Intel Update · 2026-03-15
Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for March 8th through the 14th, 2026. This week spring is in the air and terrorism season is in full bloom both at home and overseas, so let's get right to it. Around the world things are heating up with the war in the Middle East continuing as before. We are now officially 2 weeks into this conflict and the situation has only escalated since the start of this war, but we'll of course get to that in just a moment. Otherwise, the situation in most of the Western world remains tenuous at best. Multiple terror attacks have occurred within the American homeland this week and overseas American diplomatic posts have been attacked such as the small arms attack that took place at the American consulate in Toronto and also the IED attack that occurred at the American Embassy in Oslo. Very little information has been released on either attack. However, three brothers of Iraqi origin have been arrested in conjunction with the attack in Norway. No arrests have been made regarding the Canadian attack and none of the suspects involved in either event have been identified. Taking a look at the global strategic overview this week, there has been a lot of movement regarding American forces. Last night the Pentagon announced that the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit out of Japan has embarked on a deployment to CENTCOM aboard the USS Tripoli. Right now she is steaming hard for CENTCOM having departed Japan some days before the announcement of her deployment became noticed by the media. Just to cut right to the chase, this has led many people to of course surmise that the United States intends to land Marines in Iran to kick off a land invasion of the country somehow. Now that line of thinking is fraught with many challenges mostly because this is not that big of a deployment. But right now at the strategic level, this could really just be preparation for something other than putting Marines on the ground such as escorting merchant vessels through the strait. This has been put forward as an idea before such as during the Houthi crisis when Houthi targeting of commercial shipping was at its height. And even more generally, there's usually an ARG somewhere in CENTCOM at any given point, so this could be really anything at this point, but this does not appear to be a standard deployment at least at the moment. As always, the White House is not really telling us anything about whatever strategy is driving this war, so we sometimes have to make pretty wild guesses at this point. Otherwise, the two aircraft carriers in CENTCOM remain as before. The Lincoln is hanging out off the coast of Oman just out of Iranian missile range and the Ford remains in the Red Sea having not transited the Bab el Mandeb strait just yet. Within the American homeland this week, multiple terror attacks have been conducted all of which appear to be lone wolf style attacks except for one incident. First up we had the IED attack at the Jake Lang protest in New York. We had the vehicle ramming attack at a synagogue in Michigan. We had the mass shooting attempt at ODU. And we also had a vehicle ramming attack at the White House which may or may not have been a terrorist attack. It's not quite clear at the moment, but I have it on the slide anyway just so we don't forget about it. Of these incidents, the one that is most likely to not be a lone wolf attack is the IED attack at the Jake Lang protest in New York. By definition, this is not a lone wolf incident since technically two terrorists participated in the attack. Pushing the classic Jake Lang antics aside, what caught my eye with this incident was the use of a decently uncommon homemade explosive or HME compound that was used by the terrorists. The use of triacetone triperoxide or TATP is not exactly a rare type of homemade explosive material. However, it is uncommon enough to indicate that this cell might have some level of experience. Usually when we hear of IED attacks at some sort of political event, we normally see things like improvised fireworks or very very crude pipe bombs or other devices that while technically are classified as IEDs, are usually very low yield. In this case, the use of TATP indicates that somebody had done some research. However, based on the documents provided by the DOJ, there are also indicators that whomever constructed the devices also made some mistakes in their construction and I'll just leave it at that. Suffice it to say that this attack was significant not because of the target, but due to the construction of the devices themselves and the fact that this protest was only announced on short notice, so these IEDs were almost certainly beforehand. Personally, even though this is pure speculation, I think these IEDs were intended for a different target and once Jake Lang showed up in New York, they decided to spend their explosives on that attack, which again is speculation, but it makes sense because the amount of time that elapsed between Jake Lang showing up and the fact that these IEDs take some time to construct. But again, this is one of those incidents where there's plenty of incentive to lie all around. New York City officials have the incentive to conceal the nature of terrorism within their city. The federal agents have the same incentive. And because Jake Lang is involved, you've got political stuff being involved with all of this, so this is