Few actions can convey just how well a war is going as firing three of your top military leaders just four weeks into hostilities - yet this is exactly what has happened at the Pentagon earlier this week.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/3/hegseth-fires-us-army-chief-of-staff-in-reported-string-of-dismissals

On Thursday April 2nd Pete Hegseth the so-say ‘Secretary of War’ stunned the military establishment by announcing the immediate ‘retirement’ of General Randy A. George the Army Chief of Staff since 2023, in tandem with General David Hodne, the head of the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, and Major-General William Green jnr - the Army’s Chief of Chaplains.

This move which has been described by some military insiders as “completely insane” was reportedly provoked by a personal clash between General Randy A. George and Pete Hegseth over the latter’s decision to  block the promotions of four officers - two black and two female - in a list of 29 otherwise white officers gazetted for promotion.

According to the Baptist News, this marks the first occasion that an Army Chief of Chaplains has ever been dismissed from post within their four-year term of service - by a curious  coincidence Major William Green jnr. also happens to be black.

https://baptistnews.com/article/for-first-time-ever-army-chief-of-chaplains-fired-by-hegseth/

Meanwhile in other war news; The Sun has published a video of two US military aircraft that had to be blown up by their own special forces while searching for shot-down F-15 pilots after the rescue aircraft themselves became bogged down in sand behind enemy lines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siqL6V70McU

The Mirror has published video of a $700 million AWACS E-3 spy-plane reduced to rubble on the runway at Prince Sutan Air Base in Saudi Arabia by a $20,000 Iranian Shahed 136 drone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQn04k-eUD4

And The Times of India has published a detailed report claiming that an Iranian drone attack on the US Embassy in Riyadh KSA on 3 March last month caused far more damage than previously acknowledged:

The strikes occurred at around 1.30am and hit a secure section of the embassy complex. According to officials, three floors sustained heavy damage, and areas including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station were affected.

While Saudi authorities initially described the incident as causing only minor material damage and a limited fire, sources told The Wall Street Journal that the blaze lasted for nearly half a day and left parts of the embassy beyond repair.

No casualties were reported, but officials said the timing prevented what could have been a mass-casualty event had the attack taken place during the working hours.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/iran-drone-strike-on-us-embassy-in-saudi-arabia-hit-cia-station-report/articleshow/130032655.cms

Edited Sunday at 03:28 PM4 days by toucana
edited "US military aircraft" para 5

More questions are being asked about the real nature of the SAR (search and rescue) mission conducted in Iran by US forces last weekend. According to  a website called Defence Security Asia, US losses included:

• 1× F-15E Strike Eagle destroyed

• 2× HC-130J Combat King II destroyed

• 1× MH-6 Little Bird destroyed

• 1× A-10 Thunderbolt II destroyed

• 1–2× MQ-9 Reaper drones destroyed

• 2× HH-60 rescue helicopters damaged

https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/us-2-billion-burned-iran-f15e-rescue-mission-hc130-helicopter-losses/#google_vignette

Additional reports suggest that an F-16 Falcon and a KC-135 Stratotanker also declared emergencies over the same period, amounting to a jaw-dropping $2 billion worth of destroyed hardware. The Hercules HC-130J in particular is one of the very largest cargo aircraft flown by the US air-force, making this one of the most expensive SAR missions in US military history.

The incident began on 3 April when an F-15E fighter belonging to the 494th Fighter Squadron of the 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath UK was shot down inside Iran by IRG air defences. Initial reports suggested that this happened within mountainous terrain inside Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province in southwestern Iran. But the subsequent destruction of US aircraft took place several hundred miles further north at a disused airfield about 35 Kilometres from the city of Isfahan which happens to be one of the principal Iranian nuclear material storage sites believed to hold up to 400 kilograms of near weapons grade Uranium 235.

On 1 April (two days before the F-15 was shot down) the BBC posted an article suggesting that president Trump was mulling the option of sending a special forces team into Iran to seize this stockpile of Uranium in what would have been a high-risk covert operation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvglv5v4yvpo

The BBC News website returned to this theme last night with a follow-up report suggesting that the SAR mission to rescue the missing F-15E was actually used as cover to conceal an operation of this type - an operation that went very badly wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ0t7WBITyk

Iranian defence sources are in no doubt that this is exactly what happened, and are already describing the weekend events as ’Tabas II’ - a reference to the ill-fated  ‘Operation Eagle Claw’ in 1980 when US Delta forces were forced to abandon a covert operation to rescue US diplomat hostages after a Hercules C-130 and a helicopter collided at a staging area called Tabas during the early stages of the operation - a disaster which killed 8 US service personnel, and cost president Jimmy Carter the 1980 presidential election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw

On 4/5/2026 at 11:06 AM, toucana said:

Few actions can convey just how well a war is going as firing three of your top military leaders just four weeks into hostilities - yet this is exactly what has happened at the Pentagon earlier this week.

