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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

#751

Post by nl »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #672
account42 wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole point of having nukes - so others won't attack you.

Except that it's a bit more complicated than that. Russia has nukes and is under attack from Ukraine, and while in the past they sabre-rattled that they would use tactical nukes if there was ever any incursion, they haven't done so because they know that would cause the whole world to retaliate. Then there's nuclear defenses - if a country would have an effective anti-ICBM system (like Star Wars or whatever), it woul…

> Russia has nukes and is under attack from Ukraine

I mean I guess that's one way to talk about a country that shoots back when it is invaded!

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

#752

Post by Tade0 »

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?

Realistically another attack on the scale of 9/11. Republicans were in power throughout the majority of the 00s.

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

#753

Post by impossiblefork »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #212
kashunstva wrote: post #10

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…

An aerial drone capable of materially damaging a modern navy ship costs $1-2M a piece. Anything much cheaper doesn't have the range, survivability, or required warhead to do much more than scratch the paint. A cheap drone is only useful against soft targets. It is the reason Ukraine is scaling up heavy cruise missile production even though they already have vast numbers of cheap long-range drones. Being "cheap" isn't…

That isn't really true. There are expensive and important bits on the outside-- radars, optical sensors, etc. that could be damaged by very small things.

Even $400 dollar drones would force some kind of defensive system to start shooting if the ship is to remain usable.

The ship would of course also become progressively more vulnerable as this goes on, so I don't agree that ships have some kind of D&D-style DR that means that anything costing below a million does nothing.

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

#754

Post by fundatus »

woeirua wrote: post #419

This gives drones way too much credit. The USN knew that Iran could block the strait of Hormuz back in the 80s. Anti-ship missiles were already effective and plentiful enough to do it then and they’ve only gotten more lethal since. The long term solution here is to build pipelines that eliminate the need to sail up the strait. Why this wasn’t done already is beyond me.

> Why this wasn’t done already is beyond me.

Pipelines would have to run through multiple countries, meaning you now not only have to share your income with someone else (transit fees etc) but it also means that you have to stay on good terms with these countries.

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

#755

Post by freedomben »

numeric83 wrote: post #670
matheusmoreira wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how nukes work. When it comes to nuclear weapons, the world is divided into haves and have-nots. Anyone lacking effective nuclear response can be steamrolled by those who do with total impunity. The USA has been attacked before but it has never been invaded and forced to fight a war on its own soil against foreign enemies. It's possible that they unconsciously believe war is something they bring to others, nev…

The War of 1812 says "hello"

That was my first thought too, but I think it's overly pedantic. If we're reaching all the way back to 1812 then I think parents point is true in spirit if not letter

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

#756

Post by srean »

stein1946 wrote: post #650
asa400 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon But it is, the US is no position to flatten anything. Afghanistan? Lost Vietnam? Lost Ukraine? Lost Iran? will be lost And these are heavily embargoed 3rd world countries. In the first days of the Israeli-US war in Iran (a country under decades of embargo by the way) the US, Israel and vassals lost 60+ planes (plus who knows what…

60+ planes !? Not disputing, just interested to learn more.

It seems Iran offered little to no defense against bombing raids. This may have changed recently.

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

#757

Post by data_maan »

randunel wrote: post #547
misja111 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes that would be a typical US solution. Let's liberate the Cuban people! By flattening them.

Americans sure love their war crimes! Indiscriminately killing civilians is how they've gotten past, present and future terrorist attacks. I can't imagine the parents of the children they keep on killing (or maiming, or otherwise) standing by and watching. People wouldn't necessarily need to wait for their country's army to do something when they've got nothing significant left to lose.

To be fair, Iran is not pretentious either, killing a few thousand people because they dared to protest.

There are no good guys in this conflict.

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

#758

Post by pylua »

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…

Cuba would be bombed off the map if that happened.

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

#759

Post by Revanche1367 »

tdeck wrote: post #599
sfRattan wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war ? The same is even true of WWII, a more important marker afterward is that we spent the rest of the 20th century trading prosperously with Japan and Germany. Korea: the south became an economic powerhouse with whom we now tr…

> As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war? At least you're honest. Personally I can't believe someone would think it's OK to invade someone else's county and massacre civilians on the scale of Vietnam or Korea in order to establish profitable trading relations.

It’s easy when you worship money and consider people of other races or cultures as less than human. Not that I am advocating for this view of course but a lot of Americans do even if they won’t admit it.

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

#760

Post by MidnightRider39 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #686
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…

Ukrainian war is the way it is because neither side has a decisive advantage in air. There's barely any CAS - there are, however, lightweight drones. If Iran were to become a major ground war, one of the sides would have air dominance, and we know which one. How that would change things remains to be seen. But it wouldn't be the same exact trench war, that's certain enough.

I don’t think air dominance will hold up for long if a plane costs billions and a drone a couple thousand. Any interceptor rocket the US uses will set them back millions versus literal peanuts on the other side. Add that Iran is basically a mountain fortress and they’ll run out of money very quickly; disregarding that prolonging the war will be __very__ unpopular in the US. They really got themselves into an unwinnable bind
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