Similar issues had been seen by other airlines and were dealt with quietly. Not in this case: Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker, known for rejecting aircraft deliveries over tiny cabin imperfections, would not have it. Airbus was going to fix this or pay dearly. He stopped taking more A350s and brought the case in front of a London court while the Qatari Civil Aviation Authority grounded the affected aircraft. More escalation? Impossible.
As it turned out, the dispute was the last public drama of an exciting career spanning 27 years as CEO at the airline. Eight months later, the airline announced “the appointment of a new group chief executive," frankly, someone even insiders did not know: Badr Mohammed Al Meer, so far chief operating officer of Doha’s Hamad International Airport. In other words: Akbar will be gone very soon. The change will become effective on Nov. 5, though industry sources say the leadership transition will continue until the beginning of next year.
Al Baker, 62, is the longest-lasting current CEO of a major airline. It was also him who made Qatar Airways into a major airline in the first place, having taken it over with only a few aircraft in its fleet. Al Baker turned Qatar into a second Emirates—similar, but different. The airline is operating a large hub connecting long-haul services to long-haul.
Unlike Emirates, it also has a narrowbody fleet and is a member of one of the global alliances, Oneworld, and has stakes in several carriers abroad—among them Cathay Pacific, China Southern Airlines, International Airlines Group and LATAM Airlines.
Qatar Airways' status of one of the most important buyers of aircraft, connected with its shareholdings, made Al Baker one of the most powerful figures in the industry. His departure likely marks the beginning of fundamental change for the airline.
According to industry sources, Al Baker did not leave voluntarily at this time. People who know him well say he would have liked to continue for longer and would have been very interested in becoming chairman of the airline. But his superiors, mainly Chairman Saad Sherida Al Kaabi—a powerful figure who is also Qatar’s energy minister—thought otherwise.
To this day, Al Baker micromanaged essentially everything of relevance at Qatar Airways. When his airline hosted the IATA annual general assembly in 2014, he would personally drive CEOs of other airlines around in a golf cart through the airport terminal, making sure they arrived at their gates comfortably in the middle of the night. A few days before, he had broken his arm in a car accident. But he simply would not delegate anything.
Corporate governance was simple: Al Baker would decide everything. This was not what Al Kaabi wanted for the future, the sources said. The chairman wanted to establish a new governance structure that was not 100%-focused on Al Baker, with stronger checks and balances. No middle ground could be found.
The A350 case is a good example of where the airline’s weaknesses lie. In Toulouse, key Airbus executives do not to this day understand how things went so badly wrong with Al Baker after the first paint deficiencies were discovered. In Doha, members of Al Baker’s management team tried desperately to gently steer him toward compromise. After all, an airline the size of Qatar Airways cannot operate without a relationship with one of the two big manufacturers. The higher-ups in Doha noticed, too, and it is said that the settlement was the result of talks between the state of Qatar and France.
It is sadly ironic that the conflict in which Al Baker wanted to demonstrate his powers may have contributed to his departure.
Compromise was never his thing, as many others in the industry including Boeing and numerous airline colleagues can recollect. And it did not get better: When Al Baker hosted another IATA meeting in 2022, he stated in some of his speeches that many airlines let their customers down during the pandemic—not so Qatar Airways, of course. Many colleagues were outraged that he misused the stage he was given by the association in such a way. Some of his peers simply stood up and left. Emirates Airline President Tim Clark stopped talking with him some time ago.
Al Baker was often brutally honest about what he really thought. When asked at an IATA event whether a woman could do his job, he said no. A woman could not do his job, he said, because his job was so difficult. That did not go down well, to put it mildly.
As much as people were offended and afraid, many also admired his achievements.
Following the departure of such a powerful figure, Qatar Airways will have to reinvent itself. A new corporate governance has to be established—along with a management team that is actually empowered, with Al Meer at the top. His experience as an airport manager will help, but the key will be the transformation of the airline into a more normal company.
What is unlikely to change is Qatar Airways' positioning as a major player in the industry—this mandate given by its government has not wavered.
I shamelessly clipped this from a 3rd party email from work.
