last night Israel conducted a series of aircraft and most likely drone operations against Iran known as Operation Rising Lion i did a video about it last night that video was demonetized it was remonetized early in the morning like after everybody had seen it so thanks for that one YouTube look you know if you got five bucks please toss me five bucks at rybeth.ubstack.com i could use the money you know what's funny is this weekend all I wanted to do was try out my new sand wedge and read this book and uh it looks like the world is certainly intervening in that so look uh I kind of figured that something was going to happen a few days ago when the US evacuated its embassy in Iraq uh in the intelligence community this is what we call a clue right and then last night I'm sitting on the porch i'm smoking a cigar i'm reading and I get this message from my Iranian fans telling me that they're under attack now one quick note if you're a fan whether you're Iranian or Israeli or whatever if you come under bomb or missile attack don't go outside to record it okay like stay inside in an internal room but I am concerned about Iranian surface air missiles or or anti-aircraft artillery going up and then coming back down again and uh hitting you and hurting you if you're standing out on the balcony recording uh so you know debris is a thing especially uh friendly ammunition that falls back down to earth um so what's here's what's kind of interesting here the Iranians were messaging me and I have my Israeli fans messaging me as well so both sides are like texting me telling me what's going on and uh what's also interesting is that a lot of the Israelis messaged me and said they are woken up by alerts and their entire country is shut down so uh what did Israel strike well that information is still coming out but it looks like they struck top level military commanders nuclear scientists enrichment facilities and in some cases individual scientists individual military commanders how' they do it well wouldn't you like to know um most likely they did this through air strikes although this is where things get kind of interesting israel basically has three kinds of longrange strike aircraft f-16i F-15i and the F-35i uh it is a long trip to Iran and Israel only has like seven uh midair refueling tankers of the 707 variety although they are supposed to be replacing them with the KC 46 Pegasus uh they might be able to use their C130s for refueling or carrying buddy stores i have been told that some IDF aircraft have probe and drove refueling so maybe buddy stores can be carried by another fighter to help kind of extend the legs of an Israeli fighter to get to Iran and back i also believe that the F-35i which is really a variant of the F-35A has the plumbing installed to carry drop tanks although I don't believe the US has ever developed drop tanks for the F-35 because why right it ruins their stealthy capability but if Israel figured out a way to make stealthy drop tanks that that is certainly something they would do right it's Israel they're very good at at doing these surprising things next thing I want to talk about is how fuel is the operational constraint everything is planned around fuel and I did some rough calculations and Israel can maybe sort 200 long range fighter flights per day uh that's kind of at the max of their tanking capacity they can probably keep that up at the same operational tempo for five to seven days before the airframes just need to be grounded for maintenance look uh you know a jet fighter is not a Toyota Corolla jet fighters need maintenance to remain in the air now dog fighting is likely something to be avoided since it's eats up fuel at horrendous rates uh if there's any air-to-air stuff most likely it will happen beyond visual range uh this is a severe handicap for Iran uh their pilots don't necessarily get a lot of hours their airframes tend to be from the 1970s although there have been electronic upgrades uh but in a air-to-air fight uh Iran would almost certainly be at a disadvantage with a modern Israeli 4.5 generation or fifth generation fighter um now I also noticed this thing here um there if you look at civilian traffic at least as of 9:30 in the morning on Friday uh the 13th it looks like flights all over Iran Iraq Syria Jordan Israel they're all grounded all those flights are grounded now this flight tracker map also gives us a good idea of the routes Israel are taking into and out of Iran it also tells us what countries might be helping actively or what countries might be looking the other way now I also want to mention that there is a nonzero chance that people on the ground help with this there is a significant portion of the Kurdish population in Iraq Syria and northern Iran uh so there is a nonzero chance that Iranian Kurds Iraqi Kurds or Syrian Kurds they they smuggled in drones or loitering munitions somehow uh operation spiderweb style this whole thing uh to hit Iranian air defense targets before the strikes even began it's also possible that maybe uh Israeli planes didn't refuel in midair at all but maybe they landed somewhere in northern Iraq uh or Syria with the aid of sympathetic Kurdish locals there's a nonzero chance of that another interesting thing is the June 12th moon was a waning gibbus that means that Israel was dealing with 98% illumination in the night sky that's usually bad for strike fighters ideally you want to wait for a new moon where there's no light in the night sky because it makes shoulder fired rockets a lot harder to uh aim especially when you when