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Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

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Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#71

Post by [deleted] »

mrweasel wrote: post #18
i67vw3 wrote: post #2

Not every war can be fought from air, there needs to be soldiers on the ground. In fight against ISIS, the Iraqi amry, Shia Militias, Kurds and others were ground forces while Allies were in Air. In Afghanistan & Gulf War, US forces were on ground. But in these "conflict", no party is ready to send ground forces, ground forces to stop the air drones, ship drones etc. So the "blockade" will probably continue.

There was an article somewhere a few days ago, where the author raised the question: Why buy tanks in a world of drone warfare. Something like that. I see this as much the same "problem". Drones can't really take or hold territory, they can only deny access to it. At some point you need people and armoured vehicles on the ground. The US is facing the same issue in Iran. You can bomb all you like, but a bomber, like a…

[deleted]

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#72

Post by arkensaw »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14
meindnoch wrote: post #7

Could they?

Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.

Trump casually talks about destroying the energy infrastructure, power plants, desalination plants etc. This is one of the most controversial things that the Russians do in Ukraine - attack the grid when it's cold to try and freeze people to death. To willingly deprive a country of 100,000,000 people of water and power coming into summer would surely be a war-crime.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#73

Post by fooker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
fooker wrote: post #6

At the heart of this is the fact that America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale. High tech interceptors and missiles and aircraft carriers are great, but with China's help these are outnumbered by three (soon to be four) orders of magnitude. It's unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes, with not much in between.

> America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale We make plenty of stuff at scale. We just haven’t designed any of military around it since WWII. > unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America.

> We make plenty of stuff at scale

Maybe this video of a rather famous YouTuber trying to manufacture something as simple as a grill scrubber with a US supply chain would help you understand how bad it is?

https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#74

Post by meindnoch »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14
meindnoch wrote: post #7

Could they?

Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.

Carpet bombing didn't even break Vietnam. It didn't break WWII Germany either.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#75

Post by fooker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55
giantg2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We make plenty of stuff at scale." Not the stuff that matters (chips, electronics, metals, etc). We don't even have a primary lead smelter, which we would likely need if we got into a peer conflict. It's also important to note that the US lacks the ability to quickly pivot and set up plants. Much of the knowledge to do so has been disappearing as employment in that sector has been steadily declining for decades. Sur…

We suck at ultra-heavy industry that outputs commodities. We're great at light industry, or specialised heavy industry, which includes a lot of electronics. You're correct on inflexibility.

Can you give some specific examples of what light industry we are great at?

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#76

Post by roenxi »

poulpy123 wrote: post #19

I'm always perturbed to see people talk of mass killings so casually

There aren't a lot of alternatives - the amount of mass killing going on right now is unusually high. People can't spend all day frothing with moral outrage at the horror of it all. If something is routine there isn't much of an alternative than to discuss it as routine.

This article is actually unusually good, I wouldn't be surprised if the site was generally anti-war. It isn't unusual for the level of analysis to be "we're the in-group, we're morally right, they're the out-group, we can't imagine they're competent, lets kill them it'll be easy". The moment people start doing serious analysis they become well-armed pacifists. As a case study; this war is part of a trend of the US hurting itself in aid of ... nothing useful for the US. The only silver lining is I don't see the Trump presidency surviving this and that might be a lesson to the next guy about trying to start fights.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#77

Post by Someone »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14
meindnoch wrote: post #7

Could they?

Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.

: Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible.

Could that work? It didn’t end well in Vietnam, which is about a fifth of the land area, and, in 1970, half the current population of Iran.

Also, they’ll pack a bigger punch, but I think the USA has way fewer bombers now.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#78

Post by fooker »

petesergeant wrote: post #49
fooker wrote: post #6

At the heart of this is the fact that America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale. High tech interceptors and missiles and aircraft carriers are great, but with China's help these are outnumbered by three (soon to be four) orders of magnitude. It's unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes, with not much in between.

Sorry, at the heart of this is that the Commander in Chief and Secretary of War are idiots. It's not clear how any of this situation would be any different if America had a dramatically higher production capacity.

These are orthogonal problems.

Getting into this war was stupid.

Being unable to win it is also pretty bad.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#79

Post by aryonoco »

standardUser wrote: post #16

Iran's deep investment in asymmetric warfare is paying serious dividends. You wouldn't expect a nation that's being bombed day and night, essentially at will, to still hold so many cards. Not only is the US completely incapable of strong-arming the straight open, but the rate of missile and drone attacks out of Iran and its proxies has been accelerating the last few days, as has the rate of successful hits.

Since 1979, every US president has known that the US can send a couple of aircraft carriers and bomb the shit out of Iran.

And yet none did. Because they listened to their security chiefs and advisors who would tell them, Iran is a highly complex multiethnic geographically complex country. If you can contain it with diplomacy, that’s preferable.

When listening to “experts” becomes taboo, there will be consequences.

The inhabitants of the Iranian plateau have been the subject of the ire of the military superpower of their era quite a few times. Alexander the Great conquered them and set their capital and their sacred books on fire and yet a mere 70 years later his Hellenic dynasty was gone. They were conquered by the Arabs and were forced to give up their religion but somehow, unlike Egypt and Syria/Lebanon and many other ancient places, these guys somehow kept their language and distinct culture intact. They were decimated (maybe even worse ) by Genghis Khan and followed quickly by Tamerlane and yet, it was their Turco-Mongol rulers who ended up adopting their language and culture.

The inhabitants of this land have deep memory of knowing how to suffer, to endure and to survive. It wasn’t that long ago that from Constantinople to New Delhi, the language of the Imperial Court was Persian.

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