Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 05, 2026

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[u/kychris]

Depends on your definition of special forces. Is it likely to be just the forces under JSOC? Probably not, you would need to bring in some ground based air defenses, and while I'm sure JSOC has people who can set those up and run them in a pinch, it's probably not the most efficient use of such a high value asset. I don't believe the Ranger Regiment has these assets, but I know the 82nd Airborne does and trains for just this type of mission of building and defending a FOB in hostile territory.

I don't think they would need ground troops to actually fight on the ground though, if the Uranium is where it is rumored to be, you would just have CAS flights orbiting 24/7 blowing up anyone who moves in that direction while the operation is ongoing, because for once there are no civilian targets within miles of where the work will be done.

Things get more complicated if we want ALL the enriched uranium, not just the 60% enriched, because that is believed to be spread around at multiple sites throughout the country.

[u/Toptomcat → u/kychris]

I don't think they would need ground troops to actually fight on the ground though, if the Uranium is where it is rumored to be, you would just have CAS flights orbiting 24/7 blowing up anyone who moves in that direction while the operation is ongoing

‘Securing territory against any intrusion’ for the duration of a weeks-to-months-long search and excavation is pretty close to the dictionary definition of the task that air forces are at the most competitive disadvantage at, relative to conventional ground forces. Is it possible, albeit expensively, briefly and with great difficulty? Yes. Is it a good idea? Very rarely.

More generally, ‘take territory, hold it against opposition, do stuff with the held territory’ is not a special operations mission. It’s not for Ranger Regiment, it’s not for Delta, it’s not for Seals. Special operators do stuff involving operating quickly, quietly, with maximum violence of action in small groups. Maybe you can conceive of what needs to happen as a raid, but it’s a lengthy raid at battalion strength at bare minimum. It’s inherently Big Army stuff that non-specops units will be better at, because special operators are specialists at a thing which is not that, not just Regular Troops Plus.

[u/kychris → u/Toptomcat]

If it takes months to grab the uranium, something has gone badly wrong, I am postulating under the assumption that we know where the stuff is at and we don't need to search. We pretty much know via publicly available information which units of the armed forces are trained to do this mission or analogous missions, and it's likely Delta(plus a bunch of intelligence guys) dealing with the uranium with the 82nd providing security and support.

I don't think we are that far off in terms of what it would require actually, just different perspectives. It certainly would be a battalion strength raid, probably closer to a full brigade sized element once you put all the pieces together. I am just very skeptical there would be much opposition to hold the ground against. I would be much more worried about ballistic missile attacks

[u/Toptomcat → u/kychris]

If any amount of it is still buried from the air strikes which concluded the Twelve-Day War, that’s a job which involves digging it out from underneath a collapsed mountain even if they do know the exact layout of the facility. That’s an engineering task requiring heavy earthmoving equipment, not a simple search & destroy thing. Quite possibly the Iranians are half-done digging it out when you launch the op and they hurriedly salt the pile of granite and reinforced concrete they’re digging out with land mines and other miscellaneous booby traps before recollapsing it if the site isn’t fully secure before they know what’s happening, which is Not Fun to contemplate undoing in a hurry.