Intel Update — June 21 — Another Desert War

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for June 15th through the 21st, 2025. Today is going to be a little bit more of an informal chat because it seems as though things are happening around the world. These briefs take a while to get out the door, so I don't want to say anything that's going to be rapidly stale or outdated by the time you guys see it. So, we're just going to focus on one thing and one thing only, which is the strategic movement that has occurred with regards to potential conflict with Iran. I was planning to cover a lot of the events that occurred last week with regards to the no kings protest and the follow-on protests that have uh taken place throughout this week, but right now we've got bigger fish to fry and I think that we might be approaching the 11th hour with regards to conflict in the Middle East. But first, starting off with a general overview of what's going on around the world this week. Mostly the flavor has been war and unrest here at home in the United States. Various low-level protests have occurred throughout the United States this week, mostly as follow-on events from the No Kings protest, which turned out to be not as severe as everyone was expecting it to be. However, in a lot of major cities, there have been a lot of situations of unrest and just general uh longhaul type protests where uh people are conducting demonstrations daily for a variety of issues. It's uh it's definitely protest season out there. Uh the weather's weather's good throughout most of the United States and uh it's definitely going to be a summer of protest. Some of these may get out of hand, some may just be relatively low level, but either way is something to be aware of just as a baseline of activity. Similar situation in Northern Ireland with regards to the immigration crisis, which has spawned a lot of riots and kinetic arson events and things like that. Same story as last week, so not a whole lot of new details on that. It's just a developing situation. And of course, the war between Israel and Iran continues in the Middle East, which is what we're going to talk about mostly today. And this is mostly due to the strategic movement for this week. Almost immediately after I gave last week's briefing, a lot of things started clicking into motion. As we can see, there is a substantial uh number of American resources scattered throughout the Middle East now, which includes at this point up to four aircraft carriers. So we already have the USS Carl Vincent carrier strike group which has been in theater for some time now. The Nimmits has recently transitioned from Paycom into Sentcom. So now we have two American aircraft carriers in the Middle East right now. And also very coincidentally the British Prince of Wales carrier strike group is conducting exercises and has been conducting exercises for about a week off the coast of India. instead of doing this joint British Indian exercise uh situation but they are most certainly within the scentcom a so they are not officially part of this they are officially doing something else but unofficially they are in the region so we have to count them if anything were to go wrong I would fully expect the Prince of Wales to be certainly involved if they aren't already planning to do so at the moment additionally in the United States the Gerald Ford carrier struck group is planning to deploy uh any day now the Ford was scheduled to deploy this summer as part of a just standard deployment. However, this is early. So, the Ford has accelerated their plans and they are planning to depart port any day now. Same thing with the Euima. The Uima has been undergoing a lot of uh testing and reertification and things like that. I don't know if the Euima ARG is planning on deploying to support anything in the Middle East. Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to say. We just don't have any insight on a lot of these deployments most of the time. But anytime a flattop moves around anywhere in the world, we want to be aware of it, especially considering the substantial amount of aircraft that have been moved into the Middle East theater over the past week or so. And speaking of aircraft, a staggering amount of fighter aircraft have been moved into the Sentcom AO, specifically into Saudi Arabia and Jordan. 12 F-22s have been moved from Europe into Jordan to stage at one single base in preparation for what lies ahead. Saudi Arabia has also lended the support of their air bases for staging of American resources as usual. And at the Prince Sultan air base, which is one of their major air bases, uh satellite imagery has confirmed that there are 22 KC135 Strat tankers, 53 F-16s and 10 C130s. Now, this image is a few days old and many more have arrived so far. So, I have seen estimates. I have not counted myself so I I cannot verify this but I've seen estimates that say that between the bases in Jordan and Saudi Arabia up to 35 KC135s are uh staged there but again I need to bean count on my own and uh I have not had time to do that just yet because things are moving rather quickly and when I say time is of the essence I mean that in the most literal of senses because right now there