Credit: JetZero
These are exciting times for new jetliner concepts. JetZero’s blended wing body, Ron Epstein’s high-wing/propfan jetliner and others offer hope to airlines struggling with high fuel prices. The prospect of a new jetliner also offers hope to Boeing, which is losing market share to Airbus’ conventional, last-generation A321neo and, as Epstein points out, badly needs to revive its engineering core.
Despite this, Boeing CEO David Calhoun, among others, continues to deny that there is a business case for a new jet. One reason he cites is that there are game-changing new technologies coming that could make a jet launched today obsolete after a few years. History, however, shows us four principles indicating why that is unlikely:
Aviation technology is seldom game-changing. This is an industry based on incrementalism. Consider the high-bypass turbofan, debuting as the Pratt & Whitney JT9D on Boeing’s 747 in 1969. It offered impressive efficiency improvements, and all commercial engines today are high-bypass, but it took decades to extinguish lower-bypass types. The last low-bypass JT8D was delivered in 1999 on an MD-80. And the last Boeing 707, which the new widebodies and their high-bypass engines should have made obsolete, was delivered 13 years after the 747 entered service.
Exciting new technologies take longer to arrive than expected. The idea of a commercial geared turbofan was mooted in the 1970s or before. International Aero Engines proposed its SuperFan in the mid-1980s, but a geared commercial fan didn’t enter service until 2016, as Pratt & Whitney’s PurePower PW1000 series. Similarly, the propfans on Epstein’s jetliner are based on technologies envisioned over 50 years ago and first flown (as the GE36 and Pratt/Allison 578-DX) 35 years ago.
Some regard hydrogen and other alternative propulsion as promising, but many experts point to serious technical challenges. These enormous challenges may or may not be surmountable, but to regard a hydrogen-powered jetliner as a disruptive possibility for another 20-30 years completely ignores the history of technology maturation.
There is very little record of new product failure due to disruption by novel technology. Failures such as the Bristol Brabazon, Concorde or Airbus A380 resulted from misunderstandings of market requirements, a kind of magical thinking about what airlines and the public want, not new technology.
It is true that in the 1950s, numerous piston and turboprop airliners were launched, and some failed due to the advent of jets. But this was the result of cheap fuel enabling a more expensive path (jets). Today, it is a reasonable bet that fuel will not be cheap, and passengers will stay cost-sensitive.
The most promising new technologies on the drawing board—such as autonomy and sustainable aviation fuel—are retrofittable or applicable to current platforms. A new jetliner designed today can easily anticipate any requirements these technologies might have.
The military side of the industry illustrates these principles well. The U.S. Air Force has been buying fifth-generation fighters since the Lockheed Martin F-22, but per Principle 1, it is also procuring upgraded fourth-generation aircraft such as the Boeing F-15EX because they are still effective for certain missions. Meanwhile, per Principle 2, concepts such as directed-energy weapons or hypersonic propulsion have been around for decades but are unlikely to revolutionize combat aircraft any time soon. Per Principle 4, many technologies on the drawing board can be spiraled in or retrofitted to modern combat aircraft.
Most of all, militaries know that forgoing the fielding new weapons and technologies today in favor of waiting for some future “game-changing” weapon can lead to disaster. Imagine if the UK or U.S. had decided in the 1930s to skip the development of high-performance fighters like the Spitfire because jet engines were coming and were likely to make propeller planes obsolete.
Airlines often think the same way as militaries. Not having technology that is equal to their competitors’ means those competitors can outprice and out-profit them on a given route. This is why Calhoun’s insistence that a new jetliner needs to be 20-30% better than current equipment is false. Airline profit margins are tiny, and a 10-15% performance improvement can make all the difference, as with the Boeing 777-200 versus the Airbus A340-300 or McDonnell Douglas MD-11, for example. Also, the new jetliner concepts promise much better improvements than that.
Militaries that ignore these principles risk defeat. A jetliner prime that ignores them can expect defeat, too. For Boeing, being stuck in permanent second place puts it on the path to commercial irrelevance.
Some housekeeping...This was supposed to drop this morning....but alas I messed up the scheduler thingie..
