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

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 769 posts

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

#231

Post by ndiddy »

_heimdall wrote: post #171
chmod775 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can exhaust all their firepower in a couple weeks fighting Iran, China would have no reason to feel threatened in the first place. The reality is that fighting China would be a proper all-out war, not whatever this spitting match with Iran is.

The reality is that fighting any country with a decent military has to be all-out war. We should have plenty of precision missiles left today because they should have been used only to clear the way for runs with "dumb" bombs. A war with China would be the same, it can never be fought from a distance with primarily $1m+ precision surface to surface missiles. Of course I only mean if the war was necessary to fight at…

> We should have plenty of precision missiles left today because they should have been used only to clear the way for runs with "dumb" bombs.

That's what the US tried to do. The problem is that they were unable to degrade the Iranian missile systems enough that they could drop gravity bombs with impunity. This also means that they had to pull the aircraft that they would use to do bombing runs back to bases in Jordan and Israel because anything on the tarmac in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE is very vulnerable to Iranian drone and missile strikes. All of this means that they're forcing the US to choose between pulling out of the region or accepting losses of personnel and airframes (that likely cannot be replaced in a timely manner) at a level that the post-Vietnam US military has never had to face.

I suspect an all-out war between the US and China would go the same way as this one, if not worse. The US military in its modern form has focused on procuring very complex, advanced, and featureful weapons in tiny numbers. The problem is that this means that the US is incapable of fighting a sustained campaign against an adversary that can withstand attacks from American weapons and has a higher production capacity.

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

#232

Post by cmxch »

maxglute wrote: post #224
PowerElectronix wrote: post #19

Now they'll exhaust interceptors and other long range missiles like tomahawks and whatnot. And then China gets frisky with Taiwan and the US will totally not abandon them and tell them to just give up pressured by the lack of firepower to defend them, the risks of China getting back into bidding oil in international markets and the mess the treasury would be in if China raises capital by selling bonds (they just told…

LBH US hasn't been in position to defend 1st island chain in a while, US performance vs Iran just made that obvious. The one thing we have learned in recent wars is highend hardware can shoot down subsonic munitions reliably, highend missiles can penetrate high end defense reliably. AKA PRC is uniquely positioned to blunt most of US fires (subsonic munitions) while having tons of highend fires vs US defense. But real…

[dead]

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

#233

Post by tharmas »

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #216
tharmas wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We have thus far been supremely lucky that irrational actors have not acquired a nuclear bomb. Cough, cough. Who is currently in the White House?

Read the rest of my comment, I get there eventually.

Fair. And I agree with nearly everything in your comment.

One thing about tRump, is that he is more blatantly obvious about the "bully" side of America. He is not the first bully; just the first un-subtle American bully.

What I find disturbing is the others who enable him. I've long despised the Repugnant Party for their anti-worker ideology but under tRump 2.0 they've gone to a new low that I never thought possible. As much as I despise tRump, the other Repugnant members of congress (the odd rare exception) are absolutely disgraceful.

And then is there is the feckless Democrats...

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

#234

Post by lossolo »

tharmas wrote: post #215
expedition32 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at Taiwan history when the US gave PRC the UN seat and Nixon visited Beijing it was pretty much decided. Taiwan is no West Berlin and everyone knows it.

What about TSMC?

What about it? TSMC now has fabs on U.S. soil. Intel and Samsung also have fabs and are working on processes that compete with TSMC's, even if their yields may be somewhat lower.

Washington will have to decide whether the U.S. is willing to pay slightly more and rely on domestic Intel, Samsung, and TSMC fabs, or risk a military defeat and potentially millions of American lives if the situation escalates to intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The choice is obvious. Real life is not a Hollywood action movie. Also, anyone who thinks South Korea or other Asian allies would automatically go to war with China is delusional. So U.S. would be left alone. U.S. has never faced an opponent like China so a country that is also the world's leading manufacturing power. Nazi Germany was nowhere near as economically and industrially formidable as China is today, and the U.S. fought it alongside most of Europe and the Soviet Union.

If anything happens, Taiwan will probably give up. They are mostly posturing, and China may not even need to invade. they could simply impose a blockade.

Bombing things may seem normal to the U.S., but as Sun Tzu argued, the best victories are achieved without fighting, once swords are clashing, that's a strategic failure.

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

#235

Post by franktankbank »

nwatson wrote: post #95
simonh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The health care issue in the USA isn't due to lack of funding, the US spends more on health care per person than any other country, double that of many European countries with single payer systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for…

Health insurance company margins are 3% to 5%. The book America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System (2015) by journalist Steven Brill blames mostly wasteful practices in hospitals, pharma and device manufacturers, government and corporate health administration costs.

Dumb argument though when UHG owns the hospitals, pharmacy and the insurance company. They can make the "profit" of any one of them be anything they want really.

