There's a history lesson hiding in plain sight here. In 1941, Claire Chennault watched Allied fighters get slaughtered over Burma because they fought the Zero in dogfights where Japanese pilots were unbeatable. The RAF sent Buffaloes, then Hurricanes, then Spitfires. Same result each time. The institutional assumption was that Japanese aviation was imitative and inferior. The Zero kept proving otherwise and the brass kept explaining each loss away individually. It had no armor, but was so maneuverable they couldn't touch it. What's more, the early Japanese pilot training (as documented in Saburo Sakai's autobiography Samurai) was so intense that fewer than one in three hundred cadets made the cut.
Chennault was an insubordinate, hard-headed man like his hero Billy Mitchell. He refused to let doctrine overwrite what the data was telling him. He studied the Zero obsessively, admitted the P-40 couldn't climb with it, couldn't turn with it, couldn't match its ceiling so he built his entire tactical system around those hard truths.
Dive-and-zoom attacks. Never slow down. Never fight on the enemy's terms. His pilots also benefited from a vast early warning network of spotters across Yunnan province, which gave them altitude and position before any engagement. The Japanese could never figure out how the Flying Tigers always knew they were coming.
This F-35 story has the same smell. "Flattened" defenses that apparently still had enough distributed, survivable capability to track and engage the most sophisticated stealth aircraft ever built? The official narrative keeps saying dominance; the signal traffic keeps saying contest.
Remember too that Iran doesn't need to "win." It already replaced the leadership killed in the early strikes. It will continue to suppress reform. They literally have the west by the balls because the Strait of Hormuz isn't just about oil, it's also the pipeline for rare earth metals, fertilizer, and a million other things vital for technology.
The most dangerous assumption in any air campaign is that the enemy's capability matches what your targeting runs told you it was. Iran, like Chennault's spotters, may retain exactly the kind of networked, mobile, low-signature capacity that the strike packages weren't designed to find. Each incident gets explained away but you can't explain a pattern. War has changed, and continues to change.
Remember too that North Korea was entirely destroyed in three years by LeMay's intensive firebombing campaign that burned 95% of all buildings, dams, railroads, power stations, and roadways into black ash. They never surrendered, and in fact hardened into the isolated prison state we see today.
There is no endgame. No strategy of any kind. Hegseth is an imbecile and Trump's frontal cortex has been shrunk small as a golf ball by dementia. AIPAC will spend billions to make sure their candidates on both sides of the aisle will elections, and there's always the backup plan of using nukes to end elections altogether.
I think Iran is getting a lot of assistance in terms of acquiring weaponry from the obvious suspects. We may now be in the most nightmarish proxy war we could ever imagine.
That’s the nightmare scenario: not Iran acting alone...but Iran plugged into a wider anti-U.S. support network...whether that means intelligence...targeting help... components...or...technical advice.
Recent reporting AND testimony point to Iran seeking or receiving help from Russia and China...with outside support ranging from intelligence-sharing claims...to continued missile and drone-related backing.
That’s what makes this feel less like a clean bilateral war...and more like a proxy-rich escalation trap. You’re seeing the shape of it clearly!
Also I believe people are about to experience a level of propaganda that most of us have never experienced or ever conceived of....discernment is a must. My instincts are just screaming that at me.
Iran is not done, degraded, disintegrated....not by a long way. They have a lot of weapons, tools, and assistance from Vlad and Kim. Probably others. North Korea has a vast wealth of weapons. Thanks for the analysis.
I've learned to treat what President Epstein Fury says as the exact opposite. I think I know the middle east better than this sad regime and I taught elementary 41 years, but did have a Marine brother who was in that area in the 70s- late 80s. He was there under ayatollah 1. He was sent there to possibly remove him. They decided to not. Power vacuum and more double down violence and retaliation. He explained it well. So listen and think the opposite.
Military Aid and Supplies: North Korea has historically been a key supplier of arms to Iran. In the context of the 2026 conflict, reports indicate North Korea is prepared to supply missiles and has a long-term interest in providing technical military support, including tunneling expertise.
Win, lose or draw I’m not at all sure how this ends. Go in without a plan, metrics, definition of victory or a way out….? What could go wrong? Maybe everything?
When my body freaked out over the initial bombing, I figured we were in for a very rough time. I think t got played in a huge way, I think he’s in over his head and the mishaps piling up do not allay any misgivings whatsoever. And now he’s talking about Cuba? How many ways can you say stretched too thin. The Ford has been at sea FAR longer than it should have been due to its maintenance schedule and it’s dealing with a fire, limping to a port for overdue maintenance.
The messaging you’ve outlined here along with the other structural cracks you've pointed out are painting quite a picture. I don’t think we’re at collapse yet but… how long?
Jack is doing something important in this newsletter, and it deserves to be named precisely.
He is not arguing that the United States is losing. He is arguing something harder to hear: that the people making decisions may not know the difference. That is the historical danger. Not defeat. Delusion.