Also I have a problem with a spammer leaving spam in my comments and I keep dumping them but the "google algorithm" won't block it and I don't know how to block this person or bot.
I decided to roll with this song because it is one of my favorite all time movies,
Here is the Premise;
Allen Faulkner, a former British Army colonel turned mercenary, arrives in London to meet merchant banker Sir Edward Matheson. The latter proposes an operation to rescue Julius Limbani, the imprisoned President of a southern African nation who is due for execution by General Ndofa. President Limbani is held in a remote prison in Zembala, guarded by a regiment of General Ndofa's troops known as the "Simbas".
Faulkner accepts the assignment and begins recruiting forty-nine mercenaries, including officers he had worked with previously: Capt. Rafer Janders, a skilled tactician, and Lt. Shawn Fynn, a former Irish Guards officer and pilot. Fynn also brings in Pieter Coetzee, a former soldier in the South African Defence Force who wishes only to return home and buy a farm. The mercenaries fly to Swaziland, where they are whipped into shape. With training complete, Janders exacts a promise from Faulkner to watch over his only son, Emile, should he not survive.
Because of an unexpected development, Faulkner is given only a day's notice to launch the mission. On Christmas Day, the fifty-man mercenary group parachute into Zembala by a HALO jump. One group rescues an alive, though sick, Limbani from a heavily guarded prison, while another group takes over a small, nearby airfield to await pick-up. Back in London, however, Matheson cancels the extraction flight at the last moment, having secured copper mining assets from General Ndofa in exchange for President Limbani. Stranded deep in hostile territory, the abandoned mercenaries fight their way through bush country, pursued by the Simbas. Many men, including Coetzee, are killed along the way.
The mercenaries make their way to Limbani's home village, hoping to start a rebellion, but realise that his people are too ill-equipped to fight. An Irishmissionary living there informs the group of an old Douglas Dakota transport aircraft nearby that they can use to escape. As the Simbas close in, the mercenaries suffer heavy casualties holding them off in a climactic battle while Fynn starts the Dakota's engines. Janders is shot in the leg and unable to board the departing airplane. Faulkner is forced to kill him to spare him from capture and torture. The thirteen surviving mercenaries from the original fifty eventually manage to land at Kariba Airport, Rhodesia, but Limbani dies from a gunshot wound sustained during the escape.
Some months later, Faulkner returns to London and breaks into Matheson's home to confront him. Faulkner takes the half a million dollars in Matheson's safe to compensate the survivors and the families of those who died. Faulkner then kills Matheson and makes a swift getaway with Fynn. Faulkner fulfils his promise to Janders by visiting Emile at his boarding school.
Now here are some notes inter-spaced with some pics I took during the movie:
The film was based on a novel, The Thin White Line, which Euan Lloyd read prior to publication. He optioned it and hired Reginald Rose to write the screenplay in June 1976. The budget was US$9 million.
United Artists was enthusiastic about the film, but insisted Lloyd give the director's job to Michael Winner. Lloyd refused and instead chose Andrew V. McLaglen, son of Victor McLaglen, a British-born American previously known mainly for making westerns. Euan Lloyd had a friendship with John Ford who recommended McLaglen to direct the film. The finance for the film was raised partly by pre-selling it to distributors based on the script and the names of the stars who were set to appear.
The African nation in the film is not named, but it is clearly meant to be Zaire (the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo).The film's promotional literature made the link clear as The Wild Geese was promoted at the time as the story of "50 steelhard mercs who undertake a terrifying mission in dangerous, sweltering Central Africa-very much like the Old Congo-to rescue and bring out a deposed and imprisoned black president". The film's villain, General Ndofa, described in the film as an extremely corrupt and brutal leader of a copper-rich nation in central Africa, was a thinly disguised version of President Mobutu Sese Seko. Likewise, the character of Julius Limbani, the deposed pro-Western leader who was imprisoned following the hijacking of an airliner was based upon Moïse Tshombe. Finally, the film's hero, Colonel Allen Faulkner, described as a British mercenary living in South Africa, was based on Colonel Michael "Mad Mike" Hoare. Like Faulkner, Hoare was a former British Army officer living in South Africa who worked as a mercenary and had been hired to fight for the Tshombe government in the Congo in 1964-1965. Hoare served as the film's "military and technical adviser" and very much approved of the film, which he praised as a realistic depiction of the mercenary sub-culture
Although Lloyd had both Richard Burton and Roger Moore in mind for their respective roles from a relatively early stage, other casting decisions were more difficult. As the mercenaries were mostly composed of military veterans (some of whom had fought under Faulkner's command before), it was necessary to cast a number of older actors and extras into these physically demanding roles. A number of veterans and actual mercenary soldiers appeared in the film.
