The Pentagon has yet to report on the cost of President Trump’s Iran adventure, but a brief summation of aircraft losses and damage was made available a week ago by CRS.  Its report covers losses and damage to friendly fire and accident as well as enemy action.  It has to be said that the list is not encouraging for the American military, and one may suppose that the longer-term will see the development of alternatives where possible to crewed operations.  Replacement of the costly, vulnerable and outdated Reaper is already under discussion.  More generally, Bloomberg has reported that the US Department of Defense has asked to test a range of Ukrainian defense products, including drones and electronic warfare systems with a view to the transfer of technology and access to intellectual property rights.

The CRS list is:

Four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter aircraft

On March 2, 2026, CENTCOM reported that three F-15Es were shot down and destroyed by friendly fire over Kuwait; all six aircrew ejected safely and were recovered.
On April 5, 2026, CENTCOM reported that one F-15E was shot down and destroyed during combat operations over Iran; both aircrew were safely recovered during separate search-and-rescue operations.
One F-35A Lightning II fighter aircraft

A March 19, 2026, news article reported that Iranian ground fire damaged one F-35A during combat operations over Iran.
One A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack aircraft

In an April 6, 2026, news conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Dan Caine stated that on April 3, enemy fire struck one A-10 that subsequently crashed and was destroyed during search-and-rescue operations; the pilot ejected and was recovered safely.
Seven KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft

On March 12, 2026, CENTCOM reported that two KC-135s were involved in an incident over friendly airspace; one aircraft crashed in Iraq, resulting in the deaths of all six aircrew. The second KC-135 made an emergency landing at an undisclosed location in the region where U.S. forces are hosted.
A March 14, 2026, news article reported that five KC-135s were damaged while on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, during an Iranian missile and drone attack.
One E-3 Sentry airborne early warning-and-control system aircraft (AWACS)

A March 28, 2026, news article reported that one E-3 was struck and damaged while on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, during an Iranian missile and drone attack. A May 7, 2026, news article reported that the E-3 had been parked on an unprotected taxiway.
Two MC-130J Commando II special operations aircraft

An April 5, 2026, news article reported that two MC-130Js supporting search-and-rescue operations for a downed F-15E were intentionally destroyed on the ground in Iran after becoming unable to depart; all aircrew were safely evacuated.
One HH-60W Jolly Green II combat search-and-rescue helicopter

On April 6, 2026, General Caine said in a press conference that on April 5, one HH-60W sustained damage from small-arms fire supporting search-and-rescue operations for a downed F-15E in Iran.
Twenty-four MQ-9 Reaper medium-altitude long-endurance uncrewed aircraft

An April 9, 2026, news article reported that the U.S. military had lost 24 MQ-9 Reapers since the start of U.S. military operations against Iran.
One MQ-4C Triton high-altitude long-endurance uncrewed aircraft

An April 14, 2026, news article citing a U.S. Navy document reported that one MQ-4C crashed in a mishap.

The loss of Starlink was bad for Russian operations.  The loss of Telegram is worse.  But the sheer pace of Ukrainian innovation is the killer.  Prof Gerdes explains how, four years to the day when the Ukrainians first switched from defence to attack, the balance is shifting that way again.  Ukrainian forces are gaining more land than the Russians are taking.  The latter’s spring-summer offensive can’t get started.  The Russian deep rear is being hit.  At the line of contact losses are already running at or beyond what the Russian army can recruit.  The Russian strategies of attrition and war from the skies against the civilian population is being blunted.  Where does it all go from here?

0:00 ISW confirms Russia’s offensive is faltering
0:20 Ukrainian drone strikes hit key industry
0:54 Achilles 429th unit shows new capabilities
1:19 Ukraine’s expanding mid-range drone power
2:07 Targeting Russian air defense and logistics
2:45 Shift toward FPV and mid-strike drones
3:33 The economics of drone warfare
4:40 Mapping Ukraine’s strike patterns
5:17 Hits on Russian nitrogen facilities
5:40 Russia’s drone activity and defenses
6:13 Mounting Russian losses in detail
7:05 Real-time casualty and equipment trends
8:10 Measuring the offensive’s intensity
8:55 ISW: Ukraine disrupting offensive prep
9:30 Defense holds on the Lyman axis10:11 Phoenix Regiment and Achilles impact
11:00 Russian milbloggers admit heavy losses
11:39 SBU arrests suspected infiltrator
12:03 Electronic warfare training expands
12:53 Kyiv battle anniversary context