really hard to kind of really get to the bottom of what actually went on here, but I'm still digging into it. Hopefully some more documents will come to light so we can figure out how many other people might have been involved in this. Regarding the other attacks, there really isn't much information to go on at the moment and the information spin is in full effect, so getting to the truth may also take some time. In Michigan, the details of Thursday's vehicle ramming attack at the synagogue remains hard to verify because the remains of the suspect were apparently consumed in the fire that broke out during the incident. I'm not sure how the suspect was identified so quickly. Maybe it was the vehicle plates. I'm not really sure. But because most of the evidence was destroyed, there's not much to go on at the moment. I don't even have a super confirmed photo of the guy just yet because I'm not really sure that the photos that have been circulating are actually the suspect. The attempted mass shooting at Old Dominion University in Virginia was a little bit more clear as the suspect had actually previously been convicted of terrorism beforehand, so his paper trail is a bit longer. And so far that case looks like the typical lone gunman terrorist who had been plotting attack plans for a long time. Much more research on this is needed. However, because I have been reading through the prior court documents on this case and his attorneys previously argued regarding his prior terrorism charge that the FBI actually entrapped him and that he did not want to actually commit that first attack that caused him to be arrested the first time. Which I'm sure all defense attorneys want to say in cases like this, but it's still an interesting note that that needs a little bit more examination. But in any case, that defense did not work because he was tried, convicted, and sentenced, sent to prison, and he was also let out of prison early, which appears to be a rather unwise decision because he then went on to conduct the terrorist attack at Old Dominion University. So that's it for the homeland this week. A lot of loose ends to be sure and not a whole lot of good news, but it is getting to be peak terrorism season, so we have to take that into account as the days get even busier over the next few weeks. In the Middle East, the Gulf War rages on with the conflict steadily escalating over the past week. And I want to state right up front that the flow of information is rather thin at this point, so we have to assess the overall situation with not that much data. And when we make assessments on very little data, the margin of error increases. So for those who ask, you know, how goes the war, the truth is that I don't really know for sure. What we can say is that the United States is continually bombing Iran. The Iranians are also continually launching missiles and drones at most American military bases in the Middle East and the Israelis have also been getting hit extremely hard since the war began even though there is very little evidence to know for certain how much damage has been done. As a reminder, American satellite imagery throughout the region has been delayed by two full weeks, which in my opinion is solely being done to prevent the American people from finding out how bad American bases and positions have been hit. European companies like Airbus are still producing products and the Iranians themselves fed intelligence and targeting data from the Chinese and probably the Russians, too. So they don't need Planet Labs imagery to know where to strike. You also cannot use satellite imagery to find out which floor of a hotel in Bahrain is housing American contractors, nor can you look at a satellite image to find out which gate will be used by an American evacuation flight out of Dubai. But the Iranians seem to know this information nonetheless and I highly doubt it came from their own trash intelligence services. And from what we can tell so far, this targeting has so far been quite effective, at least effective enough as unfortunate as it is to note. We have to tell the truth here and the Iranians have been putting up the exact insurgent style fight at the nation-state level that we have been expecting since the start of the war. From the perspective of the Iranians, this war is actually going more or less how they probably would have expected it to go. Pretty much every single American military base in the entire region has been hit at least once with several installations being hit pretty hard. Quite a few structures at the former headquarters for Fifth Fleet in Bahrain have been mostly destroyed and Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar has been targeted successfully several times over the past few days. Ali Al Salem Airbase in Kuwait has also been hit pretty heavily since last briefing and the American positions in the Green Zone in Baghdad have taken a beating over the past couple of days as well as local Iranian militias or pro-Iran militias start to take the fight to the American positions in their country as well. So this conflict is most certainly expanding beyond the borders of Iran at least when it comes to militias being activated around the Middle East. So far most of these attacks and targeting efforts are mostly aspirational, but they are starting to launch drones including some of the more loitering munition style drones at American positions in Iraq. So that is the very