are B2s in the air this morning six B2 Spirit aircraft took off from Whiteman Air Force Base and are currently inbound to the Pacific theater. We do not know where they're going just yet, but really it can only be two places. It's either Diego Garcia or Guam. Conventional wisdom indicates that if they land in Hawaii and top off their fuel tanks, then that probably means they're going to Diego Garcia. As we recall, six B2s were in Diego Garcia not too long ago. Now, maybe we can see the utility in tracking these B2s moving to Diego Garcia a few weeks ago was a worthwhile investment of time and resources. Of course, we will never really know what that initial deployment was about, but my gut assessment is that it was probably a training run for uh seeing if they could run out of Diego Garcia efficiently and identify any deficiencies that may exist either on the ground or with support staff or logistics or anything like that. That initial deployment could also have been a pre-attack plan, right? They could have been running drills, exercises, uh and maybe they had have planned to attack then when they first moved there. But either way, six more are headed back to Diego Garcia right now. At least six more, I should say. We don't really know exactly how many. That small detail is important to note because we know that there are at least six different call signs that were uh observed talking to air traffic control. Obviously, B2s are not going to show up on flight tracking websites, right? But we we can intercept their communications with civilian air traffic control uh while they're being routed throughout the United States. So, we know how many there are. Sort of. We know that there are at least six, but there could be more than that. The reason I want to stress this is because there were a total of eight refuelers noted cutting patterns in the sky to refuel these uh B2s after they took off. So, for those of you who are maybe not aware of how bomber aircraft usually work, the way that it normally happens is if a bomber is very heavy and laden with bombs and they're carrying very heavy cargo, what they'll normally do is they'll take off from their base and uh get up to altitude, which expends on an awful lot of fuel. And once they're up there at altitude, they will hop on the tanker and top off their fuel tanks and then go to where they need to go. This has been a common tactic used since aerial refueling became a thing. And that appears to be what occurred this morning over Kansas. Either way, we know that at least six B2s are heading to the Pacific. Like I said, it could be Diego Garcia. It could be Guam. Guam would be a longer distance to Iran, so it would be less efficient and they would need to refuel many more times than just from Diego Garcia. However, we also have to remember there are already assets at Diego Garcia. There are currently four B-52s that are still there. And now there are six F-15s as well for protection of the bombers and for escorts and things like that. So my guess is that they're probably headed to Diego Garcia. But again, we'll see. So that's pretty much what we have for now with regards to strategic movement. I do want to stress though that this slide here is a little bit misleading because this is not everything that's been deployed. I've left off most of the other NATO assets as well as the domestic assets in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, right? They both have, you know, air forces and these numbers are a little bit wonky sometimes. So, don't get hung up on the exact number of airframes. All you need to know, all anyone needs to know is that there's a substantial amount of American Air Force aircraft throughout the entire Middle East right now. So, that's more or less how the situation stands right now with regards to strategic movement. There's not a lot more that I can add to the story here. I can just tell you where the aircraft are at. I can tell you where they're probably going to go, and that's about it. Normally, we could look at the geopolitical situation and take statements by world leaders and other indicators for some kind of conflict going on and kind of factor all of this in to make an assessment, but statements by pretty much all world leaders have been very wildly variable and contradictory in most cases. So, we can't really go off of what the White House is verbally stating. All we can go off of are their actions. So, that's more or less all that I have for the intel side of things. If you want to punch out now, you can feel free to do so. But what I wanted to do now is give a brief crash course in mitigating risk. Obviously, there is absolutely nothing that the average citizen can do right now to prevent their nation from going to war. It's just not happening. If the decision is made, the decision is made. You can call your senator all you want. You can scream about it on Twitter all you want, but you're not going to change it. This is now a military operation, right? But what you can do is assess the risk that these geopolitical events halfway around the world bring to you and your family as well as mitigate those risks. So let's briefly talk about that. I know risk assessment is everyone's least favorite