Attack on Saudi Oil Field
- Thread starter IUPaterade724
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If he’s anything like you, he had been scoping a group of flight attendants walking down the runway. He knew you’d understand...
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God I love cars. My two vices are watches and cars. I have finally decided to keep this one for a few years. Mercedes G-Wagon. I won’t have to worry about snow in Chi-town with THREE locking differentials!
Sheeet! You met him before? He had come cool cars when he was young too.
You must have been Chinese in your past life then. After the Austin-Healey, he had to get family cars but mercs. I grew up disliking them as they were boring as hell. Looking back, I love the dashboards from the old ones. Retro-cool.
The coolest one we had was my mum's -- she had an SL500, coupe. (Some guy/client forfeited it when he failed to pay the balance of the payment for some land deal she did and she kept the property too!)
I had the AMG GTS before this. 506 hp and a top speed of 196. Of course, I never got to enjoy it sitting in traffic. Sweet looking car, if you ever get a look at one. I've only seen one since I sold mine. People used to take pictures of it, but it just wasn't practical. The engine sounded amazing, though:
Beautiful car. The back looks so retro-like a 40s Porsche inspired. Did they take the muffler out? Sounds like it. Guttural sound.
They have a "sport exhaust", but that's really what it sounded like. What's so interesting about it is that although the front looks really long, the engine is mounted behind the front wheels, so it is essentially a mid-engine car. It can compete on the track with a 911 GTS. It FEELS big, though.
The back had a spoiler that came up if you drove 50 mph (or something) for a certain amount of time. Some people had fixed spoilers on the back, but I thought those looked stupid.
The back had a spoiler that came up if you drove 50 mph (or something) for a certain amount of time. Some people had fixed spoilers on the back, but I thought those looked stupid.
That car will be my dream in my next life. Since I am moving up north, I will need a 4x4 since I will be living on the side of a hill. -- days of 140-150mph on the highways are gone.
Emasculated.
That's what happened to me. I was sick of changing out the summer and winter tires and there were times where it just couldn't drive. The G-Wagon will drive over anything. It's a bore to drive, unless you like driving tanks. Still, it's pretty unique and they hold their value like nobody's business. Created originally for the Shah of Iran as their "Hummer". It hasn't changed much over the years.
That car will be my dream in my next life. Since I am moving up north, I will need a 4x4 since I will be living on the side of a hill. -- days of 140-150mph on the highways are gone.
Emasculated.
Trump says they will tighten sanctions... wonder how you tighten the already maximally tightened sanctions...
Trump says they will tighten sanctions... wonder how you tighten the already maximally tightened sanctions...
Powerful, strong bigley sanctions. That's the ticket.
I don't know that a coalition matters at this point. The Europeans aren't doing business with Iran. The mistake was pulling out of a deal because Obama signed it, a colossal mistake of Trump's own doing. However, I'm focused on the future.
It's my view that without any response of force, you are giving the guards the greenlight to expand their malign activities, and by that I mean that US troops are in their crosshairs next. You can't deter without the credible threat of force. Trump has twice stated locked and loaded, with no response.
First they attacked ships, then they stole ships, now they've disrupted the global oil supply. You can see how the guards actions are escalating rapidly. Without a response, they will be emboldened. A proportional respone would be appropriate and would imo actually decrease the risk of a far greater conflict. Unless they are holding the "bomb" in secret, they need to be put back in place. To avoid confrontation is viewed as a sign of weakness. No one blusters more than Trump, yet in the moment of truth displays total cowardice. Our enemies understand this. It's quite logical why the Saudis want to avoid conflict. One country has nothing to lose, and the other the opposite. That's ignoring the fact that the Saudi population is a nation of cowards.
Why should we get in a shooting war right now for oil that mostly supplies Europe and Asia? The Europeans were upset that we pulled out of the talks and the Iranians are busy proving that they are a bad actor in the region in response to us pulling out of a treaty we should have never agreed to in the first place.
Keep the sanctions in place and keep tightening the screws as we can. We have nothing to talk about until Iran is willing to completely and forever scrap their nuclear ambitions and agree to a real inspection regime. If they would be so stupid as to actually attack our troops in the region in a traceable manner as they did the Saudis, then we bring the full force of the U.S. military down upon the regime. Short of that, the Saudis fix their facility and we continue to squeeze the Iranians. We don't need to attack them, we have the upper hand right now and they know it.
I wasn't sure, but I checked and we have no defense treaties with Saud. So we should stay out of it barring UN backed approval, with a broad coalition, which will never happen. Continued sanctions is the best course, I've never been comfortable with the idea of American lives for cheap oil.
