Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

responsiblestatecraft.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 1001 posts

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

#601

Post by paganel »

bwv848 wrote: post #598
mamonster wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US can fly not only F-35 but even B-52 There is, at this point in time, literally 0 evidence B-52s are flying over Iran with JDAMs. Every single photo we saw of B-52s literally shows them with AGM-158, which means they are launching outside Iran aerospace. The biggest evidence for B-52s not flying over Iran is that there have still not been any losses. Go look at attrition rates in Linebacker 2 for comparison.

OSINTechinical literally had one yesterday https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2038625975332692466

The linked tweet says this:

> USAF B-52H refueling from a KC-135 tanker on its way to strike Iran.

with emphasis on "on its way", so not "over" Iran. So not sure your link proves your original point (which, if I understood right, was that these Americans are flying these bombers over Iran itself).

It's also telling that the Americans haven't managed to gain their much desired air supremacy, lots of Dohuet fanboys in the US Military, hopefully this war will bring their Air Power ambitions a notch or two down (even though I have my doubts).

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

#602

Post by don_esteban »

stickfigure wrote: post #262
Balgair wrote: post #113

In chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front Paul and his unit find an abandoned food cache in the middle of no mans land. Instead of secreting away the food back to their lines where they will have to share it, they decide to just cook and eat it right then and there. But a spotter plane from the allies sees the smoke and then begins shelling their position. Cue a terrifying, if hilarious, scene where the soldier…

> if it should be a ground one, is going to be just like Ukraine is today I do not think this is correct. The problem in Ukraine is that anti-air defenses control the skies, so the only accurate long range fires are expensive missiles in short supply. This seems to not be a problem in Iran. US forces can fly relatively cheap bomb trucks anywhere and drop ordinance on anything. Stealth aircraft and NATO doctrine appar…

Iran is a large country, just getting to Tehran with large-enough force is logistically enormous task.

Complicated by the fact that the logistic convoys can nowadays be trivially decimated by FPVs.

Air superiority is not going to help you much against small dispersed resistance groups with FPVs (ideally fiber optics, so not detectable by emissions from afar).

There is a chance that there will be similar democratization with AA (you will need proper AA missiles, the physics of reaching a fast jet flying high simply demands it), but the distributed passive targeting is made much simpler with current commodity computing and optics.

Achieving AA Denial is difficult, but forcing the attacker to use standoff munitions instead of gravity bombs/close-in air support not so much: shifting the risk of losing an aircraft from 1 in 100000 to 1 in 100 will do it.

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

#603

Post by paganel »

asa400 wrote: post #438
Animats wrote: post #426

A big mistake here was simply underestimating the scale of Iran. Iran has 90,000,000 people. More than 2x Ukraine. More than 2x Germany. More than 2x Iraq. More than any country in Europe. About 2/3 of Russia. Expecting to win a war on the cheap was a fantasy. Especially since Iran has been fighting Israel for years. On the naval front, Ukraine sunk the Moskva with a few truck-mounted missiles. That finally made it u…

> Worst outcome is the US attacks Cuba, Cuba allies with Iran, it turns out that Cuba has been stocking up on Iranian drones, and Cuba becomes a forward base for drone and missile attacks on the southern US. If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon. After 9/11, there's no world in which an…

> flattened

How will the Americans do that? Nuclear bombs? Because it doesn't seem to me that they have the conventional arsenal to flatten a country like Cuba.

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

#604

Post by smackeyacky »

gherkinnn wrote: post #488
mathgradthrow wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the pentagon was like "shit, Iran is bigger than we thought"?

I am certain that Hegseth is facing several, "shit!" moments, at least one of them along those limes, yes.

He doesn’t show any signs of that kind of introspection. The simple answer as to how he is conducting this war is the best one.

He’s a fucking moron.

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

#605

Post by b112 »

don_esteban wrote: post #588
b112 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big mistake here was simply underestimating the scale of Iran. There is value in much of what you're saying in your post, even though I don't necessarily agree 100% with all of it. However, no one involved in planning or starting this attack, underestimated the size of Iran at all. All of that would have been covered by all briefings. The US admin and military knew all of this, and frankly has planned all of this.…

Re: I'd be astonished if 1000s of exit strategies weren't deep planned, maybe a dozen best-outcomes planned, before a single plane bombed anything. The US knows how to exit this. Isn't this just wishfull thinking? I mean, more mature administrations than Trump's have blundered into Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan without real exit strategies... Re: Iranian drones to Russia: Russians now (for quite some time) have their own…

It's not just drones, but parts for drones. It's also munitions, shells, missiles. It's about production volume. The Ukraine is also getting large supplies of the same from the West. No side can produce domestically, what the other can product domestically + import. The imports matter.