topic, but it's one of the most important things that I can think of uh when it comes to the prepared citizen community today and not a lot of people are talking about it. And when it is talked about, well, you know, maybe there's slightly better ways of doing it. But one of the biggest problems that I see in the prepared citizen community today is risk aversion. People not wanting to take risks because of fear of what might happen. Well, in the world of basic risk assessment and risk management, we have to remember that yes, we can assess the risk of something being very very high. But we can also mitigate that risk down to an acceptable level. Right? Life is full of risk. Sometimes the world's a pretty dangerous place, right? and we're going to have to make do the best we can, even though we can't remove all risk from a situation, which is where this handy dandy risk assessment chart comes in. Risk assessment can be thought of in terms of likelihood and consequence. How likely is it that something will happen? And if it does happen, how bad will it be? That's pretty much what risk assessment is in a nutshell. The classic example used in many OSHA classes is the case of a construction worker on a job site, right? If a construction worker is on a job site where they're laying bricks or something like that, the chances of someone dropping a brick, you know, from an elevated ele elevated position is pretty high, right? So, when it comes to the likelihood of a brick falling on your head, it's probably probably quite likely. We may say that that's like a B on this chart for example. And of course, the severity is also quite high as well, right? If a brick falls on your head, it will indeed cause catastrophic damage to you, right? So all in all, if we say that the chance of a brick falling on your head is pretty likely and the consequence of it falling on your head is catastrophic, we may say that the risk ends up being critical or high depending on how you want to, you know, assess that risk. There are many different ways of doing it, but this is just a highle thing. Now, does this mean because we've got a high risk or a critical risk, does this does this mean that we're never going to lay a brick ever again? No, of course not. We can do the second part which the preparedness community forgets which is mitigation. If we wear a hard hat for instance, the damage the consequence of that brick hitting us in the head comes way down. The chances are we're probably not going to die, right? And you may be able to be treated by medical professionals for instance oros being a hospital outpatient, right? So now the risk is down to medium, right? We forget that mitigation step. So we can say that the risk now is critical but it's been mitigated down to a medium. Right? Now there are a lot of different ways of doing this. There's a bunch of other nuance there. Right? But for the most part this is why this is so important because this risk analysis and this risk mitigation part especially the mitigation part helps us to have something to do that is productive during a contingent situation. We may not be able to change that brick falling. All right? We may not be able to change that bomb falling in the Middle East, but we can certainly mitigate the effects to us if or when that does happen. We may not think about it, but all disaster preparedness, all the prepping and the, you know, disaster preparedness, even just preparing for a hurricane, this is risk assessment and mitigation. We may not break out a chart and figure out exactly what the risk is and we may not, you know, crunch the numbers on it, but we think about it passively in our heads every time we uh go fill up our gas tank right before a hurricane or something like that. So, the process is already ongoing. Human beings naturally do this, right? It's just that now during times of crisis, uh it it's more helpful to be a little bit more doctrinal in things that you can do, which we'll get to in a moment. And finally, one thing I wanted to address specifically when it comes to risk assessment, risk mitigation, and the current situation in the Middle East, I wanted to make sure that everyone does not make the mistake of letting hindsight affect and reduce your risk assessment. So, let me just tell you what's going to happen, right? If the United States backs down and if uh the United States comes to some sort of diplomatic agreement with Iran and we decide to not drop any bombs in Iran and we all go home, all these aircraft go home, I'll tell you what's going to happen. You're going to have an awful lot of people, probably a lot of influencers, big accounts on social media, things like that, who are going to mock you and retroactively make it seem like there was never really a chance that this could happen anyway. That's exactly what's going to happen. I fully understand the the argument from the whole, you know, nothing ever happens crowd. You know, we've all seen the memes, right? But I think that this is also a toxic cancer when it comes to risk management. This is a huge problem because people are are not willing to stick their neck out there and say, "Hey, I was operating under the information that I had at the time and you were