All of the "drill baby, drill" stuff that has occurred has us in a much better position when it comes to disruptions in the Middle East. That attack raised gas 10 to 20 cents a gallon in Indianapolis. That is nothing in the scheme of things. Gas is still well below $3 a gallon.
The U.S. gets its carbon based energy mainly from our closest neighbors. The Chinese, Japanese, and India are the Saudis 3 biggest partners for oil, let them worry about their supply.
That's easy to answer. We enjoy meddling in other country's affairs. Look at our history, and you will see how many fights we voluntarily got into, and most of them we had no business to be in in the first place.
The idea of less American military involvement in the Middle East is one of the very few areas I agree with Trump. I suspect Iran sees a benefit to the US and Saud banding together in retaliation, that would not be popular in a lot of places. We are best to stay on the sidelines.
We aren't on the sidelines though. We just are not shooting at them. Our sanctions are biting them...hard. The Iranians are desperate and their hope appears to be goading us into a conflict that they can use to drive a deeper wedge between us and the others who had signed onto the JCPOA. We just need to sit back and continue to let them flail about.
The flight paths of the drones snd missiles used in these attacks are still unclear to me but the various accounts mention both drone attacks and missile attacks and, of course we know drones can carry missiles.
The following links say some of the Houthi drones have a range of up to 930 miles while the missiles themselves have a range of 430 miles. I assume both distances can be added together for the total range but am not sure. (FYI the distance from Bloomington, IN to Albuquerque is 1,266 miles.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-refineries-drone-attack.html
https://time.com/5680318/iranian-missiles-drones-saudi-oil/
We need Trump to falsely deny this now so I feel better.
How did attack breach Saudi defences and what will happen next?
Saudi Arabia’s state-of-the-art missile defence systems could do nothing to stop the swarm of drones and cruise missiles that struck some of its most important oil infrastructure at the weekend. They were designed to deal with different threats – and they were looking in the wrong direction.
The audacious strike against the Abqaiq petroleum processing facilities and Khurais oil field on Saturday morning – which the Saudis say was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” – has exposed the limits of the defences of the world’s largest military spender per capita.
The kingdom’s ability to ward off any future attacks is also constrained, analysts said, and depends heavily on Donald Trump’s willingness to make a deal with Iran.
Like other conventional armies across the region, Saudi Arabia’s armed forces are scrambling to protect against the rise of cheap, low-tech threats such as drones. The kingdom has spent billions in recent years on US-made Patriot surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down high-flying targets such as enemy jets or ballistic missiles. Satellite imagery suggests at least one was installed at Abqaiq in the recent past.
But drones and cruise missiles fly too low to be detected by the Patriot’s ground-based radar. “They aren’t threats these systems are designed to cover,” said Omar Lamrani, from the strategic analysis firm Stratfor.
Even if they could see the threats, experts said, Saudi Arabia’s missile-defence systems – with a field of vision of about 120 degrees – would likely have been pointed across the Gulf towards Iran and south towards Yemen, but at least some of the missiles and drones are believed to have struck from the west.
The missile debris the Saudis displayed at a press conference on Wednesday evening appeared to be that of an Iranian Quds-1 missile, with a range of less than 1000km, and possibly as little as 500km, said Michael Elleman, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Thus, it seems more probable that they were launched from either Iraq or Iran territory, but certainly not Yemen,” he said.
At least four shorter-range defence systems, designed to take out smaller targets, were also present around Abqaiq, according to satellite images. But they were either positioned at the wrong end of the facility or would have seen the tiny drones and missiles too late to shoot them down, said Michael Duitsman, a research associate at the Monterey-based Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.
“This attack was something new, it was not something the Saudis were expecting to happen,” said Lamrani.
The US shares intelligence with Saudi Arabia, but that also has its own limitations, according to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Joseph Dunford. “We don’t have an unblinking eye over the entire Middle East at all times,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
The Saudi reaction was also hampered by the organisation of its own forces, said Becca Wasser, a policy analyst at the Rand Corporation. Most US defence sales have gone to the Saudi military, but the country’s oil infrastructure falls under the responsibility of the interior ministry, which has traditionally focused on domestic threats. Meanwhile, separate air defences are operated by the National Guard.
Other crucial Saudi infrastructure such as the plants which cleanse Saudi drinking water, and the long pipelines that carry them to major cities, also now look vulnerable. “All these installations are very large and above ground,” said Eckart Woertz, a senior research fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.
“This attack was about Iran demonstrating that it has the means and will to execute exquisitely precise attacks on the most vital oil infrastructure in the world by far,” said Robert McNally, a former national security adviser to George W Bush, and now president of the Rapidan Energy Group. “And they can come back next Tuesday or a week from Friday – they can do this again.”