Northern Irish actor Stephen Boyd, a close friend of Lloyd's, was originally set to star as Sandy Young, the sergeant major who trains the mercenaries before their mission. However, Boyd died shortly before filming commenced and Jack Watson was chosen as a late replacement. He had previously played a similar role in McLaglen's 1968 film The Devil's Brigade.
Lloyd had offered the part of the banker Matheson to his friend Joseph Cotten. However, scheduling difficulties meant that he also had to be replaced, this time by Stewart Granger.
Burt Lancaster originally hoped to play the part of Rafer Janders who in Carney's book was an American living in London. However, Lancaster wanted the part substantially altered and enlarged. The producers declined and in his place chose Richard Harris. Lloyd initially had reservations about casting Harris because of his wild reputation – he was blamed for Golden Rendezvous going over budget by $1.5 million due to his drinking and rewriting the script. The insurers only agreed to Harris' casting if Lloyd put up his entire salary as guarantee, Harris put up half of his $600,000 fee, and that the producer would sign a declaration at the end of every day saying Harris had not held up filming due to drinking, misbehaving or rewriting lines. "I'd already made enquiries about the hold ups on Golden Rendezvous", said Lloyd. "I discovered the blame was not entirely Richard's. So, as I wanted him for the part, I took the gamble. And it was a gamble. If he'd misbehaved and he'd started losing days it would have come out of my pocket." Harris did not know about the arrangement until the end of the shoot.
Hardy Krüger was not the first actor considered for the role of Pieter Coetzee. Lloyd originally thought of Curd Jürgens, but felt that "Hardy seemed to fit." Krüger was also impressed by the script scenes played with Limbani.
"I was the only wild member of the cast", quipped Moore later. "Harris and Burton were on the wagon and Krüger never emerged from his room with his lady."Moore's character was nearly offered to O. J. Simpson after confusion on the American financier's part regarding the character being described as black Irish.
Lloyd hesitated before offering the role of Witty, the gay medic, to his longtime friend Kenneth Griffith. When finally approached, Griffith said "Some of my dearest friends in the world are homosexuals!" and accepted the part.
Percy Herbert, who played the role of Keith, was a veteran of World War II, in which he had been wounded in the defence of Singapore, then captured by the Imperial Japanese Army and interned in a POW camp.
The SGM "Sandy" and "Esposito"
Alan Ladd's son David Ladd and Stanley Baker's(Zulu) son Glyn Baker also had roles in the film. Ladd played the drug-dealing nephew of a London-based mob boss (Jeff Corey), and Baker played the young mercenary Esposito. With the cast made up from so many veteran actors, Baker claimed that the only reason he stayed alive in the plot so long was that he was one of the few actors young and fit enough to carry President Limbani for any period of time. David Ladd's character's girlfriend in the film was played by Anna Bergman, the daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
John Kani played Jesse Blake, a mercenary who had previously served with Faulkner and was struggling to live before the chance to work with Faulkner again. Palitoy based the figure "Tom Stone" (part of the Action Man team) on the character Blake after looking at the pre-production photos and posters of the film. Subsequently, some modifications to the figure were made. Kani made his debut in the film after years of acting and stage performances with Winston Ntshona. Ntshona was Limbani in the film and continued to make many more films with Kani after The Wild Geese.
Kani and Ntshona say they both turned down roles in the film at first after hearing it would be about mercenaries. However they changed their mind after reading the script. "The film could not come at a better time", said Kani. "We know exactly what is happening in Africa today and a movie that devotes – out of 120 minutes – even three quarters of a minute to say we need each other and to say that a white man can be just as much an African as a black man, that's important."
