by me, Kerry Burgess, 03/29/2029 4:08 PM
Just like my proposed Cowards-class of US Navy capital-warships (for Trump and Clinton, et al.) those Iran flying-drones should be named T.A.C.O.
USA military technology should be so formidable that cowards such as any Donald J. Trump's or Bill Clinton's are not needed - or wanted.
https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/10/humiliation-and-transformation-the-islamic-republic-after-the-12-day-war/
A nation must think before it acts.
FPRI
Reports
Humiliation and Transformation: The Islamic Republic After the 12-Day War
Saeid Golkar October 30, 2025
Saeid Golkar is the UC Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, specializing in the politics of authoritarian regimes, with a particular focus on Iran and the broader Middle East and North Africa.
The 12-Day War between Iran and Israel in June 2025 exposed critical weaknesses in the Islamic Republic’s military, strategic, and ideological frameworks, marking a turning point for the regime. The Iranian government’s failure to achieve its political and military objectives undermined the regime’s credibility, revealed the limits of its deterrence, and intensified internal debates about its future. This paper examines the war’s causes, conduct, and consequences, analyzing its impact on Iran’s governance, ideology, and regional standing. I argue that the conflict accelerated the regime’s loss of strategic coherence, prompting increased repression, a nationalist pivot, and institutional restructuring, while leaving Iran vulnerable to future crises.
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The Stand - complete edition, by Stephen King, author
(from internet transcript)
excerpt, Chapter 65
He was losing himself. Once he had been able to look back over the sixties, seventies, and eighties like a man looking down a double flight of stairs leading into a darkened room. Now he could only clearly remember the events since the superflu. Beyond that there was nothing but a haze that would sometimes lift a tiny bit, just enough to afford a glimpse of some enigmatic object or memory (Boo Dinkway, for instance… if there ever had been such a person) before closing down again.
The earliest memory he could now be sure of was of walking south on US 51, heading toward Mountain City and the home of Kit Bradenton.
Of being born. Born again.
He was no longer strictly a man, if he had ever been one. He was like an onion, slowly peeling away one layer at a time, only it was the trappings of humanity that seemed to be peeling away: organized reflection, memory, possibly even free will… if there ever had been such a thing.
He began to eat the rabbit.
Once, he was quite sure, he would have done a quick fade when things began to get flaky. Not this time. This was his place, his time, and he would take his stand here. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t yet been able to uncover the third spy, or that Harold had gotten out of control at the end and had had the colossal effrontery to try to kill the bride who had been promised, the mother of his son.
Somewhere that strange Trashcan Man was in the desert, sniffing out the weapons which would eradicate the troublesome, worrisome Free Zone forever. His Eye could not follow the Trashcan Man, and in some ways Flagg thought that Trash was stranger than he was himself, a kind of human bloodhound who sniffed cordite and napalm and gelignite with deadly radar accuracy.
In a month or less, the National Guard jets would be flying, with a full complement of Shrike missiles tucked under their wings. And when he was sure that the bride had conceived, they would fly east.
He looked dreamily up at the basketball moon and smiled.
There was one other possibility. He thought the Eye would show him, in time. He might go there, possibly as a crow, possibly as a wolf, possibly as an insect—a praying mantis, perhaps, something small enough to squirm through a carefully concealed vent cap in the middle of a spiky patch of desert grass. He would hop or crawl through dark conduits and finally slip through an air conditioner grille or a stilled exhaust fan.
The place was underground. Just over the border and into California.
There were beakers there, rows and rows of beakers, each with its own neat Dymo tape identifying it: a super cholera, a super anthrax, a new and improved version of the bubonic plague, all of them based on the shifting-antigen ability that had made the superflu so almost universally deadly. There were hundreds of them in this place; assorted flavors, as they used to say in the Life Savers commercials.
How about a little in your water, Free Zone?
How about a nice airburst?
Some lovely Legionnaires’ disease for Christmas, or would you rather have the new and improved Swine flu?
Randy Flagg, the dark Santa, in his National Guard sleigh, with a little virus to drop down every chimney?
He would wait, and he would know the right time when it came round at last.
Something would tell him.
The Simpsons
"The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"
Season 9 Episode 1
Aired September 21, 1997
Quotes
Pleasant Female Voice: Thank you for calling the Parking Violations Bureau. To plead 'Not Guilty' press one now.