In its response, Riyadh will seek to avoid anything that might trigger a wider conflict, analysts said – especially if it cannot rely on American support. “Saudi Arabia’s air force has some capabilities but is very much reliant on the US for ammunition, refuelling and reconnaissance,” said Woertz.
“In terms of boots on the ground, their capabilities are more limited. They don’t have many soldiers within Yemen, they rely on mercenaries.”
Trump has made it clear in recent days that he is averse to following Saudi Arabia into a full-blown confrontation. “The president has made it clear he is not looking to go to war,” Dunford said in London on Tuesday. “What we saw was an unacceptable act of aggression [and] here are a number of ways to deal with that.”
Complicating the situation for Riyadh is that it has no way to de-escalate the standoff itself. Iran’s demand is that crippling sanctions on its exports be lifted – something only the United States can grant.
“But the escalation path is also very dangerous for Saudi Arabia because it exposes their energy infrastructure to retaliatory strikes by Iran,” said Lamrani.
The attack has put a diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Iran out of reach in the short term. More likely, said analysts, was a limited military response, delicately calibrated to deter Iran from raising the bar again without sparking an all-out conflict.
“A proportional, limited response would look like the Saudi armed forces, or the US armed forces, or both, firing a volley of cruise missiles … against the facilities or the territory where these attacks originated,” said McNally.
“It would be a symbolic strike that is directly proportional,” said Lamrani. “You struck our most important oil facility, and so we’re striking yours, and then we’re backing down.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...each-saudi-defences-and-what-will-happen-next
Saudi Arabia’s state-of-the-art missile defence systems could do nothing to stop the swarm of drones and cruise missiles that struck some of its most important oil infrastructure at the weekend. They were designed to deal with different threats – and they were looking in the wrong direction.
The audacious strike against the Abqaiq petroleum processing facilities and Khurais oil field on Saturday morning – which the Saudis say was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” – has exposed the limits of the defences of the world’s largest military spender per capita.
The kingdom’s ability to ward off any future attacks is also constrained, analysts said, and depends heavily on Donald Trump’s willingness to make a deal with Iran.
Like other conventional armies across the region, Saudi Arabia’s armed forces are scrambling to protect against the rise of cheap, low-tech threats such as drones. The kingdom has spent billions in recent years on US-made Patriot surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down high-flying targets such as enemy jets or ballistic missiles. Satellite imagery suggests at least one was installed at Abqaiq in the recent past.
But drones and cruise missiles fly too low to be detected by the Patriot’s ground-based radar. “They aren’t threats these systems are designed to cover,” said Omar Lamrani, from the strategic analysis firm Stratfor.
Even if they could see the threats, experts said, Saudi Arabia’s missile-defence systems – with a field of vision of about 120 degrees – would likely have been pointed across the Gulf towards Iran and south towards Yemen, but at least some of the missiles and drones are believed to have struck from the west.
The missile debris the Saudis displayed at a press conference on Wednesday evening appeared to be that of an Iranian Quds-1 missile, with a range of less than 1000km, and possibly as little as 500km, said Michael Elleman, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Thus, it seems more probable that they were launched from either Iraq or Iran territory, but certainly not Yemen,” he said.
At least four shorter-range defence systems, designed to take out smaller targets, were also present around Abqaiq, according to satellite images. But they were either positioned at the wrong end of the facility or would have seen the tiny drones and missiles too late to shoot them down, said Michael Duitsman, a research associate at the Monterey-based Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.
“This attack was something new, it was not something the Saudis were expecting to happen,” said Lamrani.
The US shares intelligence with Saudi Arabia, but that also has its own limitations, according to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Joseph Dunford. “We don’t have an unblinking eye over the entire Middle East at all times,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
The Saudi reaction was also hampered by the organisation of its own forces, said Becca Wasser, a policy analyst at the Rand Corporation. Most US defence sales have gone to the Saudi military, but the country’s oil infrastructure falls under the responsibility of the interior ministry, which has traditionally focused on domestic threats. Meanwhile, separate air defences are operated by the National Guard.
Other crucial Saudi infrastructure such as the plants which cleanse Saudi drinking water, and the long pipelines that carry them to major cities, also now look vulnerable. “All these installations are very large and above ground,” said Eckart Woertz, a senior research fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.
“This attack was about Iran demonstrating that it has the means and will to execute exquisitely precise attacks on the most vital oil infrastructure in the world by far,” said Robert McNally, a former national security adviser to George W Bush, and now president of the Rapidan Energy Group. “And they can come back next Tuesday or a week from Friday – they can do this again.”
