly migrants. Their experts that do the actual work are mostly migrants.
=> there is no way they can prevent sabotage. And there is no way they can prevent critical info for drone attacks being gathered and passed on to small enemy military cells.

The only preventive hurdle the Saudis control is severe penalties for those caught.
But their long lasting devastation war in Yemen... can that be escalated further ?... their war has sidelined alternatives for the hardcore Yemen groups.


The Prince, when he took over, said that the final war would be fought on Iranian soil.
As of now the war has moved from Yemen soil to Saudi Arabian soil.

Perhaps it helps the Prince giving up his pipe dream to crush Iran in Yemen.
 
@uppi
I still think drones would be a much easier, more cost effective and harder to intercept/detect method of attack. A cruise missile attack of this size likely would have been detected by either American satellites or Saudi radars. We would have found the launch complex likely before they launched or certainly afterward - you don't launch a barrage of 17 cruise missiles undetected. Plus, they'd need sophisticated guidance packages that I don't think Iran has. GPS would likely be out though if the missiles flew slow enough, conceivably they could have used GPS. But that would have made them easier to detect and intercept.

What's more likely - highly sophisticated weapons like cruise missiles that would be immediately detected and likely intercepted or a handful of drones smuggled in with backpacks and controlled with video links from a short distance away?
 
Cruise missiles would have done a lot more damage and it's a lot easier to evade air defenses with a drone than a cruise missile as well.
I'm pretty sure cruise missile is harder to shoot down than drone. It has probably larger radar signature, but also higher speed which means less time to detect and react.
The damage was significant, I posted only one picture of several published. Also, damage looks like high speed impact points strangely aligned by azimuth.
 
A cruise missile would have to cover vast distances, increasing the time to detect and intercept. And to avoid that, it would have had to have been ground-hugging which is another sophisticated technique. None of these things (technology, expense, launch site, guidance) on their own are impossible for Iran to pull off but taken together it is improbable, especially when they could have just done it with cheap and readily available drones. I mean Iran struggles to keep airliners in the air or to launch very small, basic satellites into space and we're supposed to believe they pulled off a huge cruise missile strike with the kind of sophistication and stealth that we expect from superpowers?

Azimuth could just mean the drones were launched from a common rally point outside the complex.

Edit: this is what the Saudis are saying -
“We assure the Saudi regime that our long hand can reach wherever we want, and whenever we want,” spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement, adding that drones modified with jet engines were used in the operation Saturday.

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/wor...c75a00-d859-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html

That neatly straddles the line between a traditional drone and a cruise missile

CNBC is calling the attack a drone strike.

I will say that adding a jet engine to a drone would point toward the Iranians being involved. I wouldn't expect that from Houthi rebels on their own.
 
A cruise missile would have to cover vast distances, increasing the time to detect and intercept. And to avoid that, it would have had to have been ground-hugging which is another sophisticated technique. None of these things (technology, expense, launch site, guidance) on their own are impossible for Iran to pull off but taken together it is improbable, especially when they could have just done it with cheap and readily available drones. I mean Iran struggles to keep airliners in the air or to launch very small, basic satellites into space and we're supposed to believe they pulled off a huge cruise missile strike with the kind of sophistication and stealth that we expect from superpowers?

Azimuth could just mean the drones were launched from a common rally point outside the complex.
I agree that it could be done cheaper using drones. Though damaging oil infrastructure could be only secondary objective. Primary was a technology demonstration.
Compare it with a picture of Shairat airbase after US cruise missile strike. Impact points look similar, small holes.

 
So the Houthi's in Yemen are saying they did it, the US and Saudi's are saying that the flying vehicles did not come from Yemen. The Houthi's hoofing it across the arabian desert with drones on their backs does make them both telling the truth, amazingly enough.
I will say that adding a jet engine to a drone would point toward the Iranians being involved. I wouldn't expect that from Houthi rebels on their own.
Really? You can just get them on ebay.
 
@uppi
I still think drones would be a much easier, more cost effective and harder to intercept/detect method of attack. A cruise missile attack of this size likely would have been detected by either American satellites or Saudi radars. We would have found the launch complex likely before they launched or certainly afterward - you don't launch a barrage of 17 cruise missiles undetected. Plus, they'd need sophisticated guidance packages that I don't think Iran has. GPS would likely be out though if the missiles flew slow enough, conceivably they could have used GPS. But that would have made them easier to detect and intercept.

What's more likely - highly sophisticated weapons like cruise missiles that would be immediately detected and likely intercepted or a handful of drones smuggled in with backpacks and controlled with video links from a short distance away?

I don't know. Once you get in range, the drones are obviously easier, but that would require smuggling drones and explosives over a distance in hostile territory. If you get that close, you might as well just use an RPG, a mortar or something similar. Drones only start making sense once you are outside of video link range, so you are going to need some kind of guidance package, anyway. And Iran has plenty of engineers and a lot of opportunity to field test designs in Yemen, so I would expect them to be able to come up with fairly sophisticated designs. They likely have been providing the Houthis with cruise missiles, like the Quds-1 (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1208062/meet-the-quds-1/), which would be a good candidate for such an attack.

A low-flying cruise missile is quite hard to detect, especially if you don't expect them to be coming. You might detect them a bit further out than a drone, but they will also cover the remaining ground much faster. And in the end, the line between a drone and a cruise missile is quite blurry, anyway.
 
I demand you change back your avatar!

Is this confusing? It tells you exactly who I am ;) It was drawn by a Russian ansi artist who is a great fontist. He drew my name out of nowhere and I love what he did so I'm using it:D This is offtopic tho so *runs away*
 
Well, the border between S.A and Yemen was a point of contention and outside of the coast it basically doesn't exist. The whole empty quarter is nearly terra nullus de facto. Houthi Yemen has been hitting S.A for years now and if the drones have jet engines then their range would be greatly extended, allowing attacks from Yemen to become more and more plausible?

Of course Iran probably has some technicians on the ground helping them do this but that's just to be expected.
 
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