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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

#371

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

> That's what the US tried to do.

Yes but with the caveat that they wanted the lowest risk to US service members during the bombing. This means using up the fire and forget stuff rather than the guided munitions attached to planes. They have good air superiority, but poor logistical options to do that.

The traditional way to do this is to park two carrier groups within 500 miles of the target and convey tonnes of cheap munitions to the targets (as in iraq, Libya & kosovo) the problem for the US is that it means parking a carrier within drone range. You'd then establish a land base and move forward. Again all of the logistics of doing that are vulnerable to drone.

So this is the route they chose.

Until the US have something to counter drones cheaply, then they'll get stuck like this.

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

#372

Post by starik36 »

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…

> nation without a navy can now inexpensively counter a nation with one

I would argue that you are right with Ukraine vs Russia since the former has sunk so many of latter's assets. But that has not been the case with US vs Iran.

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

#373

Post by estearum »

SR2Z wrote: post #302
estearum wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is that nobody actually gives a fuck about this war. The reason we don't have industrial capacity dedicated to this war is because everyone knows we're fighting it for no reason, there's no plan, it stops and starts every 4 days, so on. Simple consequences of having actual stupid people leading our government. If the US got into a war that anyone actually cared about, it would almost certainly snap in…

> If the US got into a war that anyone actually cared about, it would almost certainly snap into action at incredible speed. I'm gonna push back on "nobody cares." The United States is somewhat unique in that our doctrine calls for wars to be fought on distant shores, and that the main role of our military is to ensure that our ideology (liberal democracy) is protected across the world. That's why we entered WWII, it…

Nobody cares about the war in Iran.

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

#374

Post by tailscaler2026 »

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…

[dead]

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

#375

Post by toast0 »

simonh wrote: post #103
locknitpicker wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the one glaring weakness of relying too heavily on missiles. They are expensive and difficult to manufacture. And they have a limited shelf life, making stockpiles also expensive I don't think so. This observation completely misses the root cause, and it ain't missiles. Armed forces size their stockpiles in terms of their short term needs focused on rapid reaction and deterrence. The goal is to be able to re…

Those are interesting points. The US military is optimised for limited strike "special military operations", which it does all the time, and deterrence. Neither of those require a super deep arsenal, just enough to complete a limited intervention, or blunt an initial assault. Initiating a long deep ongoing offensive campaign is a whole other thing the US never planned for.

> Initiating a long deep ongoing offensive campaign is a whole other thing the US never planned for.

I don't know that that's the case. There are almost certainly plans for a long deep ongoing offensive campaign. But you can't do an ongoing campaign and keep saying it's a short term thing and expect logistics to work.

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

#376

Post by cyberax »

lumost wrote: post #351
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…

It's been discussed for decades that the US would run out of precision munitions in any multi-week conflict. The presumption was that the US would either be in a nuclear war at that point, or a ground campaign would complete the task along with dumb munitions. That the US decided to expend it's precision weapon stockpile on a conflict of choice with no ground or dumb bombing campaign to fallback on is a mystery for l…

> That the US decided to expend it's precision weapon stockpile on a conflict of choice with no ground or dumb bombing campaign to fallback on is a mystery for later generations.

There is no mystery. A dumb bombing campaign requires air superiority, and Iran actually has reasonable anti-air defense. They're not a bunch of guys running around with AK-74s.

The US absolutely can achieve that. But it _will_ result in aircraft losses, and it requires detailed planning. Both of these are not acceptable anymore.

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

#377

Post by FuckButtons »

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.

Never attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity.

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

#378

Post by mikenew »

pendenthistory wrote: post #347
justin66 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 or…

It's not a tactical failure of the US; it's a strategic one. The US operates a tremendously powerful military, but that doesn't change the fact that the war with Iran was a tremendous strategic blunder. "Moronic" is a pretty fair characterization.

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

#379

Post by rightbyte »

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.

In "actual fighting" the losses are such that the units are weakened not like leveling up experience.

I don't think soldiers survive any meaningful amount of combat to get experience in combat. Pooping without WC is what they get good at which you can do in exerciss too.

Logistics and support staff might get experience maybe ...

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

#380

Post by jonnybgood »

LastTrain wrote: post #363
pendenthistory wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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 or…

You think the US has shown itself as to be extremely competent in the Iran war? If you were talking about Iraq, that was completely different leadership.

The US killed almost the entire Iranian regime leadership with minimal cost. What definition of competence are you going by?
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