Rosalind Lloyd, who played Heather, is Euan Lloyd's daughter. Her mother, actress Jane Hylton, played Mrs Young.
Principal filming took place in South Africa in the summer and autumn of 1977, with additional studio filming at Twickenham Film Studios in Middlesex. Roger Moore estimated location filming in Africa took about three months with the unit taking over a health spa near Tshipise in Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo); shooting also took place at Messina Border Region. The fictional country is said to lie on the border with Burundi, Rhodesia and Rwanda and Zambia, Uganda and Swaziland are also mentioned to be close by.
The rugby scenes were filmed over a period of two days at Marble Hill Park in Twickenham with extras drafted in from nearby Teddington Boys' School. Marble Hill Close near Marble Hill Park was also used as a location.
Most of the military equipment used in the film came from theSouth African army. However some special weaponry needed to be imported from Britain. "Even though the stuff couldn't fire real bullets, it was held up for weeks by the British government because it was going to South Africa", said Lloyd. South Africa was subjected to a mandatoryarms embargoimposed by theUnited Nations Security Council Resolution 418in 1977.
The music, by Roy Budd, originally included an overture and end title music, but both of these were replaced by "Flight of the Wild Geese," written and performed by Joan Armatrading. All three pieces are included on the soundtrack album, as well as the song "Dogs of War" that featured lyrics sung by the Scots Guards to Budd's themes. Budd used Borodin's String Quartet No. 2 as a theme for Rafer. The soundtrack was originally released by A&M Records then later released under license as a Cinephile DVD.
And finally a clip I had recorded form the movie that was a huge takeaway from the movie that all the protestors and other naysayers totally ignored in their attempts to "be woke" or as woke as the late 70's version was and there were protest against the movie. from the anti apartheid movement to other fringe groups.
I snagged this from a 3rd party report I get in my email at work, I have been very busy and unable to post like I want, I hope things will slow down so I can blog, and sleep, LOL..well sleep first.
Credit: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Although United Airlines is battling near-term cost headwinds, the carrier remains steadfast in its belief that a significant shift has occurred in the U.S. industry resulting in diminished viability of the ULCC model.
Chicago-based United has been outspoken on the trend for quite some time, and maintains that cost convergence, and its broad range of product offerings will only strengthen its competitive advantage going forward.
With labor costs at all U.S. airlines rising rapidly, United Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella during an Oct. 18 earnings discussion described the LCC tendency to operate with larger gauge aircraft as a constraint for those carriers in being able to drive costs materially lower. ULCCs Frontier and Spirit have already forecasted negative pre-tax and operating margins, respectively, for the 2023 third quarter (Q3).
Additionally, “market saturation of the low-cost business model in certain regions is creating very low marginal RASM [revenue per available seat mile] for some of our competitors, in fact, many of our competitors have marginal revenues that are negative,” Nocella explained. There are only so many seats that Las Vegas, Florida, or Cancun can support in such a short period of time, he said.
Those operators use larger gauge equipment to gain lower costs without the benefit of connectivity garnered by the hub and spoke business model, Nocella said. “Expansion of the low-cost model into smaller and medium sized markets with these very large jets lacking connectivity just creates low marginal RASM.”
“The other factor is the percentage of ASMs [available seat miles] that these airlines have in new markets,” Nocella said, explaining that very fast growth rates create a higher percentage of new capacity, which in the best of times is below average. United is deploying less than 1% of its capacity into new markets during the fourth quarter, he said.
Capacity growth as a strategy to maintain low costs without revenue accretive markets can cause “the entire business model [to] break,” Nocella concluded. “And that is what we think is happening right now.”
United CEO Scott Kirby told investors his airline and another carrier are expected to account for 98% of the total U.S. industry revenue growth in Q3 and more than 90% of total pre-tax profitability.
The company’s business model can support dramatically higher gauge and once that occurs the airline spills less traffic to competitors, Nocella explained. Previously, United has said that its average seats per departure in 2019 averaged 104, and the company expects that number to jump more than 40% to over 145 by 2027.
