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The US has air superiority. But yes, it would be a big operation. I believe the US certainly has the capability to do it, though.
And if the recent public speculation that the material was moved to Ishafan is true, the stuff is just in intact tunnels covered with soil and not really deeply buried.
no, the US doesn't have air superiority over Iran and rarely, if ever, flies into Iranian territory due to the risk of their planes being shot down
if it had air superiority, you would see the US regularly flying into Iranian territory to use far cheaper and more destructive bombs, but they rarely if ever do that because they would lose even more planes than their 1 plane loss every day and a half or so
Iranians are complaining that the US is dropping mines in Shiraz, about a hundred miles inland. As far as I can tell, these air-dropped mines don't even have wing kits so their range is very limited. Here's pictures of Israeli F-16s (not stealthy!) kitted out with cluster bombs, which likewise are not short ranged weapons. Here's the DVIDS link to images from Epic Fury, and here's a B-52, an F-18, an F-16, and an F-15 loaded up with gravity bombs.
You can of course wave away the DVIDS photos as head-fakes but when combined with the mines it seems pretty reasonable to believe that the US is doing strikes inland.
The only evidence here is the mines picture and post which I'll have to look into, the random pictures in random anywhere of some planes loaded with gravity bombs doesn't mean much and you trying to pass it off that it does makes me skeptical of you in general.
I didn't write the US doesn't strike inland nor did I write US planes have never crossed into Iranian territory, I specifically left that open as a possibility. What I wrote was the overwhelming vast majority of strikes use stand-off munitions. The US is obviously using MQ-9 Reaper drones and some other drones in Iranian territory, many of which are armed and are attacking cardboard trucks, paintings on the ground, and probably some real military targets. We know this because we've seen pictures of them posted and published many times. When it comes to manned aircraft, however, we see none of those photos anywhere but the extreme outliers of Iranian territory. It wouldn't surprise me if US planes very briefly cross into Iranian territory to drop bombs near the borders or coastlines, but I've seen nothing to think it's a regular occurrence or deep penetration of Iranian territory happens ever.
When it comes to Russia in Ukraine, we see this all the time and have seen it for years at this point. Russian helicopters are regularly prowling Ukrainian territory and are photographed constantly. That's what something akin to air superiority looks like, not what the US is currently doing. The US could do that and they likely will as they run out of ammunition, but it will require much higher risk tolerance and will result in many more planes being shot down.
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LOL.
You know better.
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I think it's really telling that the US has achieved air superiority over Iran instantly, while Russia has as of yet never achieved that level of superiority over Ukraine.
It's probably not impossible, I'm just saying that when considering scale redundancies and protection need to be included in that calculus.
Huh? Russia flies over Ukraine far more than the US flies in Iranian territory probably by orders of magnitude given they regularly use glide bombs with a range of only 50mi. Russia flies helicopters, regularly, in Ukrainian territory and uses attack helicopters regularly inside Ukraine. This has been the case for years at this point. The US doesn't do either of these things with the overwhelming vast majority of sorties using stand-off munitions and not entering Iranian territory, if ever.
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