https://nitter.click/i/article/2101092696555135341

Random Pre-Equinox Musings
Will Schryver @imetatronink

Following are just a series of random musings here on the cusp of the 2026 Autumnal Equinox. We have seen many momentous events transpire this year.

First, prompted by a discussion on the point elsewhere, I want to reiterate my long-studied and considered estimation that the Russians have almost always been a decade (or more) ahead of the Americans in relation to the art and science of missilry.

The Russians have ALWAYS been state-of-the-art in air defense missiles. This should be an uncontroversial assertion.

Francis Gary Powers was convinced that moment in May 1960 when, cruising over Sverdlovsk at a supposedly comfortable 70,000 feet, a Soviet S-75 blew up his U-2.

You can see the curvature of the earth to a great distance at 70,000 feet (21,336 meters). So, for Gary, it was a long ride down in his parachute.

Anyway, in the ongoing Ukraine War, the Russians have proven capable of shooting down 90%+ of ATACMS and Storm Shadow types of western missilry.

The US/NATO has expended a prodigious quantity of their precision weaponry in Ukraine, and all to negligible effect.

Yes, I acknowledge the Ukraine cheerleaders making a big roar about deep drone strikes (using small low-flying NATO-produced small-engine small-warhead drones), but the reality is that they launch 1000-drone salvos in order to achieve meaningful strikes with 20 of them.

The Russian air defense routinely intercepts 98%+.

The US/NATO continues to help improve and refine the art of Russian air defense capabilities.

And those that achieve strikes don't have the potency to inflict long-enduring damage.

If the Russians launched 1000 jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones from Belarus and Kaliningrad into Poland and Germany ... the US/NATO air defenses would not intercept more than a minute percentage of them.

And last I looked into it, Geran-type drones are packing 90kg+ warheads, which is a serious boom when delivered precisely.

Of course, they wouldn't intercept any of the seriously potent Iskanders or Kinzhals, not to mention the Oreshniks. It would be a turkey shoot for the Russians.

Fact is, Ukraine's old Buk and S-300 mobile air defense systems were better than anything they ever received from the US/NATO. The Russians feared them, and it took a couple years to carefully hunt them down.

The Ukrainians would repent in sackcloth and ashes to have back again the Soviet-era air defenses they started with in 2022.

As for seriously potent strike missiles, there is simply no comparison between the American and Russian arsenals.

The US currently fields no meaningful Mach-3 strike capability, let alone Mach-5 and above, such as the Russians and Iranians can field in impressive abundance.

Which brings us to Iran.

In recent months we have learned with unquestionable clarity that there is not even any comparison between the American and Iranian arsenals.

The Iranians have now indisputably proven in war what a few of us long foresaw: when it comes to high-tech missilry, they are gifted theoreticians, engineers, artisans, and impressively capable mass-producers, all things considered.

American cruise missiles have long proven to be effective in blowing up fixed above-ground soft targets — if launched in the hundreds and thousands, as they must be to have any meaningful effect against a country of Iran's size and formidable geography.

But the current arsenal of American stand-off weaponry is manifestly incapable of defeating massive hardened underground works.

Not even so-called "tactical nukes" could do that.

In any case, the American stand-off munitions warehouse is now reduced to a handful of pallets in the far corner, as it were.

After demonstrating their capabilities in 2020 at Ayn al-Asad, and then again in 2024 and 2025 against Israel and the US, the Iranians have now in 2026 delivered a truly shocking blow to American military prestige — smashing and decisively rendering indefensible every US base in the region, to the Mediterranean and beyond.

It is a stunning turn of events very few could imagine possible at the beginning of 2026.

And now, to pour salt in the wound, the Yemeni are dismantling the Saudi oil industry and consolidating their control of the highly strategic Bab el-Mandeb — and, by logical extension, the Suez Canal.

And there is nothing the Americans and Israelis can do about it.

I figure the Pentagon could sustain maybe a week or ten days of 100 daily missile salvos against Iranian targets.

And why not blow the last of your chips? I mean, the catastrophic depletion of American armaments magazines already constitutes a dereliction of duty arguably unprecedented in US military history, so slicing away 50% of the remaining 20% isn't really a big deal at this point ... right?

At any rate, this is my summary analysis:

As a result of the wars against Russia and Iran, the US/NATO/Israel capability to wage big league war against their big league adversaries has been shattered, and will remain so for at least a decade to come.

If you have a different take on these questions, feel free to share it.