It's nice to wave away policing Hormuz, by simply asserting it can't be done. Is this accurate, however?

In terms of oil, the US has recently cut China off from Venezuela as well. Short term supplies are important, "the future", a cloud of probabilities about oil shortags helping China, is not immediately apparent. It's suffering shipment halts from two lead suppliers now, both which were non-open market shipments, and volumes are unclear.

I wonder, what if the Ukraine suddenly stepped up and crippled deliveries of Russian oil to China? Or what if Saudi Arabia was told "don't do that". From where I sit, it's China that's being most directly affected by these actions in terms of energy supply.

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

#606

Post by paganel »

don_esteban wrote: post #594
notepad0x90 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the number of people in Iran matters? I think most of what you said is just speculation, not founded on reality. The only thing that would stop the US from invading Iran in under 3 months is political will. Russia doesn't have the scale and power of the US airforce, or the ability to project that power using the US navy and all the bases in the middle-east. Any comparison with russia at all makes me…

Ufff, just to be clear: Are you saying that invading and conquering Iran won't be much more difficult than doing the same for Afghanistan? I want some of the good stuff you are using!

The non-war obsessed normies are something to behold, that's for sure. Most probably the GP has never looked at the FPV videos coming out of Ukraine, or maybe he somehow thinks that US soldiers are Terminator-like machines who would have nothing to fear from aerial drones.

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

#607

Post by gzread »

chistev wrote: post #590
PunchyHamster wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, the goal is very clear - try to somehow make reps not lose next election and take focus away from PDF files

Moving focus from PDF files has been achieved - at least for now. But how do you make reps not lose next election with this war lingering on the news?

Rig the election? You could pass a law that makes 1/3 of the country ineligible to vote, but makes sure they won't find out until they're at the polling booth. You could also prepare your allied goons to defend polling stations.

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

#608

Post by Jackpillar »

mathgradthrow wrote: post #467
Animats wrote: post #426

A big mistake here was simply underestimating the scale of Iran. Iran has 90,000,000 people. More than 2x Ukraine. More than 2x Germany. More than 2x Iraq. More than any country in Europe. About 2/3 of Russia. Expecting to win a war on the cheap was a fantasy. Especially since Iran has been fighting Israel for years. On the naval front, Ukraine sunk the Moskva with a few truck-mounted missiles. That finally made it u…

You think the pentagon was like "shit, Iran is bigger than we thought"?

If you've been paying attention you'd understand that (1) the US military brass has been almost entirely replaced by MAGA stooges who think the rapture is real and (2) Trump and co 100% thought they could Maduro-esque behead the IRGC and this would be over in a week. The military officials who (correctly) dare not attack Iran aren't in any positions of power any longer.

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

#609

Post by zarzavat »

tommica wrote: post #569
alsetmusic wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also 90,000,000 people doesn't mean 90,000,000 soldiers, especially when a large part of them hate their own regime. You know what engenders nationalism? Attack on your way of life and the murder of someone you know by said attack.

If my countrymen were killed by my government by the thousands, I'd not be super happy about defending that government. If the enemy does the same kind of mindless killing to the civilians, then I would have different ideas.

The truth barely matters anymore. People believe whatever they want to believe, or whatever they are told to believe. You can be sure that Iranians are being blasted with propaganda just the same as Americans are being blasted with propaganda, except that currently Iran is cut off from the internet so the effect is much stronger.

You can't say for sure that you wouldn't wilfully join up if you were in that kind of information environment.

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

#610

Post by mamonster »

bwv848 wrote: post #598
mamonster wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US can fly not only F-35 but even B-52 There is, at this point in time, literally 0 evidence B-52s are flying over Iran with JDAMs. Every single photo we saw of B-52s literally shows them with AGM-158, which means they are launching outside Iran aerospace. The biggest evidence for B-52s not flying over Iran is that there have still not been any losses. Go look at attrition rates in Linebacker 2 for comparison.

OSINTechinical literally had one yesterday https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2038625975332692466

There is literally nothing in this image suggesting they are flying over Iran with this loadout except the account just saying it.
Post reply on HN