Jeffrey Lewis

I don't know who needs to hear this, but Tomahawk Block IV can dive vertically.

Or, at the very least, very enthusiastic about the applications of atomic energy for military purposes.

When Trump seizes Kharg Island and the oil but leaves the uranium at Isfahan, it will be the funniest thing ever.

a man with long hair and a beard looks angry ALT: a man with long hair and a beard looks angry

I notice that over on the bad site that the people who promised us a "better deal" with Iran are now proposing special forces raids to fight their way in and secure Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium.

Glad to see "Greeted as liberators" still doing a lot of work for the wishful foreign policy wonk.

Rep Dan Crenshaw says culture of misinformation fueld his primary loss: "The truth didn't matter"

I Never Thought Leopards Would Eat My Face, Sobs Congressman Representing Leopards-Eating-Faces Party.

"surely the third democratic presidency to come to power after a norm-breaking and warcrime-cheering Republican administration will pursue justice against their predecessors," I repeat like a mantra til I collapse

If the warhead is intact after the crash, that's a strong sign of clobbering -- the LACM was lost and, therefore, didn't make enough terrain matches to arm the warhead.

Why The Navy Should Retire TLAM-N The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, or TLAM, is named after the Tomahawk — a Native American axe. If you have ever seen a Western movie, the tomahawk [...]

I wrote this up in 2009 when there was a debate about whether to retire the nuclear-armed Tomahawk. One reason the Navy supported retirement was the concern of crashing nuclear-armed cruise missiles into countries like Japan and Korea.
www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2025...

This happened during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Several cruise missiles clobbered in Saudi and Turkey. The US had to suspend launches over Saudi and Turkey as a result. Here is a picture from Turkey in 2003.

Since people are rediscovering "clobbering" of cruise missiles, let me explain: Tomahawks use "terrain contour matching" (TERCOM) to find their way to targets. For reasons, about 1-2% of Tomahawks "clobber" -- get lost and fly into the ground -- en route to target.

Orphaned Tactics Oops we did it again

Wrote up some thoughts on the current war with Iran. You can't have a strategy if you don't even have a policy.

open.substack.com/pub/bafriedm...

I didn't notice that @bellingcat.com did this too. Same method, same answer. www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

The camera looks like it has a pretty narrow field of view, ~30°. As best I can work out, this is a strike on one of the other buildings at the IRGC compound -- the school should be to the visual right of the palm tree.

That looks like a TLAM and that is almost certainly the IRGC compound in Minab, looking north-ish across Imam Khomeini Blvd./Route 91.

Just to be clear, I am not disagreeing with anything that the @trbrtc.bsky.social & @nytimes.com wrote. I am genuinely confused about what is happening in the northeast area.

I have questions about the tunnel emphasized by the
@nytimes.com & @trbrtc.bsky.social. The main question concerns the very long, shallow path to reach the protection of the mountain unlike the three tunnel entrances on which we normally focus. It's curious.

We seem to be very intent on replicating a lot of mistakes, yes.

There is basically zero chance the @iaeaorg goes commando, as it were. (10x the IAEA-UNCSOM tension in post-1991 Iraq. Disaster.) More likely is an Iraq Survey Group-like arrangement, which maybe includes some friendly former IAEA inspectors and consultants. @nicolegrajewski.bsky.social

this is not what maven does or is capable of doing, full stop

anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about

You are right! Deleting.

Data.
PrSM (TY$2.09 unit cost): www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/D...
School lunches ($3.81 median cost in SY 2014-2015, the latest year for which there is good data): fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/defaul...

Unit cost of PrSM Increment 1 is $2.09 million (TY$), while the median school lunch cost in SY14-15 was $3.81. Two PrSMs launched works out to about 1.1 million school lunches.

War is a ferociously expensive way to settle disputes.

More likely a PrSM

And then there is the really famous case.

Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate

We also experienced this with Serbia, where air power didn't really start to work until the KLA started engaging on the ground. (Byman and Waxman before they were BYMAN and WAXMAN!)
www.belfercenter.org/publication/...

Remembering the Iraqi Uprising Twenty-Five Years Ago | Council on Foreign Relations On February 15, 1991, four weeks into Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush, using identical language twice—at the White House and later at a Raytheon defense plant in Massachusetts—encou...

I think one reason that many of us are skeptical that the regime in Tehran will fall with airpower alone is that the US also tried this in Iraq in 1991, as Operation Desert Storm transitioned into the no-fly zones of Operations Provide Comfort I/II. 👇
www.cfr.org/articles/rem...

Again, only one Arrow-3 launch over the night of March 5, this time from Tel Aviv.

Brings the total Arrow-3s recorded since the war started to 16. That is still below the number used during the first night of the 12-Day War alone

More TEL plinking at Isfahan north

At least two more launchers caught out. One spilled propellant along a field, and the other left a large scorch mark on an interior road in the base.

Thanks to our friends at Planet Labs for the imagery.

Better images of the Shahid Bakeri solid propellant plant show extensive damage.

Thanks to our friends at Planet Labs for the imagery.