general wave top situation as it stands right now. And as the war drags on 2 weeks into this conflict, it's a good time to reassess what the strategic vision and future targets might be. Remember, this is a strategic fight, so the longer that the United States is in this game, the longer that we're fighting this war, the less we have to gain and the more we have to lose. Similarly, the Iranians are exactly on the opposite side of the spectrum. The longer this fight goes on, the more they have to gain and the less they have to lose. The longer that they can threaten the Strait of Hormuz increases their power with China and with Russia and with other international trade partners. And so far, the Iranians are looking a lot more strategically important than they used to be before this conflict. So, on the military front, let's start with what is likely to get blown up next. As of last night, President Trump stated that Kharg Island has been struck with one of the largest air strikes in the history of the Middle East, his words not mine, which is a drastic overstatement because hardly anything was hit at all. Beyond hitting a few buildings and structures, Kharg Island is mostly still intact and nothing is on fire as of this morning. We are, of course, waiting on more high-resolution satellite imagery of the island to see exactly which coordinates were hit and which buildings were struck. But, as of right now, it doesn't look like it was too substantial even using CENTCOM's own imagery and video evidence of the strikes. Other than Kharg Island, which is more of a strategic target, another future target could be Qeshm Island and maybe a few of the outposts on smaller islands in the Strait of Hormuz. But, honestly, most of the threats to the strait are not from coastal defense batteries or anything like that. The drones targeting shipping in the strait are probably being launched a long way from the coast, from any number of a thousand different launch sites. These small boat attacks, which are threatening the boats that are hanging out just off the coast of Kuwait, those are indeed coming from the coastline, and I'm working on isolating a few of the locations where they are being launched from. But, there are a few naval bases and few installations up there which are more asymmetric, more IRGC-N as opposed to the main surface fleet IRIN. If we recall, a lot of the IRGC-N, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, that's the more special forces navy if you want to think it like think of it like that. These smaller, more, honestly, more useful for the Iranians navy is what they're going to be using to target a lot of these commercial ships, and that is, honestly, the more direct threat as opposed to the big corvettes and the big frigates and things like that that the US Navy has very easily destroyed. These smaller boats are a tougher challenge, and there are plenty of places where they are still located that have not been struck yet. So, those are probably going to be targeted quite ruthlessly over the next few weeks if the United States intends to stay in this war for any length of time. Concerning the Strait of Hormuz itself, there are two main naval bases which threaten the region, Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, both of which have been mostly destroyed. So, we've sunk a lot of ships, a lot of submarines, a lot of surface vessels pier-side at these facilities. So, using either of these comparatively deepish water ports would be pretty hard to do. I don't know if we could have used them anyway. I don't know the actual depth of the harbor. I can't remember that off the top of my head, but either way, it doesn't look like the US is interested in using Bandar Abbas or Chabahar because we're just blowing everything up there. Similar story with most of the airfields and logistical centers that are within helicopter range of the coastline. Many, but not all of these locations have been destroyed to the point where it indicates that the US does not really see any military value of their own at most of these facilities. So far, all indications point to the US continuing to strike every single military and government site in the country in addition to a lot of random stuff that doesn't really have a military use. The runways at almost all military airfields throughout Iran have been cratered, which indicates that the US does not intend to use them anytime soon. For many installations around the nation, scorched earth is the policy, or at least so it seems at the moment. This could change at any point, but right now, there are plenty of installations around the nation that have not yet been targeted, so this war could last a long time if the goal is to destroy everything. More generally, the overall end goals of the war remain largely unknown. Rhetoric from the White House has been very confusing and very contradictory by the hour sometimes to the point that it's far more reliable to look at the actions taken on the battlefield to discern the strategy rather than listening to what political leadership has said. At the White House, it's Groundhog Day these days. I did not know this, but apparently the Iranians have a magic navy, which somehow is sunk every single day. Every day it's sunk, and the next day it's sunk again. Same with the military infrastructure throughout Iran. Every day it's completely destroyed until the next strike, and then it's really destroyed until