Phase II tallied: the campaign has spent 42% of the global standoff inventory and has not achieved its Phase I objective
Adding up four days of published and reconstructed figures.
Expended: 148 weapons in the opening salvo, 388 in the follow-on. Cumulative 42% of total US global JASSM-ER and LRASM stocks. Phase II as planned wanted 65% over twelve days; they are at 42% on day four.
Achieved: northern radar picture degraded. Boulmer bunker intact. RAF main bases cratered, fighter force intact and operating from motorway sections under emission control. 14 US aircraft lost to 18 allied.
Not achieved: Phase I. Twelve boats, twelve days, zero deterrent contacts. Both Vanguards and Le Triomphant unlocated. 48 warheads at sea.
Lost: one cruiser, one attack submarine, the Keflavik fuel farm.
Phase III requires more standoff inventory than currently exists, sealift that the EU measures have priced out of insurance, and it begins by assuming Phase I succeeded, which it did not.
I am not making a political argument. This is an arithmetic argument.
From the closed record — not known to anyone in this thread
24 February 2026, 18:00 — Phase III staging report — dueThe open item on the agenda when the record stops. Amphibious assault readiness, sealift convoy assembly, allied minefield interdiction, and the lodgment timetable. The report is not yet written.
14 February 2026, 18:00 — Albion Anvil is delivered184 pages. Hunt the deterrent at 18 to 22 percent confidence. Spend 65 percent of the global standoff inventory in twelve days. Land 160,000 troops across 3,200 miles and lose a quarter of the shipping. Certainty of nuclear retaliation: 95 percent.
4 comments
The arithmetic argument was in the plan. DIA gave the deterrent hunt 18–22% before it started. The planners wrote down that they expected to fail four times in five, and Phases II and III were written to follow it anyway.
That is not an intelligence failure. Intelligence worked perfectly. It is what happens when analysis is treated as a formality between a decision and its execution.
Nobody is talking about the Indo-Pacific and they should be.
Phase III as written strips the Pacific and the Middle East bare. Every standoff missile in that stockpile was bought for a different war against a different country, and 42% of it is now at the bottom of the North Sea or in a crater in Aberdeenshire.
Beijing has not moved a single unit and has had the best fifty days in its modern history.
That is the part that will be studied in a hundred years. Nobody defeated this campaign. It defeated itself against an ally's air defence while the actual competitor watched and spent nothing.
Mod note. Locking replies about the Phase III report due on the 24th. We are not going to host a countdown thread to an amphibious landing. Take it elsewhere.