Every major military miscalculation of the twentieth century followed the same structure. The official narrative simplified the battlefield. The simplified narrative produced overconfidence. The overconfidence produced escalation. The escalation produced the catastrophe that the narrative had made unimaginable.
Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. The details differ. The structure does not.
What Jack is tracking — the F-35, the F-15s, the KC-135, the gap between “flattened” and “still operational” — is not a list of battlefield incidents. It is an early warning system. It is the data that arrives before the reckoning. The data that gets explained away, individually, until it cannot be explained away collectively.
File the date. March 19, 2026. A writer in Kansas City looked at the pattern before the pattern had a name. That is what good journalism does. That is what this newsletter is doing.
The most dangerous four words in wartime are not a threat from the enemy. They are four words spoken internally, by the side that is winning on paper: We have this handled.
Read this. Share it. The gap Jack is describing does not close on its own. It widens. And what lives in the widening gap is the decision no one is ready to make because no one admitted the situation required it.
What we might have just learned is that one or more of our potential enemies cracked the code on the F-35 and let Iran test that theory in real time, something they've thankfully been unable to do.
If Russia, China, and/or North Korea now know how to stop our best weapons, the entire global order has been upended, American hegemony is officially over, and no amount of propaganda and bluster from the incompetents in DC can change that reality.
I’m wondering what all this means to folks on the ground here in US. I spent over $40 to fill up my Honda Civic today. Every time I shop it costs more. But we are relatively well off-retired and own our house. Friends are having babies. I can’t imagine what they think, if they are involved enough to even see anything but network news. That uninvolved group scares me. I’d like your analysis of what to watch for closer to home. Thanks, as ever. #HoldFast👹
Great post, Jack.
There's a history lesson hiding in plain sight here. In 1941, Claire Chennault watched Allied fighters get slaughtered over Burma because they fought the Zero in dogfights where Japanese pilots were unbeatable. The RAF sent Buffaloes, then Hurricanes, then Spitfires. Same result each time. The institutional assumption was that Japanese aviation was imitative and inferior. The Zero kept proving otherwise and the brass kept explaining each loss away individually. It had no armor, but was so maneuverable they couldn't touch it. What's more, the early Japanese pilot training (as documented in Saburo Sakai's autobiography Samurai) was so intense that fewer than one in three hundred cadets made the cut.
Chennault was an insubordinate, hard-headed man like his hero Billy Mitchell. He refused to let doctrine overwrite what the data was telling him. He studied the Zero obsessively, admitted the P-40 couldn't climb with it, couldn't turn with it, couldn't match its ceiling so he built his entire tactical system around those hard truths.
Dive-and-zoom attacks. Never slow down. Never fight on the enemy's terms. His pilots also benefited from a vast early warning network of spotters across Yunnan province, which gave them altitude and position before any engagement. The Japanese could never figure out how the Flying Tigers always knew they were coming.
This F-35 story has the same smell. "Flattened" defenses that apparently still had enough distributed, survivable capability to track and engage the most sophisticated stealth aircraft ever built? The official narrative keeps saying dominance; the signal traffic keeps saying contest.
Remember too that Iran doesn't need to "win." It already replaced the leadership killed in the early strikes. It will continue to suppress reform. They literally have the west by the balls because the Strait of Hormuz isn't just about oil, it's also the pipeline for rare earth metals, fertilizer, and a million other things vital for technology.
The most dangerous assumption in any air campaign is that the enemy's capability matches what your targeting runs told you it was. Iran, like Chennault's spotters, may retain exactly the kind of networked, mobile, low-signature capacity that the strike packages weren't designed to find. Each incident gets explained away but you can't explain a pattern. War has changed, and continues to change.
Remember too that North Korea was entirely destroyed in three years by LeMay's intensive firebombing campaign that burned 95% of all buildings, dams, railroads, power stations, and roadways into black ash. They never surrendered, and in fact hardened into the isolated prison state we see today.
There is no endgame. No strategy of any kind. Hegseth is an imbecile and Trump's frontal cortex has been shrunk small as a golf ball by dementia. AIPAC will spend billions to make sure their candidates on both sides of the aisle will elections, and there's always the backup plan of using nukes to end elections altogether.
It will only ge worse.
I think you're right. My ears perked up the minute I learned of it previously.
Right, Sher'?!
-Jack
Thanks for being here.
I think Iran is getting a lot of assistance in terms of acquiring weaponry from the obvious suspects. We may now be in the most nightmarish proxy war we could ever imagine.
Exactly, Sher'.
That’s the nightmare scenario: not Iran acting alone...but Iran plugged into a wider anti-U.S. support network...whether that means intelligence...targeting help... components...or...technical advice.
Recent reporting AND testimony point to Iran seeking or receiving help from Russia and China...with outside support ranging from intelligence-sharing claims...to continued missile and drone-related backing.
That’s what makes this feel less like a clean bilateral war...and more like a proxy-rich escalation trap. You’re seeing the shape of it clearly!