the next strike when it's totally for reals destroyed until the next strike when it's actually pinky swear destroyed this time. So, this entire conflict is like Schrödinger's war, where the Iranians are simultaneously the worst threat to all of mankind, but we've also totally destroyed them and crushed them into dust because we're so totally awesome. So, we can see the propaganda here is pretty terrible, but this does make it hard to determine what the next targets will be and how much the United States is interested in going along with this war. So far, the US has bombed a lot of infrastructure throughout Iran. That's easily verifiable, and the video clips of missiles and rocket launchers being struck are very easy to see. However, for every one clip that CENTCOM puts on their page, there are probably a hundred more random places that got bombed which we cannot see the utility of. How do we know that this is not a repeat of what I myself saw in Iraq and Syria when my targeting shop spent most of the war bombing empty buildings. The truth is, we don't. We don't know that most of what's been bombed is a legitimate military target, and we can't trust anything the White House and the Pentagon say because they openly lied about the strike on the girl's school, which has been a rabbit hole that I have not had time to go down just yet. I'm not ignoring that one. I promise, I'm digging into it, and I have a lot of very strong feelings on that one. But, the point that I'd like to make by bringing that up is that the United States initially denied, denied, denied. They initially their knee-jerk reaction was to lie. Their knee-jerk reaction was to immediately say, "No, we didn't do it. It was the Iranians that did it." And then wait a week, and then suddenly the United States is the one who did it, right? It took two seconds to find out whether or not we bombed that site. It took two seconds to look up the basic encyclopedia number, the BE number, within MIDB, the Modernized Integrated Database. It was a phone call that the White House could have made or anybody with the right access to that system could have made to determine, did we drop a Joint Desired Point of Impact or JDPIs on that facility, yes or no? Tomahawks don't just fly without guidance. Somebody had to put that GPS coordinate there, and that GPS coordinate, most civilians might know it as a GPS coordinate, but really what it is is a Joint Desired Point of Impact or a JDPI, in this case, the case of the school, probably several JDPIs, and the United States of America knew within five seconds of finding out that that was a bad target, that that was a bad target. They knew instantly, and they lied about it. That was their knee-jerk reaction. So, when it comes to any other further targeting efforts, we cannot trust them at all. So, the overall challenge here is that it's hard to determine what the actual combat goals of the war actually are and how much combat power the Iranians have at this point. We can't trust the Iranians, and we can't trust our own government to tell us the truth about what they're actually doing in this war. So, we have to guess, and I don't like guessing, especially since the drones and the missiles keep flying. And two weeks after the most powerful military in the history of the world began combat operations in that country, Iran has still managed to sling a few ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv and launch drones at a dozen US military bases throughout the region every single night. How long they could keep this up is anyone's guess. I think the Pentagon is probably hoping that they will just stop one day or they'll run out of drones, they'll run out of missiles, or they'll finally get the last ones. But, I personally do not feel very confident in continuing a war on the Iranian's terms, a nation built around the concept of insurgency at the nation-state level. Joint Publication 3-6-0 and the deliberate targeting cycle will help you destroy buildings and static targets in Iran, but it won't help you win the wider war. If the end goal of that war is to ensure that the Iranians cannot pose a threat to Israel or threaten shipping in the strait. Two weeks into this thing, the Strait of Hormuz is contested battle space. Just think about that for a minute. It is contested battle space, and it is leaning in Iran's favor. Same thing with the Persian Gulf at large. We do not control this waterway. This is not to disparage the US Navy or anything like that, but this is just a fact of the case. The United States is not projecting sea power. We're not power projecting in the Persian Gulf at the moment because we cannot guarantee the safety of commercial vessels in the strait. We cannot endure freedom of navigation, and that's just something the Pentagon is having to deal with. Same thing with airspace. Again, not to disparage the US Air Force or anything like that, but the airspace over Iran is, per the Pentagon, still contested to some degree. I don't know how it is, but that's what the Pentagon has said. They still do not have totally uncontested airspace just yet. So, if we want to understand how this war is going, we really have to be realistic in what is happening and the threats that the Iranians pose because it is not a straightforward fight, and the doctrine of all belligerents in this war does not really fit together like a puzzle piece like Russia and Ukraine at the start of their war because