you can't see the enemy fighter in the air now a new moon would have been around the 23rd 24th 25th of June so launching during what is essentially a full moon phase tells me that Israel need to hit something right now like they couldn't wait for a new moon they had to hit it right now which also leads me to believe the Iranians were planning something we just don't know what that thing is and we might never know another question was the US involved in the attack i doubt it right now there is some internal instability going on in the US and it's really playing well with Trump's base the this this large show of military force in LA is considered good television he has this parade he's really been looking forward to coming up you have a lot of footage of brave American soldiers in lines you have senators getting arrested you have aliterations like you spit we hit the administration was almost certainly aware the attacks were happening but I doubt they actually helped it along because right now I think the president kind of wants to focus on his domestic agenda because it's it's playing really well in his ratings so Israel comes along basically just takes the air out of the room um that's why I don't think the US had a hand in this I think the president was kind of enjoying the ratings response from the immigration crisis in the US and uh if you look at a lot of President Trump's actions if you kind of think about what would get good TV ratings he tends to go and do does that thing that gets good TV ratings so I don't necessarily see how a a foreign strike on Iran by the United States would generate the kind of ratings that he's getting with the domestic problems right now so kind of follow you know I'm sure you've heard people say follow the money in the case of the current administration follow the ratings and that kind of leads you toward uh their plan or leads you toward what they're doing um another thing is that people say could this lead to a regional war you know I've said before regional war is impossible neither Israel nor Iran uh have the physical uh troops or logistical ability to capture or invade each other both Iran and Israel have what we call short arms and short legs uh they can't get to where they're going they don't have the logistical ability to do it and once they get there they can't sustain so before you you listen to people going "OMG World War II." Just stop and ask yourself "What does World War II look like?" Try to war game it out in your head look how far away Israel and Iran are and it kind of leads you to to believe like really a war between Israel and Iran would just look like them lobbing missiles at each other until one side runs out and Iran is already dangerously low on ballistic missiles that fired about 200 300 missiles and drones at Israel in October of 2024 in a fairly ineffective attack now Israel's response to that attack was to destroy Iran's planetary mixers you see rocket fuel is mixed in these special mixers called planetary mixers that are designed to be airtight to prevent bubbles from being formed in the fuel as the rocket fuel is being mixed um if you destroy the mixers you essentially eliminate your production of new rockets right you have no way of feeding those rockets rocket fuel to launch them i know that Iran just ordered more missile ingredients from China which tells me that Iran might not have the weapons remaining to launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel of a similar kind that they performed back in October of 2024 uh next question is are the attacks over we don't know israel may certainly perform these attacks until they get tired or they absolutely have to ground their planes for maintenance average Israeli rate for uh uptime for an F-15 F-16 is about 85% now that doesn't mean you can't surge aircraft you get your crew chiefs you get your maintainers to work like hell you get all 12 all 24 aircraft up and running crew chiefs are all tired but you got it done yes you can absolutely surge aircraft but for the most part ready rate for the F-15 F-16 is 85% for the F-35 it's about 65% um and every time that plane goes up there is a chance that the super genius with degree in zoologology who's in the cockpit is going to break the freaking jet you're going to be working Saturday so you know uh if these attacks occur over a series of nights expect each attack to have fewer and fewer aircraft because things are just going to break all right look uh I'm going to be on Newsmax a lot today talking about this you can tune in if you have cable uh and if I'm lucky I'm going to make it till 1:00 tea time uh hey one more thing i'm wearing my Think Outside the Bomb shirt today features an F-16 dropping a JDAM ER you can find that at Bunker branding along with signed copies of my book Last Republic and Win Machine thank you guys so much for watching wow this girl from Watertown sure is cool hey kid what's going on think tank you know a girl from Watertown is kind of like riding a moped it's lots of fun till your friends see you on one what's really cool is a t-shirt or hoodie from Bunker Branding wow intellletr Ctrl + V that's exactly what we do and remember branding has all sorts of cool gear intel life aeros assault live launch for destroyer trident high mars and patriot think outside the bomb drone sweet drone department of the boat people landmines and even the tow missile it would behoove you to grab one today girls from water aren't cool so wear your bunker branding gear now I know and knowing how to go hey babe you want to dance