-Jack
Also I believe people are about to experience a level of propaganda that most of us have never experienced or ever conceived of....discernment is a must. My instincts are just screaming that at me.
Same.
#HoldFast
Thanks! 💕 Jack
Difficult to watch this unfold. We have been here so many times.
This is worse because the generals are gone, and everyone that support them.
We have COWBOYS again, and not very smart ones.
Congress can just order the fleet, planes, personnel home.
THOUSANDS of US personnel are trapped.
Inexcusable.
😡😠😡😠🗽🇺🇲🇺🇦
No way is this clean nor bilateral.
You saw something about russia or china giving iran missiles and drones? Can you share thanks
Who are the obvious suspects?
Iran is not done, degraded, disintegrated....not by a long way. They have a lot of weapons, tools, and assistance from Vlad and Kim. Probably others. North Korea has a vast wealth of weapons. Thanks for the analysis.
I've learned to treat what President Epstein Fury says as the exact opposite. I think I know the middle east better than this sad regime and I taught elementary 41 years, but did have a Marine brother who was in that area in the 70s- late 80s. He was there under ayatollah 1. He was sent there to possibly remove him. They decided to not. Power vacuum and more double down violence and retaliation. He explained it well. So listen and think the opposite.
#HoldFast
Can you link to weapons coming from north korea thanks
https://thediplomat.com/2026/03/north-koreas-response-to-the-israel-us-attacks-on-iran/#:~:text=In%20this%20context%2C%20North%20Korea's,against%20governments%20it%20deems%20threatening.
Military Aid and Supplies: North Korea has historically been a key supplier of arms to Iran. In the context of the 2026 conflict, reports indicate North Korea is prepared to supply missiles and has a long-term interest in providing technical military support, including tunneling expertise.
Win, lose or draw I’m not at all sure how this ends. Go in without a plan, metrics, definition of victory or a way out….? What could go wrong? Maybe everything?
When my body freaked out over the initial bombing, I figured we were in for a very rough time. I think t got played in a huge way, I think he’s in over his head and the mishaps piling up do not allay any misgivings whatsoever. And now he’s talking about Cuba? How many ways can you say stretched too thin. The Ford has been at sea FAR longer than it should have been due to its maintenance schedule and it’s dealing with a fire, limping to a port for overdue maintenance.
The messaging you’ve outlined here along with the other structural cracks you've pointed out are painting quite a picture. I don’t think we’re at collapse yet but… how long?
Thanks, Jack! You keep us all sane (ish?)!
Jack is doing something important in this newsletter, and it deserves to be named precisely.
He is not arguing that the United States is losing. He is arguing something harder to hear: that the people making decisions may not know the difference. That is the historical danger. Not defeat. Delusion.
Every major military miscalculation of the twentieth century followed the same structure. The official narrative simplified the battlefield. The simplified narrative produced overconfidence. The overconfidence produced escalation. The escalation produced the catastrophe that the narrative had made unimaginable.
Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. The details differ. The structure does not.
What Jack is tracking — the F-35, the F-15s, the KC-135, the gap between “flattened” and “still operational” — is not a list of battlefield incidents. It is an early warning system. It is the data that arrives before the reckoning. The data that gets explained away, individually, until it cannot be explained away collectively.
File the date. March 19, 2026. A writer in Kansas City looked at the pattern before the pattern had a name. That is what good journalism does. That is what this newsletter is doing.
The most dangerous four words in wartime are not a threat from the enemy. They are four words spoken internally, by the side that is winning on paper: We have this handled.
Read this. Share it. The gap Jack is describing does not close on its own. It widens. And what lives in the widening gap is the decision no one is ready to make because no one admitted the situation required it.
#HOLDFAST
"[A] direct hit on a stealth platform suggests that the enemy still has teeth." ... OR is being guided by Putin!
But the chinese system is so much better, do you think china cut them out so they had to go to russia? That would be interesting
Thanks for this update, Jack.
Proxy war indeed.
What we might have just learned is that one or more of our potential enemies cracked the code on the F-35 and let Iran test that theory in real time, something they've thankfully been unable to do.
If Russia, China, and/or North Korea now know how to stop our best weapons, the entire global order has been upended, American hegemony is officially over, and no amount of propaganda and bluster from the incompetents in DC can change that reality.
They underestimated Iran & Iran’s response to being attacked.
I’m wondering what all this means to folks on the ground here in US. I spent over $40 to fill up my Honda Civic today. Every time I shop it costs more. But we are relatively well off-retired and own our house. Friends are having babies. I can’t imagine what they think, if they are involved enough to even see anything but network news. That uninvolved group scares me. I’d like your analysis of what to watch for closer to home. Thanks, as ever. #HoldFast👹
Jack, that was great! Do you know where that happened? Over water? Over Iran itself? Elsewhere?
It hadn't occurred to me how non descript the word winning was until this last week.
Wow, you couldn't have said it better J Hardy Carroll!