Live data from Hacker News

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

responsiblestatecraft.org

121–130 of 1001 posts

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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, there's going to be a dumbenough general to try to paratrooper their way in. They've spent the past year trying to cull "dysloyal" troops, so at some point, the delusion will surface is an absurdly dumb attempt. Hard to see it any other way.

US forces are not partisan and not culled, they're mostly the same entity they were last year, but with a few Generals asked to retire. (Edit: highly professional I might add. There are quirks, and obvious hints of 'nationalist bias' - but that's to be expected. They are not the 'cultural problem' we see on the news - at least not for now. They lean 'normal') The current Joint Chiefs is a bit obsequious but he's not…

Theyre culling all branches for loyalty. You arnt paying attention or you thinl those who arnt being promoted are more DEI.

THE rest of your screed follows from inattentive disorder.

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

#122
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.

Correction: Hegseth is a crusader. He is a super zealous religious fanatic who very much wants to destroy as many Muslims as possible. He has a crusades tattoo and openly talks about killing heathens in his WEEKLY SERMON. He might be an idiot alcoholic, but he very much knows what he is doing.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this shift in carrier-based projection of power in the era of low-cost drones Nothing in this war has suggested carriers are obsolete. A carrier that launches drones and fields an anti-drone strike group would be amazing. We don’t have that. (And even what we do have is great in the carrier department, it’s given us air parity to superiority from way offshore.)

Both can be true - carriers and traditional air force are not obsolete but also western armies are unprepared to deal with the threat posed by a large number of cheap drones which can quickly deplete traditional air defense (based on SAM systems).

Wasn’t this the exact sort of reason we were developing laser weapons? I thought at least one US Navy ship was equipped with one now.

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

#124
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US public discourse is so dehumanized today that anyone who is not "with them" is literally not a human anymore. Even within the country itself "the leftards" are considered an obstacle which can be removed if only enough force is applied. Sending armed agents at protesters is seen as being the same thing as sending pest control to clear out beaver dams on the creek. Nobody cares what the beavers think, they are…

[flagged]

Jan 6th.

Even the example you gave is incorrect. Lol. It's so obvious when conservatives cherry pick information to placate their views.

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

#125
“during WWII, the US Navy… winning the U-boat war in the Atlantic”

Sounds like typical US revisionist history.

They developed ASDIC? HF/DF? Hedgehog? Even the depth charge?

No, that was all the British.

I would say technological development plus the Enigma decrypts were the biggest factor.

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

#126

Brightest minds of US were too focused on displaying ads and making teenagers addicted to tik tokies-like stuff instead of working security, defense, etc You couldve seen anti militsry industry sentiment on HN for years, which apparently worked for US adversaries, who knows who was behind that propaganda :) Inb4: im from eu

The US no longer uses its army for defense. Nobody in their immediate region dares attack them, they're too powerful ("Godzilla", in the words of John Mearsheimer). All the wars that the US has fought since WWII are nothing to do with defense. Just look at the Wikipedia article on "power projection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection The leader image is ... a US aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz). That's…

>The whole of US society seems to be extremely tired with those "forever wars",

This is the main thing I would disagree with, as an American who rubs elbows with conservatives quite a bit.

A large amount of Republican and conservative Americans want war. They're primed for a war they haven't had this generation. There are a lot of relatively young conservatives who are eager for war. A weird number of Republicans don't think we lost Iraq or Afghanistan, or a few other wars, so they aren't tired of it yet.

Like 15-25% of Americans also believe in some form of the end times prophecy involving Israel. I'm not kidding about this. The number really is that high. A lot might not openly state that they believe in it, but they were raised under a religious teaching that says it will happen. Hegseth, literally, has a crusades tattoo and openly talks about eradicating Muslims on his weekly or monthly sermon.

But yes a majority of americans, like 60%, are extremely tired of ongoing wars. But I can also drive to towns in the western US where trump still has majority support and they will openly say they support the Iran war. America is really polarized and a lot of conservatives only talk about this stuff to family now.

I grew up super rural and have to deal/work with very religious conservative Americans often enough. There are a lot more of them than people think. They've just learned to self-segregate and keep to themselves and say things a certain way.

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

#127
post #50

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.

My Iranian ex colleague shares very interesting opinion. They trained during his army time to blow everything in the region up. So if things escalate badly the oil and gas importing countries will stay with a fraction of needed oil and gas for years. There is no backup infrastructure anywhere in the world. It will take years to rebuild the infrastructure. It will destroy world’s economy better than nukes.

I kinda expected scorched earth from Iran, or any oil producing state tbh, didn’t Saddam do this retreating from Kuwait?

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

#128

Whether or not professional military strategists and planners anticipated this shift in carrier-based projection of power in the era of low-cost drones, it is nearly certain that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States military has not. And if the Commander is involved in the either the day-to-day operations or the strategic level of planning, I can’t imagine that whatever reasoning about these shifts in power dy…

> this shift in carrier-based projection of power in the era of low-cost drones Nothing in this war has suggested carriers are obsolete. A carrier that launches drones and fields an anti-drone strike group would be amazing. We don’t have that. (And even what we do have is great in the carrier department, it’s given us air parity to superiority from way offshore.)

> Nothing in this war has suggested carriers are obsolete.

What are ours doing during this war?

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

#129
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correction: Hegseth is a crusader. He is a super zealous religious fanatic who very much wants to destroy as many Muslims as possible. He has a crusades tattoo and openly talks about killing heathens in his WEEKLY SERMON. He might be an idiot alcoholic, but he very much knows what he is doing.

> Correction: Hegseth is a crusader. [...SNIP...] He might be an idiot alcoholic, but he very much knows what he is doing.

That sound like he knows what he wants to do, but that's not the same as knowing what he is doing.

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

#130
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.

I think there's very little to be learned from Ukrainian technology. They dont have unprecedented servos, software, or manufacturing.

What they have is a dire situation that drives efficient and pragmatic proucurement. This is much harder to export.

Post reply on HN