In its response, Riyadh will seek to avoid anything that might trigger a wider conflict, analysts said – especially if it cannot rely on American support. “Saudi Arabia’s air force has some capabilities but is very much reliant on the US for ammunition, refuelling and reconnaissance,” said Woertz.
“In terms of boots on the ground, their capabilities are more limited. They don’t have many soldiers within Yemen, they rely on mercenaries.”
Trump has made it clear in recent days that he is averse to following Saudi Arabia into a full-blown confrontation. “The president has made it clear he is not looking to go to war,” Dunford said in London on Tuesday. “What we saw was an unacceptable act of aggression [and] here are a number of ways to deal with that.”
Complicating the situation for Riyadh is that it has no way to de-escalate the standoff itself. Iran’s demand is that crippling sanctions on its exports be lifted – something only the United States can grant.
“But the escalation path is also very dangerous for Saudi Arabia because it exposes their energy infrastructure to retaliatory strikes by Iran,” said Lamrani.
The attack has put a diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Iran out of reach in the short term. More likely, said analysts, was a limited military response, delicately calibrated to deter Iran from raising the bar again without sparking an all-out conflict.
“A proportional, limited response would look like the Saudi armed forces, or the US armed forces, or both, firing a volley of cruise missiles … against the facilities or the territory where these attacks originated,” said McNally.
“It would be a symbolic strike that is directly proportional,” said Lamrani. “You struck our most important oil facility, and so we’re striking yours, and then we’re backing down.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...each-saudi-defences-and-what-will-happen-next
How did attack breach Saudi defences and what will happen next?
Saudi Arabia’s state-of-the-art missile defence systems could do nothing to stop the swarm of drones and cruise missiles that struck some of its most important oil infrastructure at the weekend. They were designed to deal with different threats – and they were looking in the wrong direction.
The audacious strike against the Abqaiq petroleum processing facilities and Khurais oil field on Saturday morning – which the Saudis say was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” – has exposed the limits of the defences of the world’s largest military spender per capita.
The kingdom’s ability to ward off any future attacks is also constrained, analysts said, and depends heavily on Donald Trump’s willingness to make a deal with Iran.
Like other conventional armies across the region, Saudi Arabia’s armed forces are scrambling to protect against the rise of cheap, low-tech threats such as drones. The kingdom has spent billions in recent years on US-made Patriot surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down high-flying targets such as enemy jets or ballistic missiles. Satellite imagery suggests at least one was installed at Abqaiq in the recent past.
But drones and cruise missiles fly too low to be detected by the Patriot’s ground-based radar. “They aren’t threats these systems are designed to cover,” said Omar Lamrani, from the strategic analysis firm Stratfor.
Even if they could see the threats, experts said, Saudi Arabia’s missile-defence systems – with a field of vision of about 120 degrees – would likely have been pointed across the Gulf towards Iran and south towards Yemen, but at least some of the missiles and drones are believed to have struck from the west.
The missile debris the Saudis displayed at a press conference on Wednesday evening appeared to be that of an Iranian Quds-1 missile, with a range of less than 1000km, and possibly as little as 500km, said Michael Elleman, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Thus, it seems more probable that they were launched from either Iraq or Iran territory, but certainly not Yemen,” he said.
At least four shorter-range defence systems, designed to take out smaller targets, were also present around Abqaiq, according to satellite images. But they were either positioned at the wrong end of the facility or would have seen the tiny drones and missiles too late to shoot them down, said Michael Duitsman, a research associate at the Monterey-based Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.
“This attack was something new, it was not something the Saudis were expecting to happen,” said Lamrani.
The US shares intelligence with Saudi Arabia, but that also has its own limitations, according to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Joseph Dunford. “We don’t have an unblinking eye over the entire Middle East at all times,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
The Saudi reaction was also hampered by the organisation of its own forces, said Becca Wasser, a policy analyst at the Rand Corporation. Most US defence sales have gone to the Saudi military, but the country’s oil infrastructure falls under the responsibility of the interior ministry, which has traditionally focused on domestic threats. Meanwhile, separate air defences are operated by the National Guard.
Other crucial Saudi infrastructure such as the plants which cleanse Saudi drinking water, and the long pipelines that carry them to major cities, also now look vulnerable. “All these installations are very large and above ground,” said Eckart Woertz, a senior research fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.
“This attack was about Iran demonstrating that it has the means and will to execute exquisitely precise attacks on the most vital oil infrastructure in the world by far,” said Robert McNally, a former national security adviser to George W Bush, and now president of the Rapidan Energy Group. “And they can come back next Tuesday or a week from Friday – they can do this again.”