For some weeks now there have been growing signs of Russian failure at the front, particularly in the north and south.  In Donetsk, meanwhile, the Russian advance is slower than ever.  Pokrovsk is still not fully under Russian control, and may now never be so.  In this video Jason Jay Smart alights on the apparent flight of Vladislav Surkov as a sign of trouble in Putin’s inner circle, and pulls together the political and military strands to make the case for something broken at the top of Russian power that can’t be put back together again.

00:00 – Intro: Putin’s House of Cards
01:40 – Kremlin Exile: The Fall of Vladislav Surkov
03:04 – Putinism Unmasked: The Architect of Russian Propaganda
04:17 – Crimea Assault: Ukraine Destroys Russian Radar
05:04 – Frontline Failure: Russian Soldiers in Retreat
05:47 – Command Paralysis: The Kremlin’s Communication Crisis
06:52 – Internal Sabotage: Putin’s Health and Elite Purges
08:53 – Bot Network Collapse: Russia’s Failed Influence War
09:51 – Russian Shadow Fleet: Espionage and Oil Smuggling
12:38 – The Breaking Point: Putin’s Final Stand

Paul Warburg explains the technical impact and potential military consequences of the ending of unauthorised access to the Starling system:

Sometime tomorrow, or not long after, four things will likely happen in the politics of Epstein World.

1. Keir Starmer will request an audience with the King before travelling back to the House of Commons to announce his departure from No 10.

2. Angela Raynor and Wes Streeting will compete to lead tributes to his leadership and speak of his personal warmth and support during their respective time as an MP.  Both might just be lying.

3. The Labour candidate for the forthcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, someone called Angeliki Stogia, will be pressured into resigning her candidacy, and an unseemly rush to put Andy Burnham on the ticket will be initiated.  However Burnham, having just returned to his Manchester mayorality after an unsuccessful attempt to get the nomination, will be forced to decline on the basis that he can’t dis-own the lucky, lucky people of Manchester a second time.  That said, there is the interesting question as to whether at least half the Labour parliamentary party would want to campaign for Burnham anyway.

4. Peter Mandelson, just thrown out of the party by Starmer and about to have his knighthood revoked, will issue a brief statement of sorrow for the pain and difficulty he has caused to the former PM.  He, too, might just be lying.

Something is definitely happening.  The “loveless landslide” of the May 2024 UK General Election, which handed Keir Starmer a 174-seat majority in the Commons, has been followed by a year and a half of utterly shambolic government.  Labour Party polling is stuck a couple of points above the Conservatives.  Never in any way “a man of the people”, Starmer of the tortured expression and halting, charmless delivery is now held in contempt even by a third of his own MPs.  Everyone knows that complete disaster awaits when he has to go to the country (by May 2029 latest).  And that’s if he survives that long in office himself.  I hope he does.  He’s the perfect failing Establishment clone.

Out among the Englishry, though, it’s a story of gathering rebellion.  There is anger about many things.  But the dominant consideration by far is race and immigration.  The Southport riots were not followed by a period of peace and recalibration.  They were followed by several instances of sexual assault involving illegal migrants, which led to the long-running protests by local people, often women, who did not want young men from the Third World dumped in hotels in their towns and villages.  The protests forced the Home Office to move away from the hotel strategy – but only as far as using army camps instead.  So, of course, protest is switching there.

Consonant with the hotels protests was the sudden and stirring appearance of the national flag – sometimes the Cross of St George, sometimes the Union Jack - along public highways all over the country.  Where these flags came from and how they got to fly in the first place was and is a mystery.  At a time when councils were flying the rainbow flag, the Palestinian flag, the EU flag, patriots decided to issue a riposte.  It certainly felt good to this Englishman.