United also believes its complexity and range of product offerings is far from a disadvantage, rather “there’s a structural advantage that generates more than the costs it creates by the complexity and just cannot be replicated.”
Its product offering ranges from Basic Economy to First Class; during Q3 revenue for its Basic Economy offering grew 50% year-over-year. Kirby explained one thing that has changed for United over the last year is “we finally started to get the gauge right; we couldn’t make this work when we were flying 650 regional jets around the country.” Basic Economy is a better product for United, he explained. “We’ve figured out how to make it work, but we now have the gauge to be able to sell the product.”
The airline’s total revenue in Q3 increased 12.5% year-over-year to $14.5 billion, and the company’s operating expenses grew 11.6% to $12.7 billion. United’s Q3 net income grew from $942 million last year to $1.1 billion, and its pre-tax margin was 10.8%.
But United is facing cost challenges in the fourth quarter, driven by numerous issues. It recently suspended flights to Tel Aviv following Hamas’ attack on Israel. If the airline resumes service to Tel Aviv after October, its unit costs excluding fuel (CASM-ex) will grow 3.5% year-over-year; but if flights remain suspended until year-end, CASM-ex will grow 5%. Service to Tel Aviv represents around 2% of United’s capacity.
United’s CFO Mike Leskinen explained the carrier’s capacity in the fourth quarter will be roughly three points lower than it planned three months ago. Two points is attributed to Captain upgrade issues and the remaining one point is driven by the suspension of service to Tel Aviv.
“The industry is facing other issues, but that’s what happened here at United, and we expect to mitigate that in 2024 and beyond,” Leskinen said.
United’s CFO said another issue the carrier is facing is maintenance costs, explaining he was not certain how persistent the challenge will be. “Maintenance costs throughout the years have been higher than we expected, and for United the big piece has been an increased need for spare parts,” Leskinen said, “particularly on engines as the work scope has been larger than we expected.”
Some of the spare parts challenges are stemming from supply chain issues, “and it’s difficult to see where that ends,” Leskinen said. United is not giving cost guidance for 2024 at the moment, citing inflationary, labor and maintenance cost pressures persistent in the industry.
“What I will commit to today, is that United will be industry leading in how we manage our costs,” Leskinen said. “Cost convergence is a structural trend; it is what is causing the lower cost carriers ... to struggle.”
The Hamas invasion of Israel and Israel’s declaration of war have raised a series of new scenarios for defense analysts and planners to consider.
Israel’s response will be different than in prior conflicts with Hamas and may be even more visceral than the U.S. reaction after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The U.S. responded to the 9/11 attacks with an invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to overthrow the Taliban and attempt to capture al-Qaida leadership, and it invaded Iraq and began a wider war on terror in 2003 under the suspicion that Iraq had hidden nuclear capabilities.
This is how some may see what flows from the initial Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. Israel will seek to destroy Hamas, but it also will embark on a path to reset its security environment. That could include eliminating Hezbollah as a threat, annexing the West Bank and then attacking Iran to punish and deter it from threatening Israel. Of course, Hezbollah could act on its own and attack Israel without provocation, as might Iran. Iraq’s decision to launch ballistic missiles against Israel after the start of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 is an example of how Hezbollah and Iran might behave.
It may be sage, however, to view these as a series of events that will not happen all at the same time or may not happen at all—at least after the initial campaign to eliminate Hamas—and to prepare for more stressful scenarios.
One question is how long a campaign to eliminate Hamas in Gaza will last. History shows a wide range in the length of major urban campaigns, and not all are like Gaza. At one extreme is the battle U.S. forces fought against Iraq in Baghdad in 2003. It lasted six days. Several urban battles that might be similar to Gaza in World War II and the Vietnam War lasted a month or less. Operation Cast Lead during which Israel made limited incursions into Gaza in 2008-09 lasted 21 days. At the more extreme end of the scale is the battle fought in Mosul, Iraq, in 2016-17, which went on for approximately 10 months.