those countries were very similar with similar ways of waging warfare. The United States and Iran could not be any more different in terms of overarching warfare doctrine, and since this war is largely for the Israelis as well, that adds in a third dynamic. So, there's no real way to answer the question of, are we winning? Instead, we have to answer really specific questions and evolving specific objectives and capabilities that all sides are able to maintain. So, as the war continues, it must be noted that the intel spiral is in full effect. Confirmation bias is rampant, and most structured analytic techniques or SATs are being thrown out the window, especially when it comes to what this war means for the American homeland. I know that for most of you, myself included, the more pertinent threats that you're concerned about day-to-day are in the American homeland. Yes, what's going on in the Middle East may be a concern, but really what's going to matter to you each day is what's happening in your own home, right? And on that front, the information space has gotten way out of control, right? Suddenly, conversations are not centered around what the threat actually is, but what the threat could theoretically be. That is a major difference between those two ideas. Such as the case a few days ago with the recent rumors that were circulating regarding potential Iranian threats off the west coast. The question is not, are the Iranians planning to launch drones from containers that secretly on board commercial shipping vessels? The answer to this question is obviously no, they're not planning to do that. Instead, the question that is asked, the question becomes can they theoretically do this? And the answer to that question is yes, because in theory anything is possible, however unlikely that it is. Well, that word unlikely gets stripped out of the report and that yes is then put on a PowerPoint slide which is subsequently leaked to the media. And now the whole West Coast is terrified that Santa Monica is going to turn into Dubai. Do you see how we've kind of spiraled out of control here with some of this stuff? The same thing appears to be happening in Iran itself when it comes to kinetic targeting. What's that building over there? Oh, it's a random outbuilding, they're not really using it for anything. Is it a military target? Well, no, there's not really anything there. But could it potentially have some kind of military use? Well, I guess, but I don't think so. Doesn't matter, stop, put it on a target list and kill it. This is absolute peak WMDs are in Iraq mentality and rhetoric and it's starting to get out of control. On the other hand, for those of us who are trying to figure out how this is all going to affect the homeland, we have in many ways slowly returned to the Biden era in terms of information control. The political left is trying to do everything they can to make Trump look bad, but they are also divided because they don't want to point out that the population demographics that are most likely to present dangers to the homeland are the exact same people they imported wholesale over the past few years. Likewise, many people who initially supported Trump are absolutely terrified to come out and voice any concerns about this war because they will lose friends and maybe even their jobs, just like during the Biden years. And let's not forget that even during the height of COVID, it was easier to speak out against the policy decisions then than it is now to mention even the name of the foreign nation that has openly bragged about dragging the US into fighting their war. This topic is the absolute peak of censorship and it's affecting threat assessments on the home front at this point. So, apart from the war itself, we're kind of in this Schrödinger's terrorism sort of thing. The same kind of thing that happened in the in the last few months of President Biden's administration. We can't admit that terrorism concerns are elevated because that might make people think that this war isn't worth it. But we also have to have terrorist attacks in the US to justify the war in the first place. All of this makes it very hard to assess the no kidding threats to the American homeland because the information space is like that metronome meme, right? It's flipping back and forth between overreacting to threats that don't exist and completely ignoring other threats which are very real concerns. It's really hard to find balance in a situation like that because everyone wants to flip back and forth between focusing on the wrong things and then ignoring the things that actually do matter. It's amazing how the internet works sometimes. What is pretty clear though is that the American populace is primed and ready for a series of events which may motivate more Americans to support the war. At the moment, the risk of a false flag incident occurring intended to drag the US deeper into the war is exceptionally high. I never thought I'd say it, I never thought this would be a real thing that we had talk about in the open, right? Other than just like being a fun conspiracy theory, but they may actually do something. I don't know. They may have already tried. I don't know. More pertinently and also probably safer to talk about are the likelihood of malign actors, either Iranian or otherwise, attempting to take advantage of the fray, conducting legitimate terror attacks so as to bring some attention to their