America has lost white air supremacy. They bet the farm on stealth fighters and they're a long way from Kansas now. Cheap drones and accurate rockets have made a mockery of western air defense and offense. This is a real sea change in air warfare. We are now in the age of unmanned missiles, not manned fighter jets, and America has missed the boat entirely.

Planes Vs. Missiles

As an illustration, look at this illustration. On one hand, 'Israel' has to send $100 million dollar jets to drop million dollar bombs, and worry about getting their planes home in one piece. On the other hand, Iran can fire waves of drones, cheap missiles, and highly accurate missiles, turning the Iron Dome into the Iron Sieve. Both sides have air defenses, but Iran only has to defend against 100 bogeys, compared to the thousands hitting 'Israel'. Meanwhile 'Israel' has to park its planes somewhere as sitting ducks, while Iran can hide its missiles underground until they're needed. This is complete game changer. The rules of air warfare have changed.

The big paradigm shift is from from planes to missiles. This is part of the global trend of putting microchips in everything. Bombs are really smart now, and drones are really cheap. Rockets are basically consumer technology, evolving rapidly, while American aircraft are like Faberge eggs, ordered decades in advance and extremely delicate. America's latest airframe (the F-35) is nearly 20 years old and is somehow expected to be relevant till 2070. It's irrelevant already. The F-35 is a liability more than an asset, except to American arms dealers, who have orders booked for 50 years. America won't even be around by then, inshallah, and this strategic inflexibility (re: corruption) is a big reason.

On the other hand, Hamas and Iran and Yemen and Hezbollah come out with new missiles every year (every time America martyrs someone, they name the next missile after them). Iran has hypersonic missiles (which fly unstoppably fast, low, and funny), Yemen fired the first rocket through space, Hezbollah has drones that hit Netanyahu's bedroom window, and Hamas has rockets that can hit Tel Aviv. The Resistance made a strategic bet on rocket and tunnel technology 30 years ago and it's playing out now. America made a corresponding bet on jets and avarice and now les jeux sonts faits. The strategic decisions leading to this war happened in the 1980s and neither side is changing. As Lenin didn't say, there are years when decades happen, and these are those years indeed.

I'm reminded of the moment, which I may be making up, when the Chinese met the Mongols. The Chinese had been perfecting and fetishizing a highly ritualized form of archery, more ballet than battle, splitting silk with perfectly shot arrows. Then the Mongols rode in and just shot the hell out of them. Like the Mongols—who shot from horseback and disappeared—the Resistance can shoot from trucks and be gone in an instant. Like the Mongols, the Resistance does one thing really well (hit targets) and it does it often. The past 30 years have been a quantum leap in 'archery', and the latest decrepit empire is just not built for it.

Manned Vs. Unmanned

Last century—which might as well be the days of air knights—manned aircraft dominated the skies. These air knights operated out of castles (aircraft carriers, airbases) and could bomb any weaker castle, though they spent most of their time slaughtering peasantry. They could even make themselves invisible, such was their sorcery. This sounds like a distant fairy tale because it is.

Now the days of air knights are gone, these are the days of air shaheed (martyrs). Missiles and drones can rise from their earth and exact vengeance kamikaze style. These are not human soldiers, they don't have to make a two-way trip. Air defenses can stop some of these missiles, but they can't stop swarms of them, which can be produced quite cheaply. Iran and Hezbollah have used these missiles in layered attacks (sometimes spanning months), first drawing air defense missiles with dogshit, then hitting air defence batteries, then unloading the good stuff on precise targets. Some of these missiles—like hypersonics and drones—are functionally invisible to Cold War era defense systems. And planes can't do shit about it. Expensive, elaborate air knights are no match for air shaheed.

$ Vs. $$$$

Another big problem is cost, the $$$ markers in the infographic. For every incoming missile—which could be a $20,000 drone—air defense systems must fire at least two interceptors missiles, which range from $100,000 to multi-millions each. And these missiles are produced in tiny, bespoke quantities, sometimes just 10 or 12 a year. America can print money but they can't print missiles, they've deindustrialized so much they'd need China's help to bomb China.

The stealthy jets America bet the farm on in the 1980s are cool, but built for another war. Stealth fighters not that stealthy, and are completely vulnerable on the ground. As former US General Frank McKenzie said, “the thousands of short-range missiles that Iran possesses are a factor here. There is no strategic depth. An F-35 is very hard to hit in the air. On the ground it is nothing more than a very expensive and vulnerable chunk of metal sitting in the sun.” America's whole defensive strategy is based on expensive air defense systems, but these are overwhelmed by cheap missiles and can't even defend themselves anymore. America's rapidly depreciating military assets have become liabilities now.

The End Of Supremacy

America's strategic problems go deeper than missiles vs. planes. The bigger problem is that America is an invading army. The Resistance are fighting for their homes, while the Americans are 11,000 km from Kansas. The Resistance does not need an air force because it's their turf. They can literally dig in and follow Sun Tzu's dictum, “To excel at defense means hiding oneself away in the deepest recesses of the earth. To excel at offense means striking from the highest reaches of the heavens.” The combination of unmanned missiles and tunnels is a complete blind spot to the US military, and they're too big and corrupt to change course.

America has a military base in Bahrain, but that's too close to Iran and Gen McKenzie recommended retreat. But retreat to where? 'Israel' requires daily arms deliveries from America, it's just another liability, not an asset. The IOF are just delivery boys for American munitions, like Uber for genocide, and they're wasting them on civilians. So this is how white air supremacy ends. Choking on its own cruelty and arrogance, taking hundreds of thousands of innocent souls with them, with the threat of global irradiation upon us all.

For decades America and the greater White Empire had white air supremacy and used it with such violent prolificacy. They imposed no-fly zones wherever they wanted, and rained death from above whenever they felt like it, which was often. America's whole strategy was based on the manned plane model, and unmanned technology has upended it all since October 7th. As Professor John Mearsheimer said in an interview with an absolute moron,

What I'm telling you, is the conventional wisdom in the West, that 'Israel' is on a roll, that 'Israel' is in the driver's seat, is simply wrong. If you look at what's happening in Gaza, if you look at what's happening with regards to Hezbollah, and Iran, 'Israel' is in trouble. And I want to point out here, that the key variable is the coming of sophisticated missiles and rockets. When I was very young and used to study the 'Israeli'/Arab conflicts, what we focused on in those days was army to army and air-to-air engagements. And the 'Israelis' invariably defeated the Arab armies, whether you're talking about '48, '56, '67, '73, those big wars. And it looked, up until October 7th, like the 'Israelis' were really in the driver's seat. That they faced no serious threat. Then October 7th happened and what became manifestly apparent to all sorts of people, including me, was that there was this really wicked rocket and missile threat against 'Israel' that 'Israel' had no way of dealing with.

Mearsheimer is talking about a tectonic shift in military technology. The age of the manned plane is out and the age of the unmanned missile is in. This is like the discovery of the longbow or gunpowder or diesel. It makes an entire generation and tradition of warfare obsolete. This is not to say that fighter jets will disappear (horses were used well into World War II), but the idea of humans flying planes is becoming as archaic as horse cavalry. America is completely lost in this brave new world, and its enemies have leapfrogged them technologically. White Empire may look like it's fought to a tactical draw (still good for bombing refugees), but for a superpower, this is strategic defeat.