You can't expect a war to go good if it is based on a faulty premise and idiotic planning.

I would expect senior Pentagon officials and Generals to push back against stupid orders and war crimes; they are, after all, professionals, and the only 'grown ups' in the room.

P 'ass-licker' Hegseth obviously didn't like sensible opinions, and fired them.
( I'm sure many more firings will come, including Hegseth himself; somebody has to fall on his sword for D Trump )

42 minutes ago, MigL said:

You can't expect a war to go good if it is based on a faulty premise and idiotic planning.

To quote a famous strategist and deal-maker:

Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.

43 minutes ago, MigL said:

P 'ass-licker' Hegseth obviously didn't like sensible opinions, and fired them.
( I'm sure many more firings will come, including Hegseth himself; somebody has to fall on his sword for D Trump )

No doubt. I am moderately certain that Trump is strategically not talking to Hegseth so that that one can take the fall. Also a lot of folks apparently were women and people of color, so we can see the true worth of DEI.

I like the thread's title nod to the A.C. Clarke story "Neutron Tide".

27 minutes ago, Janus said:

I like the thread's title nod to the A.C. Clarke story "Neutron Tide".

Oddly enough I had completely forgotten about that A.C. Clarke story, from 1970, though I do vividly recall the Larry Niven story ‘Neutron Star’ which came out 4 years earlier in 1966 as part of the ‘Known Space’ series.

Niven later said that he kept meeting people who had done full mathematical analyses of the tidal effects in his story, and they told him the hero could not possibly survive, as the ship comes out of hyperbolic orbit spinning.

Edited 21 hours ago21 hr by toucana
redundant 'and' removed

We were warned many times. Here's one red flag, from the Guardian in November 2016.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/nov/21/watch-movies-donald-trump-films-fast-forward

Donald Trump’s greatest talent is his ability to boil complex themes down into blunt sentiment. While Hillary Clinton broke her back trying to set out a wide-ranging and inclusive moral ideal of what the United States should be, Trump wore a hat with “Make America Great Again” written on it and won.

This ability, it turns out, stretches to Trump’s movie-watching habits. A feature in the Sunday Times this weekend recalled an occasion in the 1990s when Trump wanted to watch the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Bloodsport during a flight. However, Bloodsport is a long film – 92 minutes long, in fact – and Trump is a busy man. His solution? Making his son fast-forward through all the boring bits, like exposition and dialogue, until he was left with a relentless 45-minute supercut of broken bones and knuckle sandwiches.

(Me again): Trump's foreign policy, such as it is, has no moral center or guiding geopolitical principle. It's just about people giving you cool stuff, making money (or stealing it), bullying whenever possible, and if you get a chance to act tough and blow things up in a spectacular way, with lots of Van Damme supercut moments, go for it. Damn the bone spurs, full speed ahead! Add in the advancing effects of dementia as it further reduces self-awareness, ability to comprehend strategy and absorb anything from intelligence briefings, any rudimentary grasp of the global economic effects of unleashing chaos in the Gulf, plus general failure to grasp political optics, and you have a president demolishing his own party with each TACO Tuesday that isn't met by a 25th amendment team.

5 hours ago, toucana said:

Niven later said that he kept meeting people who had done full mathematical analyses of the tidal effects in his story, and they told him the hero could not possibly survive, as the ship comes out of hyperbolic orbit spinning.

Remember the story well, and its many scientific corrections later (much as his later Ringworld had glitches that were pointed out, and which Niven corrected in sequels). I remember my journalist papa returning from some conference in NY (where he met Lyndon Johnson), and he'd bought a couple sci-fi books in an airport store during a long layover. One was Alfred Bester's collection (Starburst, iirc), the other an issue of Worlds of If, which happened to contain "Neutron Star." Both that story, and an especially horrific one by Bester called "Fondly Fahrenheit" were a lot for a ten/eleven year old to take on board (let alone a younger sibling), but they set my imagination to sizzling.