cause. That's also pretty likely and I think that the terrorist attacks this week have done the same thing. The guys that threw the bombs at Jake Lang's event had no ties to the Iranians, they were not Iranian sleeper agents. The terrorist who tried to shoot up ODU was from Sierra Leone and had, again, nothing to do with Iran. And also the guy who attacked the synagogue in Michigan, some reports state that he was affiliated with Lebanon, so that's not I mean that's that is more directly related to the current conflict that's going on, but it's not because of his allegiance to his allegiance to Iran, it's due to his allegiance to uh groups in Lebanon, either Hezbollah or because his family got killed. So, again, not exactly an Iranian sleeper agent that is being directed by the Iranian government, right? We've had three major terrorist attacks in the United States since this war began and they've all been from other groups or other causes or other political goals that are trying to take advantage of the increased emotions and likelihood of success with terrorist attacks. How many Iranian sleeper agents have been activated to take out targets in the United States? Well, as of right now, if we're just going by what reports that we have, how many successful attacks have Iranian sleeper agents conducted in the United States? Zero. How many other terrorist groups have taken advantage of the fray to conduct attacks of their own for their own causes? Well, right now at least three just this week and probably a couple more last week. It depends on how you want to categorize it, but it's not zero, right? So, at bare minimum, really the most that we can do is stay vigilant, stay prepared, stay situationally aware, stay strapped if you can, and keep your head on a swivel over the next few weeks. That's the best that we can do. It's no different from the way that we've been living for the past few years, at least most of us, right? Or many of us. We definitely do not need to be terrified of every possible conceivable threat that might exist in society, but we do need to be a little bit more attentive and a little bit more situationally aware these days because there are a lot of very upset people and they're looking to cause a lot of harm. So, on that rather foreboding note, I think that's all I have for today. So, let's wrap things up with the Ghost Net reports for this week. Sometimes it's good to take a break from a lot of this stuff and get outside and do something different. And the Ghost Net is a good way to do that and also do those equipment checks that we all like to do so much just to make sure everything works and that at least some of us can maintain some level of communications capability in a manner that is not easy to take offline. So, if the past couple of weeks have had you being terminally online and glued to your phone for up-to-the-minute updates on everything, it might uh help to change that vector a little bit and switch to radio for a bit. You can still stay informed, uh but you can see uh some of the other stuff that's going on around the world as well. Because I'm not sure if anyone's noticed, but it's become quite unbearable in the information space these days. Fifth generation warfare or whatever you want to call it is going absolutely insane. Propaganda and even worse, subversion, is going around on all sides. Even I myself have had a really, really tough time with this over the past couple of weeks, but with radio, it's much harder to censor and you can take back a tiny portion of the world of information. You probably cannot build your own version of Twitter, at least not easily, but you can buy a radio and assert dominance on the airwaves and shape the next generation of radio communications. And that's what I hope to continue doing for as long as possible, no matter how locked down things become on social media. For those who are interested in my mapping products, you all know where to find everything and all the links are in the description box below. I am trying to put out a lot more raw information than analysis these days, so the raw information is always there to do with it what you will. In today's challenging information environment, sourcing material is incredibly important. A lot of people seem to want that quite a bit and you can find all the sources for all of my war reports at the bottom of each war report on my Obsidian page. So, if you want the raw sourcing to come to your own conclusions on things, go ahead, go for it, it's all there. And of course, for those of you who provide support on Patreon, make sure you open up a tag every now and then to refresh the data layers I've loaded in because I have been updating everything on average at several times per day since the war began. And for those of you who just want to pull my work into whatever GPS mapping application you need, my map layers and products are hosted on my GitHub page as KMZ files. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you for sticking around. I really do appreciate it and I hope to improve things on the information front soon now that the war has settled in for the long haul, at least for now. The threats within the homeland continue and I hope to get ahead of the curve before the war in the Middle East gets more serious and by default, the threats within the homeland become more serious as well. So, we'll keep at it and do the best we can. And as always, fight on the shade.