That's my stalker troll, I think most of its posts are done by a (fairly poorly programmed) bot. I've seen over a dozen before after a single post that I've made, it's quite pitiful. I suspect it's the same troll that has been stalking rsilvergun for the last several years, and creimer before him.

So, "whenever we wanna".

Iran has never been involved in any terror operations to the scale of the US. Just the Contra terrorists, directly funded, trained, armed, and directed by the US, killed a minimum of 30,000 people. The Hmongs in Southeast Asia may have approached or even exceeded that number. The Afghan mujahideen's death toll of civilians was thousands even before they became al Qaeda. The various US-funded right-wing groups in Colombia terrorized the countryside worse than the FARC. To this day the US continues to fund at least a dozen terrorist groups across Africa. All Shi'ia terrorism, whether associated with Iran or not, combined might have a death toll of a couple hundred, tops.

TFA doesn't mention a court order, so apparently they didn't even require one. They've done that repeatedly with people's iCloud data and their location data, so I'm not surprised. No idea why the fanbois seem to think that Apple gives a shit about their privacy, I've never seen any indication of it.

Russia only attacked civilian infrastructure after Ukraine spent 8 years doing it.

I'm sorry, but WTactualF? Are you unaware of the last 80 years of US military history? Damn.

For that matter, which I didn't think of until later, Kazakhstan has a border with China and ports on the Caspian Sea. I like your idea better, though.

Of course not, and the F-150 isn't the same truck as when it was introduced in 1975. It's still the same basic vehicle except now it's got power steering, you can't get it with a manual transmission, and it has air conditioning. Sure, the Patriot has had some improvements, especially a better radar system (which now needs gallium that China won't sell us), but it's still the same basic vehicle.

This wouldn't be allowed if the Chinese government didn't approve to a certain extent. I'm wondering if this is their way of allowing the BRICS countries to arm themselves with a weapon the Empire has no defense against.

Interesting claim. Why is it then that Patriot batteries in Ukraine keep getting destroyed? It couldn't possibly be that a weapon developed in the 1980s is inadequate for usage four decades later, could it? Nah, that's just crazy talk...

Easy to shoot down, until you run out of interceptors and have to spend half an hour or more to reload while the next wave is incoming. Then there is the simple fact that if you're spending $8,000,000 (two THAAD missiles, which are fired in pairs) to shoot down a $100,000 missile that's a serious self-own. (Of course if you don't shoot it down you may lose your $500,000,000 radar set.)

Heat dissipation is a major issue with those systems. Throw a dozen drones at it and it might be able to handle it, throw three dozen in its direction and it will overheat and be the biggest infrared target in the region and impossible to miss.

Between the Ukraine and Iran conflicts Western militaries should be panicking, but all they seem to be doing is asking for more money to continue with business as usual and preparing to re-fight the Iraq clusterfuck.

On the other hand there are cartels in Mexico who might want to take out a DEA office or two (if there aren't any which aren't corrupt). On the other hand the Chinese government will have to approve any export license.

It's a car analogy, a hoary old tradition on SlashDot. It's also a rhetorical technique that author uses a lot to make costs relatable to the general public. In a different article he pointed out that a billion dollar radar installation was taken out by a Shahed drone that cost about what you'd pay for a used BMW.

Getting them there wouldn't be much of an issue, Kazakhstan has a border with China and shares the Caspian Sea with Iran.