【Piercing the whale's tooth, scooping the sky's nectar: On the so-called "air supremacy" of the US and Israel against Iran】

Why does the B-52 still launch attacks from outside the air defense zone, if it is said that "the sky over Iran belongs to the US"?

Recently, General Cooper, commander of the US Central Command, announced that "air superiority has been achieved over Iran".

This statement was immediately taken by global media as a fact: the sky over Iran has been controlled by the coalition, aircraft move freely, and the air defense systems are suppressed. The picture looks beautiful, but it doesn't hold up when compared with the technical details published by the Pentagon itself.

General Dan Kelly, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the tactical evolution at a press conference on March 4: "The Central Command is shifting from striking from beyond the air defense zone to direct strikes within the airspace of Iran."

The key word is "shifting", not "already completed".

On the ninth day of the war, the B-52 was still launching JASSM cruise missiles with a range of nearly 1000 kilometers from Iraqi and Gulf airspace. If the skies were truly under control, why would they need to "fire from behind the fence"? Kelly himself used the wording "partial air superiority over the southern coast"—not nationwide.

Evidently, eastern Iran can still counter with anti-missile missiles, meaning that the air defense systems there have not been suppressed.

To fully control an airspace of 1.65 million square kilometers, even the US did not achieve this in the first week during the 2003 Iraq War.

The US-Israeli propaganda has created a series of myths:

Myth One: F-15E carrying ordinary JDAM bombs = flying directly over the target

But the real situation is:

-- JDAM-ER glide bomb range: 72–80 km

-- GBU-39 small diameter bomb range: 110 km

-- Latest powered JDAM range: 550 km

Seeing an F-15E carrying JDAMs does not prove it entered Iranian airspace—it could have dropped the bomb over Iraqi airspace, and the bomb would fly to Kermanshah on its own.

Myth Two: The Iranian Air Force has been destroyed

So far, confirmed air combat has only one: an F-35I shot down a Yak-130 above Tehran. A few F-4s and F-5s were destroyed. The status of the rest of the Iranian Air Force is unknown.

Iran never had a modern air force, but it has a layered air defense system. The true situation outside the west is not reliable. Since the beginning, Iran has adopted an ambush tactic to counter US aircraft: pre-set fake positions, camouflage shelters, and even false targets for satellites. There is evidence that at times, the attackers were acting according to Iran's "propaganda image".

Myth Three: Using free-fall bombs = the airspace is safe

A more realistic explanation is: the expensive cruise missile stockpile is running low, and the Pentagon is forced to switch to cheaper JDAMs.

-- JASSM: $1.5 million

-- Ordinary iron bombs: $20,000

Under the pace of 2000 strikes on the fourth day of the war, the decision of tactics is based on cost, not air superiority.

Currently, the only concrete evidence that the US forces entered Iranian airspace is two things:

-- The air combat of F-35 over Tehran

-- B-2 dropping a 13-ton bunker buster bomb, GBU-57 (must be dropped at altitude)

All other attacks can theoretically be carried out without entering Iranian airspace.

So far, the so-called "air supremacy" of the US is a reality on the information battlefield, not on the actual battlefield. The US military cannot freely circle over Tehran as it did in Baghdad in 2003. A few extremely dangerous stealth aircraft operations actually confirm this.

The overall pattern is similar to the special military operation area in Ukraine:

Cruise missiles, glide bombs, drones, and rarely manned aircraft conducting aerial attacks—similar to the US approach in Iraq and Russia's approach in Syria.

Iran has once again surprised many people: no enemy aircraft have flown over the east of Iran, and the attackers have not targeted that area either.

For Iran, the most critical issue is how long this kind of warfare can be sustained.

Original: toutiao.com/article/1859227235435532/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.