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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

#341

Post by lern_too_spel »

sssilver wrote: post #277

I'm always confused by prices of "highly regulated" goods in the United States. When I get a $150,000 bill for a 15-minute hand-reconstruction surgery, how much of that bill is the total margin vs self cost? And how much of that is warranted / acceptable? When a single Tomahawk missile bills the taxpayer $3,600,000, how much of that bill is the total margin? When I say "total margin", I mean not just the margin of th…

Many defense contracts are cost plus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-plus_pricing

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

#342

Post by rootsudo »

WarmWash wrote: post #246
ndiddy wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle. Nothing. No one has any rank that has bearing on any kind of combat. Just decades of self-congratulatory war games. China has tons of weapons and resources. But it would remain to be seen if they can actually fight when every single person along the entire chain is a total day one rookie.

Vs, the unities which has lost its engagement since.. the Vietnam or Korean war?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro-American all the way. I just am not sure which is better: to defer and not be in war or to be in war and lose due to economics vs brute firepower/manpower/superiority.

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

#344

Post by colechristensen »

pandinus wrote: post #301

"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…

Once proper defenses for cheap and slow suicide drones is created (fast small unmanned interceptors with bullets instead of missiles) this temporary drone threat phase of war will be mostly over. The ability to build $1000 drones in everybody's garage was an obvious but unhandled threat, surely it will be though.

The funniest thing I've seen with the Ukraine war (if it's not AI) is an old prop plane with it's canopy removed and the dude in the rear seat shooting down a drone with his automatic rifle. We're going to get Top Gun: RC Mini Edition in the next armed conflict and it's going to seem like a video game.

It will then become just another threat, and one that is managed well enough to no longer be a david v. goliath kind of weapon.

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

#345

Post by ARandomerDude »

pandinus wrote: post #301

"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…

This doesn't account for the substantial difference between military deception and political (self-)deception.

The Midway water shortage deception was a way to gain a tactical, followed by strategic advantage.

Running out of missiles is an "incovenient truth" for the zionist pro-war crowd. History is littered with innumerable examples of political leaders not adequately considering ground-truth military and logistical realities (Confederates fighting in Pennsylvania, Germans invading Russia, etc.).

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

#346

Post by sssilver »

abtinf wrote: post #327
sssilver wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me understand this. There's the cost that the employees pocket, and then there's the share that the shareholders pocket, right? Doesn't "margin" represent the latter?

100% of the money ends up going to people. It’s not like you get to the end of the chain and trade a fistful of dollars with the ingot of aluminum itself.

Sure, the concept of money is only meaningful / valuable to humans.

But isn't there a conceptual difference between the "owners" of the Tomahawk factory vs. the people who are actually putting the missiles together?

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

#347

Post by pendenthistory »

justin66 wrote: post #309
pandinus wrote: post #301

"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…

> For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Wow, yeah, you'd need to have morons at the top of the chain of command and subordinates afraid to speak out in order for something like that to happen. Nothing like the US government today at all.

(Not American, need to preface with this) I think the US military has shown itself to be extremely competent in the last war. Reading about Desert Storm and later the invasion of Iraq it's just insane. It's still possible they miscalculated how rapidly warfare would change, but to call them morons... As far as I can see, there are only three proven militaries in the world, the US, Israel and Ukraine, and the US is orders of magnitude larger than the rest. Have we already forgotten what happened to Maduro? What other country in the history of the world could pull something like that off? Russia tried at Hostomel, didn't go so well.

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

#348

Post by Aboutplants »

sssilver wrote: post #277

I'm always confused by prices of "highly regulated" goods in the United States. When I get a $150,000 bill for a 15-minute hand-reconstruction surgery, how much of that bill is the total margin vs self cost? And how much of that is warranted / acceptable? When a single Tomahawk missile bills the taxpayer $3,600,000, how much of that bill is the total margin? When I say "total margin", I mean not just the margin of th…

The unknowns of defense spending is a feature and not a bug - for defense contractors

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

#349

Post by computably »

abtinf wrote: post #317
sssilver wrote: post #277

I'm always confused by prices of "highly regulated" goods in the United States. When I get a $150,000 bill for a 15-minute hand-reconstruction surgery, how much of that bill is the total margin vs self cost? And how much of that is warranted / acceptable? When a single Tomahawk missile bills the taxpayer $3,600,000, how much of that bill is the total margin? When I say "total margin", I mean not just the margin of th…

There are a great many costs built into the system that this analysis won’t get you: mandatory useless ingredients, arbitrary standards, and pervasive regulations. I worked in aerospace and know a bit about this. Say you want to make a missile. Well, you better have the paperwork for literally every component to show that the metal used in all of it originates from a foundry in one of a tiny handful of countries.

That sounds superficially reasonable. The supply chain should be trustworthy and reliable.

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

#350

Post by danans »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #197
iamnothere wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this is a comic book understanding of victory and defeat. Not your fault, many people think this way post-WWII as they have come to see this conflict as a template for what “real” war looks like. Tactical defeat is when you are prevented from meeting your objectives for a particular operation, such as securing a target area or destroying/degrading a target enemy force. Strategic defeat is when the enemy pr…

> Not your fault, many people think this way post-WWII as they have come to see this conflict as a template for what “real” war looks like. Yeah I certainly see it that way. I think saying the US got "defeated" by Vietnam drops some nuance. WWII proves the US is perfectly willing to suffer at least 5x the casualties of Vietnam in order to achieve their objectives. They probably just didn't want to commit to that sort…

> WWII proves the US is perfectly willing to suffer at least 5x the casualties of Vietnam in order to achieve their objectives.

The US today isn't the US on the dawn of WWII, and this war is unlike WWII as a whole.

Domestic political support for the war is so low due to the huge costs (of the war itself and on the American pocketbook). Furthermore, due to the open and blatant corruption in the current administration, and the passing of economic policies that increase the struggle of everyday people while enriching the billionaire class, there has been a huge loss of trust in the US federal government in general.

Contrast this with the establishment of the Social Security act and WPA before WWII, which greatly increased the public's trust/confidence in the federal government to secure their welfare in the wake of the Great Depression, and made them willing to sacrifice for their country.

Finally, unlike WWII, this war didn't start with any attack by Iran on US territory, or attacks on closely allied countries. To the extent that allies have been attacked, it has been in response to US aggression, further undermining the public's will to commit American lives to further conflict.

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