Malcolm Nance has been under bombardment himself, in eastern Ukraine, where his unit stayed sane by tallying Russian impacts and laughing between them.
He is certain the same scene is running inside Iran's mountain tunnels right now: a tally scratched on a wall, tea brewing, men waiting for the doors to be dug back open.
The Wall Street Journal all but confirmed it.
Satellite imagery shows Iran rapidly rebuilding what months of strikes destroyed, missile bases, bridges, ports.
No mystery, just arithmetic: a country of 93 million clears rubble with shovels and excavators, while Washington would bid a quarter billion dollar contract for the same job.
That arithmetic also breaks the escalation talk.
A number making the rounds promises 400 strikes a day.
Desert Storm needed six carriers and every Saudi airbase for that tempo; today three carriers are available, the Gulf bases sit abandoned, and quite possibly HALF of America's global precision missile inventory is already gone, missiles designed for Chinese and Russian defenses.
Iran takes three and a half hours to cross by jet, and his warning was BLUNT:
"You're going to start bombing rubble to bomb rubble."
This war is being measured in sorties. The country underneath it is measured in shovels, and the shovels are winning.
@MalcolmNance