Israel will want to bring the operation to a close as quickly as possible. Hamas will not have resupply, and Israel cannot afford high Palestinian civilian casualties, which would erode global support and raise the risk that Hezbollah and/or Iran would act or that relations with other Arab states would deteriorate.
In this scenario, demand for military products likely will be limited to surges of precision guided weapons, aircraft and helicopter rotatable parts and ammunition. There then comes the question of what Israel does with Gaza after the campaign. It cannot just withdraw and expect a city of 2 million people to recover quickly. There will be a longer-term cost of governing Gaza, both in terms of security forces and government resources.
A larger-scale war would have a far greater impact on global defense. Despite threatening to do so, Hezbollah might not choose to intervene and attack Israel. Lebanon is in dire straits economically, and an Israeli response could be far more damaging to Lebanon than the 2006 war was. Hezbollah and Iran might also weigh the weakened capacity of Russia to support the Assad regime in Syria.
However, Hezbollah has a far larger rocket and missile inventory than it did during the 2006 war. A report published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2021 estimated Hezbollah has 130,000 rockets and missiles now, compared with 15,000 on the eve of the 2006 war. Hezbollah probably also has been observing the use of small uncrewed aircraft systems by Ukraine and Russia, which could add to its ability to inflict damage on Israel.
Israel has been keenly aware of this threat, and its Iron Dome has proven effective in earlier conflicts with Hamas. However, some batteries may have been overwhelmed by the far larger initial salvos Hamas fired on Oct. 7.
A war with Iran would be conducted by air and missile forces but would raise the same problems if Hezbollah and Iran were to coordinate their attacks. There may be 10-15 key critical infrastructure targets in Israel that would impose severe costs on Israel if damaged or destroyed. Iran could also lash out and attempt to hit crucial targets in other countries in the region.
A broader war in the Middle East cannot be ruled out, and its opening days may be as abrupt and chaotic as Oct. 7-9. Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine marked a significant change in global defense spending. A base case scenario is that Israel will seek to destroy Hamas and the campaign will be limited to Gaza. Still, more thought and preparation should be put into what a broader war could entail for the U.S. and European defense industrial bases that are already straining to meet Ukraine’s demands.
I saw this on Quora and thought it was an interesting perspective.
My message to the non-Hebrew speakers. Feel free to share.
Until Saturday I was Stav Bartel. From then and until further notice I am Chief Sergeant Stav Bartel, fighter in the IDF 7109 reserve infantry battalion.
I would like to share that since Saturday morning I am in near the front in Gaza, fighting against the barbarian invasion of Hamas. I want to bless all who genuinely strive to know the truth. Do not back down and don't let the cynics shove irrelevant pseudo-rationales that would downplay the scale of this crime. There are numerous reports all over the media from reliable sources. These events are unfolding and Western media begin to realize them much later than needed. Do not let anyone decive you.
Lots of my friends and acquaintances had their loved ones were butchered. The enemy is cynically denying anything they themselves filmed doing. Don't legitimize this. Hamas is evil, don't fall into that stupid relativistic attitude, that attempts to show the "other side" of Hamas. See the true pictures from Gaza, the voice of the Gazans, but not the voice of Hamas. A group that launches an attack that massacres, butchers innocent men, women and babies, a group that burns houses with civilians trapped inside, forcing them to flee and then massacring them. My friends told me the TERRORISTS were piling bodies from the festival with a tractor and tried to burn them.
A family member of a friend of mine was raped three times. Others were abducted. An acquaintance of mine told me she hid in a bunker after the attack on the rave party, luckily left to treat the wounded, and she saw the terrorists throwing grenades into the bunkers. Her friends were injured, others killed. She carried them wounded under fire. I've received these testimonies already on Saturday morning. At the kibbutzim, babies were abducted, others killed, choked, and beheaded. Grandmothers were abducted, entire families were wiped out. This is not an IDF assault from air on a building used by Hamas, housing civilians as human shields. And this is no mistake. There is no way to compare. None of these people were a threat to anyone, they were not next to IDF troops. And this attack had no military objective. This is not a legitimate response to anything, not a proper way to deal with occupation or blockade. There is absolutely no way to justify any of this.
