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U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

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Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#111

Post by firesteelrain »

deadbunny wrote: post #96
firesteelrain wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The US spend 20 years in Afgan fighting to remove the Taliban from power only to hand power to the Taliban. The US spent years fighting north Vietnamese forces only to sign a peace treaty, leave south Vietnam and then 2 years later have North Vietnam take over South Vietnam and unify the country. You don't consider completely failing your objectives failure?

No. Both cases were wins. Saigon fell 2 years after US combat forces left for example.

In both cases, Washington chose to stop sustaining a local government that could not survive on its own.

Saigon fell on April 30, 1975, which was a little over two years after the last US combat troops left Vietnam on March 29, 1973. US did not lose Afghanistan on the battlefield. US military overthrew the Taliban government, dismantled al-Qaeda’s sanctuary, killed Osama bin Laden, and prevented another major foreign-directed terrorist attack from Afghan soil for nearly twenty years. American forces were not defeated or driven out; they left because elected political leaders decided the mission was no longer worth continuing.

In both cases, the threats were eliminated. Hanoi is now friendly to the US. Iraq is friendly to the US. Syria is friendly to the US.

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#112

Post by codeduck »

pjc50 wrote: post #84
Arodex wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>not whatever this spitting match with Iran is. Are you openly saying the president and the secretary of war are lying when they say they have done "massive" bombings of Iran?

That's an easy one: I don't even have to look at what the facts are to be sure they're lying. Just a question of what about. Although "massive" is a subjective word. Nothing can be as massive as WW2 carpet bombing.

Or even what they were regularly doing to grids of rainforest in Vietnam.

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#113

Post by padjo »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #48
Jgrubb wrote: post #2

What is there even to say about this? Where does one even begin?

> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. - Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953

Eisenhower would be considered a woke commie by today's administration

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#114

Post by teytra »

Arodex wrote: post #80
firesteelrain wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Who rules Vietnam? Who rules Afghanistan? Tell us.

I remember when I was young all the boat refugees from Vietnam. I could not understand why people said USA lost, but all the refugees were Vietnamese. If USA lost, whay were they not American?

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#115

Post by bad_haircut72 »

bluegatty wrote: post #34
bad_haircut72 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America could theretically sustain other cheaper losses, like a few more F15s going down - but Trump is rightfully terrified of the political fallout of American pilots being capturred and torture videos showing up on Telegram.

They are not cheaper losses, because production capacity for those things is very limited. Missiles are always easier to replace then platforms of any kind. But yes - a single, lone captive could cause political devastation.

Im no military planner so Im not gonna get invested in this debate haha - and obviously a human death is a huge loss - but presumably you could drop a lot of bombs for each lost fighter, so the bang/buck (literally) would be better than with missiles.

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#116

Post by leonidasrup »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #24
actionfromafar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was very quick though.

It turns out public money is more expensive these days. Debt is a more mainstreamly exposed problem.

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&...

"The estimated cost of the war in Vietnam during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations was $176 billion."

Adjusted for inflation, that is $1,192 billion in 2026 dollars.

"The longest war in American history had significant economic effects both domestically and internationally in terms of what was spent on the war and what expenses had to be cut."

https://www.thecollector.com/vietnam-war-economic-effects/

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#117

Post by simonh »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #75
thinkindie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t be the first war the USA loose against a smaller enemy. See Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc etc.

The USA has never been defeated . It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities. It's their relentless deindustrialization that will eventually do them in. The USA's industrial output back in WWII was staggering, its enemies had little h…

>The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.

Except for the capability to prevail in those conflicts.

On the other hand the US did prevail in Iraq, and often prevails in smaller interventions such as Kosovo, or various strikes on particular targets.

>Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.

American workers just don't want to do those jobs any more, at least not enough of them, and the country won't tolerate enough immigration to make up the shortfall domestically. There just aren't tens of millions of Americans sitting around waiting to take up manufacturing jobs. If citizens prefer to do other jobs, then non citizens have to do them, whether that's in the USA or outside it.

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#118

Post by matheusmoreira »

padjo wrote: post #105
matheusmoreira wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA has never been defeated . It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities. It's their relentless deindustrialization that will eventually do them in. The USA's industrial output back in WWII was staggering, its enemies had little h…

If you set out to achieve an objective, but the enemy prevents you from achieving that objective, you lost.

I wouldn't say they lost. They failed their strategic objectives, but they're still out there, intact and combat capable.

Losing is what happened to Germany after both World Wars.

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#119

Post by surgical_fire »

Philorandroid wrote: post #37
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #6

Did the US just have the same fate as Russia where they where feared for their military until they used it?

I think that's an unfair assessment. Depleting a stockpile of a particular munition (since missile strikes are less unpopular than a full-scale deployment) because of overreliance shows a particular strain, not a pervasive weakness.

So this is all solved when US troops waltz into Tehran?

Any day now.

Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war

#120

Post by firesteelrain »

appointment wrote: post #106
firesteelrain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air superiority was established fairly early on in the conflict. Flying F-15 and F-16s now. Not even stealth and they drop more than just missles - they carry bombs. B-52s weren’t sent in to carpet bomb the area of that’s what you mean. US could indiscriminately drop dumb bombs but you would have a higher civilian casualty rate.

> Flying F-15 and F-16s now. Except not really. If they were willing to risk sending many aircraft deep into Iranian airspace with SDBs and JDAMs they wouldn't be running out of ballistic missiles.

There have been 60-70 F15 and F16s operating in Iran (could be more just found via public sources).
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