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Nowhere is safe

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Re: Nowhere is safe

#241

Post by adrian_b »

solatic wrote: post #222
shalmanese wrote: post #214

This is the classic tech person trying to sound smart in a domain outside of their expertise. Fixed civilian infrastructure has never been safe. The way you protect it is diplomatically, by having that region not be attacked in the first place or putting incentives such that certain bits of infrastructure are considered off limits. Secondly, people whose only experience of war comes from fictional media have a drasti…

Your analysis presumes air power alone. Assets are seized by cavalry (in modernity, APCs and tanks) and held by infantry. Nothing new under the sun. The only reason anybody is thinking of destroying civilian infrastructure (wealth) is because everybody took off the table the prospect of sending in cavalry and infantry to seize and hold it.

USA rightly hesitates to send in the cavalry & infantry, because there, against much more numerous opponents, it no longer has the crushing advantage that it has in air power.

The chances of success of such an action are very low, unlike for air strikes, as it has already been demonstrated by the failure of the incursion attempted by USA one week ago, which resulted in significant US material loss, e.g. the 2 scuttled transport airplanes.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#242

Post by throw310822 »

throw310822 wrote: post #57
SoftTalker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "people are more respectful when everyone is armed" theory.

Yes, it's called MAD. It doesn't work for very large groups with many unstable individuals but seems to have worked so far for the small group of nations.

(Note though that in MAD you always shoot back at your opponents and never miss the target- which changes things quite a bit.)

Re: Nowhere is safe

#243

Post by adrian_b »

anovikov wrote: post #235
verdverm wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ensuring they have no electricity makes it impossible to continue producing drones > political constraints prevents US from making appropriate use of air force Are you arguing that destroying a country of 90M's entire basic infrastructure is an "appropriate" use of force?

[flagged]

There is little evidence for your theories.

We do not know exactly how much Iran can really destroy, because regardless if they can or they cannot destroy more, their current strategy of threatening to destroy much more than they have destroyed is the correct strategy.

If they had destroyed everything they can, then the adversaries would have no reason of further restraint. As it is, the adversaries are still fearful of greater retaliation, which has forced them to enter negotiations.

Also the fact that the Americans are not attacking "anything", is only partially true.

Of course, the Americans could destroy much more, but they have already destroyed many civilian targets, including the oil exporting infrastructure, bridges, rail stations, etc., in some cases also taking care to hit again the first responders.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#244

Post by hackable_sand »

TheGRS wrote: post #71
brianjlogan wrote: post #15

Hmm... Interestingly one does not look at the solutions to de-escalate conflict. Despite the proxy wars we've had a relatively peaceful world since WW1/WW2. Please humor me here, I'm not saying the world is horror free. The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peac…

Globalization offered the model for this. When the economy is globally linked there is more pressure for stability than conflict. I think that theory still holds. The fallout of the last 10 years is that the distribution of the wealth created in that system has not been even at all, and we are seeing huge wealth gaps. Jobs were redistributed to poorer nations and lost in a lot of wealthier markets. If nations can sol…

I would like to evolve beyond the archaic notions of nationalism.

The idea that you can mark a map and define property and consolidate identities to property is so anti-human.

If you embrace humanity then you should also reject the premise that there is any Other humanity.

It's historically supremacist.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#245

Post by XorNot »

maxglute wrote: post #218
carlosjobim wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if mainland China is successfully invaded by a country being supplied with American military equipment and having their fixed infrastructure destroyed - like described in the article - you can be dead sure that they will try to destroy American military plants. None of the super power countries will ever accept defeat in their homeland and being conquered without using all means possible to hinder it. That's why…

That's borderline nonsense scenario. Superpowers aren't going to be existentially invaded via lesser proxy. We're talking about being quagmired in war of choice where proxys being supplied. Lots of escalation rungs up the ladder that run before looping into superpower vs superpower peer conflict.

The scenario being unlikely doesn't make the OP's point irrelevant: the situation you see today is because that scenario doesn't happen, and it doesn't happen because countries are relatively circumspect about the way in which their military aid is deployed for exactly this reason.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#246

Post by ilovecake1984 »

cryptonector wrote: post #162

Imagine the cost of a shahed drone being as low as $5,000, or less. Imagine the cartels south of the U.S. having tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of them. It could get painful fast. That's one thing this war is showing.

This makes no sense. The only real danger are religious nutters like Iran, USA and Israel. Everyone else just wants to make money.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#247

Post by kaashif »

cryptonector wrote: post #162

Imagine the cost of a shahed drone being as low as $5,000, or less. Imagine the cartels south of the U.S. having tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of them. It could get painful fast. That's one thing this war is showing.

If the cartels attack American civilian infrastructure with drones, the American public will support a full on land invasion and annexation of Mexico if they're told that will make it stop.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#248

Post by vizzier »

Nathanba wrote: post #181

I was also thinking about this and I think it has to go a step further: Assets don't just need to be underground, they need to be on mobile rails underground. They need to constantly be moveable and pop out of one of thousands of holes to attack or if it comes to defensive e.g SAM sites they need to be moveable so that when an incoming missile is not interceptable that it can simply move away to a different undergrou…

https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Command_System

> And of course to defeat such underground networks you need vast armies of small intelligent drones that can go in there and explore every tunnel where no human wants to risk setting foot in.

In the book they're defeated by biological warfare.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#249

Post by AtlasBarfed »

brianjlogan wrote: post #15

Hmm... Interestingly one does not look at the solutions to de-escalate conflict. Despite the proxy wars we've had a relatively peaceful world since WW1/WW2. Please humor me here, I'm not saying the world is horror free. The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peac…

If anything, the prospects for war are far higher now, because drones provide economic victory to a gigantic number of countries against a larger foes.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#250

Post by gmerc »

The irony is that we know it’s vastly cheaper to curtail war with treaties, diplomacy and mutually assured destruction… the US is the primary force moving away from it.
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