In its response, Riyadh will seek to avoid anything that might trigger a wider conflict, analysts said – especially if it cannot rely on American support. “Saudi Arabia’s air force has some capabilities but is very much reliant on the US for ammunition, refuelling and reconnaissance,” said Woertz.
“In terms of boots on the ground, their capabilities are more limited. They don’t have many soldiers within Yemen, they rely on mercenaries.”
Trump has made it clear in recent days that he is averse to following Saudi Arabia into a full-blown confrontation. “The president has made it clear he is not looking to go to war,” Dunford said in London on Tuesday. “What we saw was an unacceptable act of aggression [and] here are a number of ways to deal with that.”
Complicating the situation for Riyadh is that it has no way to de-escalate the standoff itself. Iran’s demand is that crippling sanctions on its exports be lifted – something only the United States can grant.
“But the escalation path is also very dangerous for Saudi Arabia because it exposes their energy infrastructure to retaliatory strikes by Iran,” said Lamrani.
The attack has put a diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Iran out of reach in the short term. More likely, said analysts, was a limited military response, delicately calibrated to deter Iran from raising the bar again without sparking an all-out conflict.
“A proportional, limited response would look like the Saudi armed forces, or the US armed forces, or both, firing a volley of cruise missiles … against the facilities or the territory where these attacks originated,” said McNally.
“It would be a symbolic strike that is directly proportional,” said Lamrani. “You struck our most important oil facility, and so we’re striking yours, and then we’re backing down.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...each-saudi-defences-and-what-will-happen-next
A couple months ago the military discussion groups were filled with a story that NATO probably would lose a war against Russia. I do not know how credible the consultants who wargamed to that conclusion were, but the attack described above is how they got there.
The idea is that our aircraft are almost unbeatable in the air. So the Russians have spent heavily on cheap drones and missiles. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them. F35s have to land sometime, when they do Russia overwhelms our defenses with drones and missiles. Our fighters are defenseless against that. Everything we do is predicated on air superiority, lose that and we have problems.
Looks like Trump is sending more troops to "beef" up security in the region.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al...loyment-saudi-arabia-uae-190920222531776.html
(Trump said earlier on Friday that he believed his military restraint so far showed "strength," as he instead imposed another round of economic sanctions on Tehran.
"Because the easiest thing I could do, 'Okay, go ahead. Knock out 15 different major things in Iran.' ... But I’m not looking to do that if I can," Trump told reporters at the White House.)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al...loyment-saudi-arabia-uae-190920222531776.html
(Trump said earlier on Friday that he believed his military restraint so far showed "strength," as he instead imposed another round of economic sanctions on Tehran.
"Because the easiest thing I could do, 'Okay, go ahead. Knock out 15 different major things in Iran.' ... But I’m not looking to do that if I can," Trump told reporters at the White House.)
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I consider this and his sanctions towards Iran his diplomatic response to the attacks. Which seems measured proportionatly and appropriately. If anything else happens in the region I don't think Iran will get off lightly.
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My wife used to have Mercedez and switched to Lexus. Peer pressure, I think. I have a Honda.
The funny thing is I never had trouble with my Honda, Suzuki before that. She has had a lot of troubles with those "fancy" cars; just came back from the Lexus repair shop.
My wife used to have Mercedez and switched to Lexus. Peer pressure, I think. I have a Honda.
The funny thing is I never had trouble with my Honda, Suzuki before that. She has had a lot of troubles with those "fancy" cars; just came back from the Lexus repair shop.
BMWs are the worst when it comes to repair costs for those luxury brands..
Yes, indeed. My BMW ate good money on repairs. That was when I swore to hell with "luxury" cars; just reliable "garden variety utility" vehicles such as Honda.
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If this was a failure of imagination when it came to understanding the threat it happened because of people simply not paying attention to others having shown how it might happen:
https://www.wearethemighty.com/arti...ictional-iran-against-the-us-military-and-won
Former CIA operative Bob Baer pointed out the target (as a Saudi oil choke point) in his one of his books)...
No one should have been surprised by either the target struck or the type of attack.
The military is the strong arm of the economic and diplomatic sector. "Business" is almost always the reason we are there ...That's easy to answer. We enjoy meddling in other country's affairs. Look at our history, and you will see how many fights we voluntarily got into, and most of them we had no business to be in in the first place.
WSJ: Stakes Grow Higher in Trump's Iran Gamble
"So far, the gamble is working, much to the amazement of the president's critics. But the stakes in this international poker game are growing steadily higher, and the costs of losing the bet are rising along the way."
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