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

#236

Post by SR2Z »

ndiddy wrote: post #231
_heimdall wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that fighting any country with a decent military has to be all-out war. We should have plenty of precision missiles left today because they should have been used only to clear the way for runs with "dumb" bombs. A war with China would be the same, it can never be fought from a distance with primarily $1m+ precision surface to surface missiles. Of course I only mean if the war was necessary to fight at…

> We should have plenty of precision missiles left today because they should have been used only to clear the way for runs with "dumb" bombs. That's what the US tried to do. The problem is that they were unable to degrade the Iranian missile systems enough that they could drop gravity bombs with impunity. This also means that they had to pull the aircraft that they would use to do bombing runs back to bases in Jordan…

The problem is production capacity. The US has gutted the lower-value parts of its supply chains, closed refineries and foundries left and right, and is thoroughly unequipped to even produce cheap weapons at the rate required to support a war.

The number of airplanes built in the US during WWII is greater than all the airplanes NOT in that category. Obviously we can't maintain that level of industry during peacetime, but we've fallen so far below that level and are so low on weapons that if another major war starts we won't even be able to rapidly scale up.

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

#237

Post by bluegatty »

wookmaster wrote: post #177
bluegatty wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - the Iran war is a total strategic failure, but the US is very obviously 'exceptional' - I'm not saying necessarily admirable, or more moral etc but it is hugely 'stand out' in terms of capabilities. That's just a fact of reality irrespective of all of the political and moral context. - The US did not 'lose' the majority of the wars it started - it won most of them, and arguably failed to achieve strategic object…

>The US did not 'lose' the majority of the wars it started - it won most of them, and arguably failed to achieve strategic objectives in some. I mean if we look at all recent wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and now Iran we completely failed in our objectives. We spend billions, kill a lot of people and get a lot of our own people killed and didn't manage to instill democracy anywhere. How is that not losing the wars…

It's fair to say overall engagements were bad, but it's hard to argue that a military looses when it streamrolls the opponent, and then 'decides to leave'.

The US generally wins wars, but can fail on occupational and grander objectives, which are different things.

The US 'tied' in Korea, eventually 'won' in Vietnam but then quickly decided to leave - strategic failure), 'won' in Iraq but a grinding occupation left it a strategic quagmire but no total failure.

Middling intervention in Syria was effective in bringing down Assad and now there is a transition to 'something somewhat better'.

There was no fight to even win in Afghanistan as the Talibain was overthrown without direct intervention - the follow up was entirely occupational - and though it was a strategic failure, it wasn't a military defeat. The West just did not want to continue paying the cost of keeping the fighters at bay. That's a 'stupid set of decisions' which is different than 'losing'.

This is all different from Russian failure in Ukraine where it cannot meet it's military objectives.

Iran is shaping up to be a 'military tie' - because US is engaging from afar it' abilities are limited and is taking real losses ... and a pretty big strategic failure, having lost control over the Gulf, no 5th fleet presence in the Gulf, allies attacked, Iran emboldened. Bad.

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

#238

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

simonh wrote: post #49
dccoolgai wrote: post #38

3 generations of wealth poured into the most expensive military in recorded history - the reason that we don't have health care, clean energy, decent social safety nets and so many other things... and they can't even control a small stretch of water. What a waste.

The health care issue in the USA isn't due to lack of funding, the US spends more on health care per person than any other country, double that of many European countries with single payer systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for…

> As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz

I don't see how they could manage that without a full-scale invasion and control of Iran. It's far too easy for Iran to launch drones/torpedoes from small watercraft or from nearby land. I expect they could control Hormuz for a while, but it would be very expensive and I'd expect the logistics to break down fairly quickly if the economics doesn't stop it first.

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

#240

Post by breppp »

thinkindie wrote: post #156
breppp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have been preparing for 50 years yet lost all their leadership, nuclear facilities, ballistic missile manufacturing ecosystem and air defenses in minutes to days. The US is not doing amazing in this war but no need to give the Iranians too much credit. The Iranians are expanding a lot of resources of their own as much as this war drags on. It is still very early to say how a country will fare considering that it…

According to the US administration Iran military was supposed to be obliterated, and still. Either way, they have figure out they have a much cheaper way to hold Trump by the balls, and let him dance to their tune. I believe Ukraine and Iran are showing that there is a new level of inflicting damage to your aggressor.

They are mainly using the known fact that there's no chance in hell that the US will invade Iran with ground forces. They also previously negotiated as if this war would never start, so they might make a mistake as this is Trump after all.

In any case, Iran is not in a prime position either, it has many economic assets that can be completely destroyed as it has no air defense and then leave them in a much worse situation, while the only real damage they can do to the US is by attacking their own neighbors

Post reply on HN