>>24469505 (PB)

>Rescue operation cover for Uranium extraction.

At first, I considered this angle, as well, but the more I studied the operation, the more I came of the opinion that this was not likely the case. If we were setting up a forward air base like that, we would have come in far heavier. One of the first things we would do is lay down reinforcement grating to prevent exactly what happened to the C-130s and we would have deployed a much more significant ground presence. They were on the ground for 7 hours, that is more than half the time we need to lay down a complete air strip and begin surging in whatever we want.

Ifsehan, itself, also has an airport virtually attached to the nuclear facility which is far more capable of handling heavy lift. We would have "just" taken that.

The other problem is the Uranium, itself. Best intelligence estimates it will take a few weeks of heavy excavation to access. This is not a simple snatch and grab mission. Which is why the proposed forward air base idea to perform such an extraction seemed more like a "we have included this for the sake of completion, but it'd be kind of dumb."

What I suspect they did was deploy an operations force to use shorter range helos to move in and make the grab. There were a lot of IRGC out and about who would rapidly begin to converge once they knew where to go and so they came in pretty heavy. They couldn't make the extraction with the C-130s because the small airstrip they operated out of sank under the load and thus we get the scuttling. They would scuttle the H-6s as well and those may have been counted as disposable to the mission, going in, not planning to fold them up and put them back.

If they were setting up a FOB there, they would have air dropped in the crews to build out the runway and tarmac reinforcement and started landing dozens of aircraft over the course of minutes and rolling things out.

We don't see any signs of reinforcement and the decision to land without it speaks to a decision made under time constraints that would not have been risked otherwise. The decision to bring so little in terms of ground forces is questionable if the goal was to build out an airbase. There is no support equipment left behind, no real fortifications. These are things that would be pushed out and set up in a hurry as among the first things. The fact they weren't, and the lack of any observable cargo in the C-130s, suggests that most of what was in those planes was the scuttled helicopters on the runway.