not going to make me feel bad or feel embarrassed for thinking that this was was going to happen." This is something that is not good. It is the result of the terminally online uh individuals who have the luxury of not really being pressed for any sort of hard decision uh in their lives. And unfortunately, this seeps over into our own risk assessment, right? What I would encourage all of you to do is do not let this line of thinking change the way that you think. If you are doing the right thing, if you are looking at what's going on, you are taking in as much objective information as possible sprinkled with maybe some analysis from people that you trust here and there. You're forming your own opinions. You're using all of the tools at your disposal to determine what the truth is. You're weighing all of the impact and consequences of all of this sort of thing. and you're coming to the conclusion on your own like I have done that this is a very serious situation which is that we're probably going to go to war with Iran or at least drop some bombs there. Right? If you have done all of that then don't let anyone make you feel embarrassed for thinking that this uh might have happened at the time. I think pretty much anyone that would make it this far into the video would very much hope that we don't actually get involved in another desert war. Maybe that's just me. I don't know. But I would think that generally speaking, we would probably not go to war unless we have to to defend the American homeland. And anything short of that is probably not such a great idea. But regardless of that, it seems like we're going to do it anyway. You know, if we're moving around a substantial percentage of the US Air Force to make uh make preparations for such if we're moving around probably 80% of the operational strategic stealth bombers that we have, you know, pardon me for thinking that something might actually happen, right? I would be very glad in 2 weeks to report back. Ah, nothing actually happened. It was all the whole situation stood down and everything was hunky dory, right? But you're not going to make me feel embarrassed for taking the preparations that I need to do to make sure that we're prepared as best we can be. And speaking of last minute readiness, here are the things that you can do right now just to make sure that everything's all good to go. Right. One of the very first things you can do is check the fuel level in your vehicles. This also has a very practical impact because if we end up bombing Iran in over the weekend, then gas prices are going to skyrocket, right? So either way, gas is pretty expensive today anyway because it's the weekend. But still something to keep in mind if you're so inclined to do so. Same thing with batteries uh in your AMFM radios, Noah weather radios, handheld radios, your valve fangs. Make sure everything's charged up and good to go. Same thing with things like power banks for charging your smartphones and laptops. And of course, the standard food supply, water supply, and prescription medications and medical supplies are always good to have on hand. I know I rushed through that really quickly, so if you want more details, uh there are many, many guides on the internet, uh for what you need to have on hand. What I would recommend you do is just go to the FEMA website. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about FEMA these days. However, I think FEMA is a good resource because one, it's a.gov website, right? Ready.gov, of and it's something that you can easily text to a family member who is maybe not the most prepared person and right there on one page they can see a checklist of things that they need to have on hand, right? It would be something that you can casually nudge nudge someone to do. One of the biggest problems for basic disaster preparedness these days is that a lot of people just are not interested, especially family members who may not understand that that a little bit of very very ultra basic preparedness is necessary during the co years. I think a lot of people went gung-ho on the whole prepper kind of game and a lot of people got burned out on it and a lot of people got turned off uh from this uh idea because of well just you know the optics of it sometimes which is why I like to rely on a lot of these you know governmentmade guides for people who may not uh be aware of even the very ultra basic stuff. So so that's one thing that I recommend if you're in Europe check and see if your nation has a uh civil defense guide. This is less of a social pariah sort of situation in Europe because a lot of nations have actually made these uh in case of crisis or war publications. This one is actually from Sweden. It's got some good information in it. Um it's also helpful for Americans to just have just another general checklist to go by. Most of the time these European guides are specific to the nation that issues them though. So, for instance, there's a lot of things with regards to like civil defense shelters and whistle blasts and siren sounds which don't apply to us here in the United States, but it's still a good uh publication to take a look at. All of the links to these resources will be in the description box below