Now, on top of all that, we have Amelia taking over social media.  Apparently, the pace of it is such that 12,000 posts about her were made on one day.  I don’t even “do” social media, so I had to rely on our sturdy friend Manc to point me in Amelia’s direction.  I won’t re-tell the sorry tale of the Pathways game concocted by Prevent, and its portrayal of this goth girl with purple hair and a choker as a racist and xenophobe.  But it was clearly a great idea to subvert that and make a national heroine out of her.  Now she is everywhere teaching the young about English history and fighting back against the pathologies of the political Establishment.  She has Swedish, German and French variants doing the same service for their young people.  It is a great use of AI.

Here, then, is by far the best Amelia video I have seen, a gentle and beautiful, purpose-written song exquisitely handling the subject of mass repatriation.  It is posted by Choking Fox.  The AI is high quality.  The video even finishes with a solution to the sorry fact that childbirths to the non-native cohorts are now virtually equal to those of the English:

READ MORE...

Friday 9th January

Mahyad Tousi, an Iranian–American film-maker, scriptwriter, producer and director lives in London and runs TousiTV, claimed to be the most watched political channel in the UK.  As one would expect he is following the people’s revolution in his homeland with amazement and joy.  What he showing us now makes it very unlikely that the Khamenei regime can survive.  For a flavour of the electric excitement on the streets here is his latest show:

24 hours on, Saturday evening, 10th January

... and this is the TousiTV broadcast:-

... and then the IRGC began its slaughter of somewhere between 6,000 and 30,000 protesters on the streets of Iran’s cities.  The process came to a halt.  But now ...

February 28th - Khamenie dead, IRGC leaders dead, US strikes on-going.

The people are celebrating already.  There are calls for Pahlavi to return.  A gun battle is being waged to free political prisoners in Tehran (which could be important, because there is no revolutionary leadership among the people at large).  We wait for news.

From the exiled dissident news outlet Moscow Times:

Residents of the town of Valdai in Russia’s Novgorod region said they neither heard nor saw signs of a large-scale drone attack overnight on Monday despite official claims that nearly 100 Ukrainian drones targeted President Vladimir Putin’s residence there.

Fourteen residents told the independent outlet Mozhem Obyasnit that they received no text alerts warning of a drone threat and did not hear any buzzing sounds or explosions characteristic of a drone attack.

“There was no noise that night, no explosions, nothing,” one resident was quoted as saying. “If something like that had happened, the whole town would have been talking about it.”

Putin’s Valdai residence, known as Dolgiye Borody, lies northeast of the town and is separated from it by Lake Valdai.

Residents told Mozhem Obyasnit that they usually know when the Russian president visits his residence due to the heavy helicopter traffic accompanying his arrival.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Ukraine’s armed forces had attempted a “massive” drone attack on Putin’s residence using 91 drones, all of which were allegedly destroyed by air defense systems.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s official report said only 18 drones were shot down over the Novgorod region during the night.

Lavrov said the alleged attack would prompt Russia to revise its negotiating position on Ukraine, though he added that Moscow did not plan to withdraw from talks with the United States.

He also warned that the incident would not go unanswered, saying Russian forces had already selected targets and timing for retaliatory strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Lavrov’s allegations “fake” and “extremely dangerous,” arguing that Moscow was trying to sabotage diplomatic efforts to end the war and justify continued strikes on Ukraine.

Shortly after Lavrov issued his statement, the White House said U.S. President Donald Trump concluded a “positive” phone call with Putin about Ukraine.

Trump then criticized the alleged Ukrainian drone attack, saying it was “not the right time” given the ongoing talks to end the war.

This morning Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Russia’s negotiating position towards Ukraine will become tougher.  So the lumbering, lying Kremlin machine clunks into gear to prevent Donald Trump from moving forward on the basis of Zelensky’s 20-point peace plan.  It had been 95% agreed, Trump had said.  Now nothing will be agreed.

So, a question.  Does Trump actually believe that Ukrainian armed forces chose this most critical moment, of all moments, to launch a 91-drone attack on one of Putin’s palatial homes, but failed to get a single one past the creaking Russian anti-aircraft defences?  Or does he, in fact, understand perfectly well that Putin told him the most obvious, bare-faced lie, but his policy-aim of making American corporations great again requires him to smile on the Russian dictator all the same and in all things?