(Homer presses one)
Pleasant Female Voice: Thank You. Your call has been
Gruff Male Voice: Rejected.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-responds-reports-us-weighing-ground-operations-we-never-accept-humiliation
FOX News
By Eric Mack Fox News
Published March 29, 2026 8:25am EDT
Iran responds to reports US weighing ground operations: 'We will never accept humiliation'
Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Family" - tv series Season 4 Episode 2 - 10/01/1990
(from internet transcript)
Captain's Log: Stardate 44012.3 The Enterprise remains docked at McKinley Station, undergoing a major overhaul and refit following the Borg incident. I am confident that the ship and her crew will soon be ready to return to service.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cje4x38q8xqt?page=2
From 8/7/1986 ( "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy ) To 3/27/2026 ( ) is 14477 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/22/2005 ( ) is 14477 days
From 5/8/1994 ( premiere USA TV miniseries "Stephen King's The Stand" ) To 3/27/2026 ( ) is 11646 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 9/21/1997 ( premiere USA TV series episode "The Simpsons"::"The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" ) is 11646 days
From 11/7/2025 ( debut "Plur1bus" streaming-video serial AppleTV ) To 3/27/2026 ( ) is 140 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 3/22/1966 ( from The New York Times newspaper: Crew of 3 named for Apollo orbit; Grissom, White and Chaffee to fly in first Mooncraft ) is 140 days
From 11/7/2025 ( debut "Plur1bus" streaming-video serial AppleTV ) To 3/27/2026 ( ) is 140 days
140 = 70 + 70
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/11/1966 ( Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of USA federal government 1963-1969: Executive Order 11265 - Amending Executive Order No. 10448, Establishing the National Defense Service Medal ) is 70 days
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/key-e-3-awacs-aircraft-damaged-iranian-attack-saudi-air-base/
Air & Space Forces Magazine
Key E-3 AWACS Damaged in Iranian Attack on Saudi Air Base
March 28, 2026 By Chris Gordon and Stephen Losey
A pivotal U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
The attack injured more than 10 service members, two seriously. Among the other planes damaged are aerial refueling tankers.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/images-purportedly-show-e-3-060505478.html
Yahoo! News
The War Zone
Tyler Rogoway Sat, March 28, 2026 at 11:05 PM PDT 7 min read
Images Show E-3 Sentry Totally Destroyed From Iranian Strike
Info is slowly dripping out as to the extent of the Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia that occurred on March 27th. Multiple U.S. military aircraft are reported to have been damaged. This is beyond the toll on U.S. service members, which sits at 10 injured, some of them critically. While high-resolution commercial satellite imagery of the Middle East from U.S. companies remains delayed for weeks, foreign satellite images purport to show major damage on the base’s main apron. Now, photos from ground level appear to show one of the USAF’s prized E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft totally destroyed.
Red Storm Rising (1986) - by Tom Clancy,author
(from internet transcript)
excerpt, Chapter 17
Lockheed called her the Ghostrider. The pilots called her the Frisbee, the F-19A, the secretly developed Stealth attack fighter. She had no corners, no box shapes to allow radar signals to bounce cleanly off her. Her high-bypass turbofans were designed to emit a blurry infrared signature at most. From above, her wings appeared to mimic the shape of a cathedral bell. From in front, they curved oddly toward the ground, earning her the affectionate nickname of Frisbee. Though she was a masterpiece of electronic technology inside, she usually didn't use her active systems. Radars and radios made electronic noise that an enemy might detect, and the whole idea of the Frisbee was that she didn't seem to exist at all.
Far over their heads on both sides of the border, hundreds of fighter aircraft played a deadly game of bluff, racing toward the border and then turning away, both sides trying to goad the other into committing to battle. Each side had airborne radar aircraft with which to control such a battle and so gain the advantage in a war which, though few yet knew it, had already begun.
And we're getting a quick one in, Ellington thought. We're finally doing something smart! He'd had a hundred missions over Vietnam in the first production F-111A fighters. The Duke was the Air Force's leading expert on covert low-level missions, and it was said that he could "bull's-eye a chuckhole in a Kansas tornado at midnight." That wasn't quite true. The Frisbee could never handle a tornado. The sad truth was that the F-19 handled like a pig-a consequence of her ungainly design. But Ellington didn't care. Being invisible was better than being agile, he judged, knowing that he was about to prove or disprove that proposition.
The Frisbee squadron was now penetrating the most concentrated SAM belt the world had ever known.
"Range to primary target is now sixty miles," Eisly advised. "All onboard systems continue nominal. No radars are locked onto us. Lookin' good, Duke."
"Roger." Ellington pushed the stick forward and dived as they passed over the crest of a small hill, then bottomed out at eighty feet over a wheatfield. The Duke was playing his game to the limit, drawing on years of experience in low-level attacks. Their primary target was a Soviet IL-76 Mainstay, an AWACS-type aircraft that was circling near Magdeburg, agreeably within ten miles of their secondary target, the E-8 highway bridges over the Elbe at Hohenroarthe. The mission was getting a lot hairier. The closer they got to the Mainstay the more radar signal hit their aircraft, its intensity growing at a square function. Sooner or later, enough signal would be reflected back to the Mainstay to be detectable, even by curved wings made of radar-transparent composites. All the Stealth technology did was to make radar detection harder, not impossible. Would they be seen by the Mainstay? If so, when, and how quickly would the Russians react?