as usual. But finally, I know saying all of that, I do want to stress that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Focusing on disaster preparedness and the basics of being prepared for a contingent situation is just something that we can do right now with our own hands, right? So instead of sitting here and waiting for something to happen, we can we can do something like this. I do not know if the basics of disaster preparedness are going to be especially useful in the situation. I know a lot of people who may want to try to stoke fear or something like that. Maybe very convinced that the very minute that we drop a bomb in Iran, all these sleeper cells are going to activate in the United States and we're going to have this mass pandemonium and it's World War II, right? I'm not convinced on that. I personally think that's probably a little bit overhyped to be honest, but it's still something to think about. If you want to know what I think, yeah, I think that the very minute that the United States drops bombs in Iran, if that does go ahead, like we think it might, uh, I think that probably a whole lot of nothing is going to happen in the United States, maybe some protests and riots, which get kinetic, maybe a lonewolf attack here and there. Uh, just kind of like what we saw with Gaza when that conflict was at its height. We saw uh several lone wolf attacks and things like that around the United States. Protests will become very kinetic because obviously the situation in the Middle East is very divisive even amongst uh groups which normally protest, right? So you're going to have uh most events becoming more kinetic and things like that. But I'm not projecting doomsday the very minute that we uh decide to get involved with uh striking Iran. But I cannot say that for certain. And that is why we prepare for unforeseen circumstances. Things that we may not have thought about may happen. Who knows? Panicking does not help, but also doing nothing uh is not helpful either. So either way, we'll make do the best we can. We'll hope that things simmer down, but we'll also be prepared just in case they don't. Right? That's what it's all about. Nothing more than that. So that's pretty much all I have. Uh finishing up today with the intercepted ghost net reports. This week's uh Ghostnet uh meeting was quite good. My antenna was a little bit wonky, I guess, this week. So I got a lot of partial messages from a lot of people, but I didn't get a whole lot of solid reports. So it's just kind of peace meal. Uh, one thing that I did want to remind everyone for those of you who may have been doing the ghost net for a while is that uh, I do have this whole uh, strategic radio concept. I will admit it sounds a little lary, but essentially I created this uh, guide uh, this these couple of pages in the Ghostnet handbook which essentially answer the question of how concerned do I need to be, right? Is it worth dragging my HF radio out of storage out of its backpack, right? and setting the thing up and sitting there and monitoring it. To answer that question, I have really kind of created this strategic radio condition concept or Stradcon concept. Essentially, just levels of readiness for what I personally think would be worth uh doing. And just to cut right to the chase, I'm probably going to be at StradCon 1 for the next few days at least, just to, you know, keep things networking, keep JSA call running and things like that, just in case. I don't think we're going to have any communications issues. Even if we do start bombing stuff in Iran, I I don't think we're going to have any problems with that. But you never know, right? It's uncertainty and uh sometimes it's it's helpful to get away from social media, get away from the internet and and talk to a real person, right? And uh exchange information that way. So that's my personal plan for the next few days. Um just to see how things are going to go. But yeah, we now see how all this can be kind of a helpful tool. I know that it's not exactly beginner friendly. It's very difficult to learn how to do, but we've gone from having nothing to having something. And I think that this is a helpful tool to have for those of you who know how to use it. And especially the people who want to take the time to go through my Ghostnet playlist here on YouTube. There are plenty of ways that you can get involved and start listening to the messages on the Ghostnet for free without doing anything and uh start getting familiar with the system. So again, more to come on that, but I just wanted to remind everyone that there's a lot of uh doctrine in the guides that you can run through and uh try out, see what works, see what doesn't work, and see how uh it can help you stay informed during a crisis. So that's pretty much all I have for today. Thank you guys all for sticking with me. I know this one's been all over the place today, but hopefully it's been helpful, and I uh I really hope that peace can prevail, but just in case it doesn't, we will be as prepared as we can possibly be. And I suppose that's pretty much the best that we can do. So, thank you guys for all of your support. Hopefully, we'll have some good news on Monday. And we will see you next time.