France is also claiming involvement.
Apparently they have an airbase in Jordan (which I did not know of).

They’ve been operating out there for quite some time:

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/2023122...isit-to-jordan

It looks like about a 4 or 5 metre drop to the ground.

On an individual level (re the persons involved) for sure. On a national level there is still a difference. Better a failure (with subsequent learning) in a voluntary aid to another Country than trying it the first time defending your homeland.

Narrow PoV is again noted. Lack of objectivity also noted. (Also, UK has relationships with IraQ and Jordan, over whose airspace these missiles were flying).
Thanks for that.
The "axis of Resistance" has been around siince the early 80's, with Hezbollah being the poster child but not the only one. (And Hezbollah seems to have playing along the other night).

Good to hear about the Arleigh Burke Class intercepts. Glad that works. It took a lot of years of development, and a lot of money, to put that capability into practice.

For dead pan: spot on! :ok:
The Iranians were very clear about what they intended, warned folks what was coming, and then did their thing in retaliation for the attack on their consulate.
I suspect that, in the PR war, this went over very well in most places in the world (outside of the echo chamber that is PPRuNe and certain Western press outlets).

Russia is launching from Russian air space into Ukrainian airspace. Iran has to launch over the airspace of other sovereign nations.

That is before we get onto the threat from Russian SAM and aerial assets. Where would there RAF aircraft be flying to protect Ukraine from incoming drones and missiles?

Turns out that video apparently pre-dates the attacks this week. https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoo...heck#read-more

Is this finally the update we have been waiting for since 1948 to the question 'when was the last RAF AA kill in an RAF aeroplane'?? :)

Saw a concise news release from Iran: (Roughly)
"As far as we are concerned, this operation is over. If the Zionist entity does something to Iran as a response, our next operation will be much larger"

Escalation isn't going to happen unless Israel chooses not to escalate. I wonder if that was the topic of conversation between Bibi and Biden this weekend.

No, notwithstanding the intentions of the Jaguar that was downed by an RAF Phantom in 1982, that honour was taken by an RAF Typhoon over Syria in December 2021. Again, a drone.

Is this somehow related to the domino theory that Poland (or another NATO country) is next?

But that doesn't actually mean that Iranian hostilities towards Israel will end, it just means they will go back to launching drones from Syria and encouraging Hezbollah and the Houthis to the do the same. But of course, that won't be escalation as only Israel escalates.

Call me old fashioned but I really don’t think drones count. I understand the sincere wish to congratulate the sterling efforts of the chaps but what next, pigeons carrying NAAFI rations?

But then I am a bit biased.

Mog

I heard something on a news feed about the PM calling the RAF chaps "heroes". How that word has been overused and debased in recent years! "He heroically shot down an unarmed drone." Or am I missing seething significant, like a sky full of metal heading for Israel?

Along that same line, when Patriot was first used in anger against Iraq, it didn't work very well against ballistic SCUD missiles (in spite of impressive looking TV footage).
We learned from that, and the current version of Patriot is far improved.

Did the RAF give 'kill' credits for those who intercepted V-1s headed for London - and would knocking down five make you an Ace?
BTW, intercepting those V-1s was rather hazardous - the 'wing flip' technique could easily damage your own aircraft, and if you fired at it and it detonated, you could easily get damaged by the shrapnel...

I agree V-1 killing was a hazardous exercise! What did our folks use? “Too close for missiles, etc etc?”

Drones with a self defence capability or even armed escort drones may not be too far off. Not a bad idea to get a bit of practice in while you can!

YS

Yes, it won't be too long before drones display some level of autonomy and self-awareness, and shooting them down won't be the risk free turkey shoot is currently is.

AFAIK Patriot was bad against the Scuds because of two problems - the first was that different modules used different time-bases that differed in the number of bits assigned to their clocks. The second was that the Patriots were kept running far longer without a reboot than ever before. This meant that the two modules had increasingly different notions of time. One module did the calculation of when to shoot and passed that time to the other, the other looked at a different clock as the basis for when to initiate the launch. Had the Patriots been rebooted several times a day they would likely have hit the incoming scuds. As it was they were firing way off schedule, where "way off" was some seconds or fractions of seconds. I think they were running continuously for days.

See also the Ariane flight V88 had a similar design problem that led to the loss of the launch vehicle and several satellites. " The active module presented a diagnostic bit pattern to the On-Board Computer which was interpreted as flight data"

Edit to add why they were on line so long. In the anti-aircraft use, there would be long distance radar that would provide sufficient time to wake up the system and get it ready, but with missiles that time was reduced below what the system start took. I would be surprised if a reset would take as long as a startup, but they didn't know the source of the problem and thought it was because the missiles were too fast.