Keep her on the deck, he told himself. Play the game by the rules you've practiced out. They had rehearsed this mission for nine days in "Dreamland," the top-secret exercise area in the sprawl of Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Even the E-3A Sentry could barely make them out at forty miles, and the Sentry was a far better radar platform than the Mainstay, wasn't it?
That's what you're here to find out, boy . . .
There were five Mainstays on duty, all a hundred klicks east of the inter-German border. A nice safe distance, what with over three hundred fighters between them and the border.
"Twenty miles, Duke."
"Right. Call it off, Don."
"Roge. Still no fire-control emanations on us, and no search stuff is lingering our way. Lots of radio chatter, but mostly west of us. Very little VOX coming from the target."
Ellington reached his left hand down to arm the four AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles hanging under his wings. The weapon-indicator light blinked a lethal, friendly green.
"Eighteen miles. Target appears to be circling normally, not taking evasive action."
Ten miles to the minute, Ellington computed in his mind, one minute forty seconds.
"Sixteen miles." Eisly read the numbers off a computer readout keyed to the NAVSTAR satellite navigation system.
The Mainstay would not have a chance. The Frisbee would not begin to climb until she was directly underneath the target. Fourteen miles. Twelve. Ten. Eight. Six miles to the converted air transport.
"The Mainstay just reversed her turn-yeah, she's jinking. A Foxfire just swept over us," Eisly said evenly. A MiG-25 interceptor, presumably acting on instructions from the IL-76, was now searching for them. With its high power and small arc, the Foxfire stood a good chance of acquiring them, Stealth technology or not. "The Mainstay might have us."
"Anything locked on us?"
"Not yet." Eisly's eyes were glued to the threat-receiver instruments. No missile-control radars had centered on the Frisbee yet. "Coming under the target."
"Right. Climbing now." Ellington eased back on his stick and punched up full afterburners. The Frisbee's engines could only give him Mach 1.3, but this was the place to use all the power he had. According to the weather people, these clouds topped out at twenty thousand feet, and the IL-76 would be about five thousand above that. Now the Frisbee was vulnerable. No longer lost in the ground clutter, her engines radiating their maximum signature, the Stealth aircraft was broadcasting her presence. Climb faster, baby . . .
"Tallyho!" Ellington said too loudly over the intercom as he burst through the clouds, and the night-vision systems instantly showed him the Mainstay, five miles away and diving for cover in front of him. Too late. The head-on closing speed was nearly a thousand miles per hour. The colonel centered his gunsight pipper on the target. A warbling tone came into his headset: the Sidewinders' seekers had locked onto the target. His right thumb toggled the launch-enable switch, and his forefinger squeezed the trigger twice. The Sidewinders left the aircraft half a second apart. Their brilliant exhaust flames dazzled him, but he did not take his eyes off the missiles as they raced for the target. It took eight seconds. He looked them all the way in. Both missiles angled for the Mainstay's starboard wing. Thirty feet away, laser proximity fuses detonated, filling the air with lethal fragments. It happened too fast. Both of the Mainstay's right-side engines exploded, the wing came off, and the Soviet aircraft began cartwheeling violently downward, lost seconds later in the clouds.
Jesus! Ellington thought as he rolled and dived back to the ground and safety. Nothing like the movies. The target was hit and gone between blinks. Well, okay, that was easy enough. Primary target gone. Now for the hard part . . .
Aboard an E-3A Sentry circling over Strasbourg, the radar technicians noted with satisfaction that all five Soviet radar craft had been killed within two minutes: it all worked, the F-19 really did surprise them.
The brigadier general in command of Operation Dreamland leaned forward in his command chair and toggled his microphone.
"Trumpeter, Trumpeter, Trumpeter," he said, then switched off. "Okay, boys," he breathed. "Make it count."
Amid the clouds of NATO tactical fighters hovering near the border, a hundred low-level attack fighters broke clear and dove for the ground. Half were F-111F Aardvarks, the other half "GR. I " Tornados, their wings heavy with fuel tanks and smart bombs. They followed the second wave of Frisbees, already sixty miles into East Germany, fanning out to their ground targets. Behind the strike aircraft, all-weather Eagle and Phantom interceptors, directed by the Sentries circling over the Rhein, began to launch their radar-guided missiles at Soviet fighters that had just lost their airborne controllers. Finally, a third team of NATO aircraft swooped in low, seeking out the ground radar sites that were coming on to replace the radar coverage of the dead Mainstays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_(literature)
Identification (literature)
From Wikipedia
Identification refers to the automatic, subconscious psychological process in which an individual becomes like or closely associates themselves with another person by adopting one or more of the others' perceived personality traits, physical attributes, or some other aspect of their identity. The concept of identification was founded by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in the 1920’s, and has since been expanded on and applied in psychology, social studies, media studies, and literary and film criticism. In literature, identification most often refers to the audience identifying with a fictional character, however it can also be employed as a narrative device whereby one character identifies with another character within the text itself.
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 5:03 PM Pacific-timezone USA Sunday 03/29/2026
