> Iran was big and hostile, but relatively unimportant. How unimportant was Bin Laden?
Bin Laden was not from Iran.
Miscellanea: The War in Iran
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#652The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. In the fantasy im…
It's not just this administration. Everything with the US military has been going clearly downhill since the Millennium Challenge 2002. [1] It was, appropriately enough, a wargame simulating an invasion of Iran. It was a major event involving preparation in years and thousands of individual operators. When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian…
This is an odd place to put a stake in the ground--there are a number of macro trends that have been going on for far longer (e.g. the military-industrial complex, the Cold War, Congress, American football), as well as a few others that have only really come to a head more recently (e.g. demographics, media spheres/tribalization). I would argue that our failure to learn lessons from the Millennium Challenge has a massive overlap with our failure to learn from Ukraine--not to mention Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam... The military is not monolithic--remember that the Millennium Challenge was more or less a sparring bout between two parts of the military with different philosophies--and it really takes something like an existential war for meritocracy and common sense to reassert themselves to a meaningful degree.
A smaller point: all military exercises are heavily scripted--it's more or less impossible for them to be otherwise, as you just can't simulate the details of war that matter without actually killing people, breaking things, and giving up your secret game plans. Usually the goal of this sort of thing is to make sure that everything (people, equipment, doctrine) works together more or less as intended, and people have the experience leading and operating in larger units than they do on a routine basis. The PR people then spin it into an unqualified and historic success, validation of our technology and tactics against the forces of evil, blah blah blah. It is still very difficult to draw the right lessons from these sorts of things--even more so when the civilian leadership of the military has 99 things to consider besides a certain kind of pure military effectiveness (and although I have strong feelings here, we're still doing quite well on the tactical and operational levels in spite of everything).
Fun fact: the Millennium Challenge is still taught as a case study in basic officer training, at least in the Marine Corps (well, probably--it definitely was a little over a decade ago).
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#653[flagged]
I find it quite amusing.
Moderation? LMAO. This is peak HN.
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#654The war should be over by March 31st. Netanyahu has a deadline. He is facing a snap election. If the Knesset doesn't pass a budget by March 31st, Israel votes 90 days later, and Netanyahu is not expected to win. Worse for Netanyahu, he's on trial for corruption charges, and once he's out of office, he's probably headed for jail. The war was intended to give Netanyahu's popularity a boost, but that did not work out. […
This toothpaste is probably not going in the tube by March 31, even if Netanyahu tries to scrape it back in.
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed type drones And where exactly are you planning to operate that trawler out of? Or are you going to send it across the Atlantic on its own (well, with a couple of tankers accompanying it, but never mind that) and hope no-one pays attention? > operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at the hyped prototyp…
I assume that smuggling drones into the US is easier than it was for Ukraine to smuggle them into Russia.
You know what they say when you assume.
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#656Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its harder. 20% of Russians(my estimate) have connections to Ukraine (relatives, friends, or were born there) and could be Ukrainian agents, there are lots of land routes how you can smuggle stuff. Things are not as well connected between Iran and US.
Agents in the US would just be normal citizens asking for money/crypto. You'd need to find fools to deceive, but a lot of people fall for scams to get small gains. Many hard drug users in particular are often rather self centered in my limited experience. Or if you wanted to attack refineries, you could possibly select some climate change activists to do it for you? Or find angry children to do it. Make things go ban…
We're getting into Tom Clancy novel territory here.
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#657Joe Kent [1] offered a possible way out of this - however slim the odds might be. Trump's one quality that may save us all from this quagmire is his ability to do a complete 180 on his previous committed path - "TACO" as his detractors like to call it. Like he did with ICE in Minneapolis, or in Yemen last year when he quit his bombing campaign after one month. If he could be convinced to just declare victory over Ira…
I am just as annoyed at the Democrats, but let us not always pretend the Republicans lack agency. The majority Republican congress could do any number of things to curb his power, but they choose to abstain.
What would the democrats need to do for you to not be annoyed at them?
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
The game being reset makes sense - time and resources have been spent to make it happen, and it's best to get as much value from those resources as possible. Of course this means learning the lesson of how the first defeat happened. You reset so that you can learn more lessons. If they ignored the lesson of the first defeat, that's stupid. But the reset itself makes sense.
The reset isn't the problem, the entirely nerfing the Red team is the problem. The US took steps to fail to learn from the exercise before it had even finished.
what exactly does one learn from hypothetical light-speed motorcycles?
Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you listen to the director of counterterrorism explain what happened in the run up to him resigning it fits pretty well the theory that Trump is compromised (possibly with kompromat) by a certain Middle Eastern country.
I mean, Joe Kent resigning in protest over the war with Iran is admirable, but Joe Kent is also a vocal anti-Semite who was upset that US policy was being directed by Israel. And I don't mean that Joe Kent dislikes the Israeli government or its actions specifically, I mean he engages in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and associates with anti-Semites like Nick Fuentes.
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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
After being restarted, the red (opposing) force general resigned due to the restarted game having what amounted to a scripted end, with little to no latitude for the red force to exercise creativity in strategy or tactics. Among the highlights, the red force were required to turn on and leave on their AA radars so that blue force HARMs could take them out, and the red force was prohibited from attempting to shoot dow…
Similar complaints from Trump the other day “So, it’s it’s uh little unfair. You know, you win a war, but they have no right to be doing what they’re doing.” https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/2033768757688934424
It’s all the VAR referee’s fault.