This was done by hands. This is not arresting Palestinian rioters. I've done it countless times during my service. Never, NEVER through my entire service have we ever treated an arrested Palestinian that way. We never beat them, never torture them. Never hurt them for fun. Quite the contrary. And if any of my soldiers mistreated them I would stop them immediately. We were always told, the IDF's morals are the Purity of Arms, the Value of Human Life. We have been attacked so many times, we were equipped with guns and could massacre the masses, but we never did. We suffered rocks and molotov cocktails, got injured but never lost our humanity. Never tortured. I have always had a soft spot for Palestinian children, when entering their homes, I hated the idea of their fear. I often comforted them. And also during the checkpoints. Countless times we laughed with them, gave them high fives. We treated them as human.
I know the situation in for the Palestinians is not good. I know it is far from right. We are not blind to it. And more often then not I've regretted our governments. It is complicated. I believe they deserve to live good lives just like we do.
But Hamas are not true representatives of the Palestinians. They are a proxy of Iran, they are a lunatic, ultra-religious murderous organization. They portray themselves as the weak, freedom fighters, but in truth, they are just thugs. All of them. We are no saints, but they are the devil. While we sometimes fall in judgment, they have no morals in the first place. They celebrate death, cheer for the sight of fire and destruction and enjoy the smell of blood. They are animals and they have always been, ever since they started with the suicide bombings. And Hezbollah and the PIJ and all other TERRORIST Organizations are no different.
I woke up on Saturday with a rocket barrage on my city, Tel Aviv, in the metropolitan area of 3 million people was attacked. A rocket fell in my neighborhood, where there is no military presence, no strategic sites. Just civilians. Soon we received the reports of terrorists armed for an all out war, rampaging through cities and villages, butchering people, desecrating their bodies and burning houses. We saw the videos of thousands of people fleeing from the festival. And there are stories I've heard that I can't yet process. I am unable to even think about them. So much blood and gore on the most innocent of lives.
No more than 6 hours later, I was already on my way south to arm up with hundreds of other reservists in my unit. Some of them I've never seen, people who did not show up to previous reserve activity for years have showed up. 300 thousand Israelis showed up. This is the largest deployment in the country's history. This is how eager we are to defend our homeland. And civilians are doing circle in the air just to provide us with food and equipment. Everyone joined, not a single soul in Israel remained indifferent. Jews, Drzue, Christians, Arabs, Bedouin, people who just a few seconds ago only saw their differences, have all united against evil. There is no question here, Hamas must be eradicated, just like ISIS. And what they have done is as big a crime against Israel as it is to the Palestinians. They have done nothing but bring on death and destruction on themselves, and we haven't started yet.
I am now near the front, thwarting continuous infiltration attempts. They try and fail. Dozens of terrorist were killed. They are getting weaker and weaker and we are getting stronger and braver. They keep shooting on civilians. Rockets are falling near us, exploding over our heads. But our spirit is strong, we are strongly united, brothers and sisters, from all over the country, religious, secular, rich, poor... And the ground is shaking below our feet front our air force pounding of the devil's den.
While their leaders are hiding in bunkers, some of our leaders, members of the Knesset, have showed up, volunteered to join the fighting units. My battalion commander, who lives in a kibbutz just next to the strip, who was abroad at the time, has lost his 18-year-old son, and before burying or even seeing him, he decided to take a flight, show up and help in whatever he can, even though he was given the option to stay home and whip. This is the spirit of our country. And we have no other land to go to. This is our secret weapon. We have one homeland.
My Israeli friends from across the world all began organizing donations, others have bought tickets, cutting their trips by months and came back to recruit. My little cousins set up stations to collect food and supplies from civilians for the soldiers. My family is doing anything they can and so everyone else.
I have gave much thought about my grandparents who fought the Nazi attempt to eradicate them, and others who suffered persecution anywhere they've been. Here we are united together, we have the right and duty to help ourselves. And we will do that for eternity. We cannot be beaten, and whoever will challenge us will be destroyed.
I am no religious person, but now more than ever the words Am Yisrael Chai are inscribed on my heart.
I hope to come back as well as possible, to tell our story.
