If I was an ex KGB man running the rump of an ex empire, I'd be thinking of ways of disarming the strongest military in NATO. "Sure go ahead invade Iran, we are so impressed with your leader we wouldn't dare do anything to dissuade you."
U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
391–400 of 774 posts
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#3923 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.
I mean, we could, the issue is that it would be politically untenable. Controlling the straight means controlling Iranian territory, which means a ground invasion and occupation, which means ~2 million deployed personnel until you set up a compliant regime (because Iran, is absolutely massive). Which is why literally every other president has chosen to negotiate with them or keep them at arms length.
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#393Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#394Earlier 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…
Maduro operation wasn’t a war my good man and the other two you reference were 20 and 30 years ago.
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 air…
> Iran actually has reasonable anti-air defense. They're not a bunch of guys running around with AK-74s.
To help put that in perspective versus Iraq: Iran's GDP today is a ~7x stronger than Iraq's was (in 2003) relative to the US GDP at each time. In other words, bigger economy, better-equipped military.
Plus having ~2x the population, and ~3x the land area.
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#396Earlier 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. I think the reason China has no reason to be threatened is the US outsourced most of it's manufacturing to them, meaning China now has more skills, know-how, and manufacturing infrastructure to redirect to wartime production. That was truly a brilliant move by US business leader…
Sorry, but this is only partially informed. 1. The U.S. produces a massive share of global manufactured goods, ranking second globally behind China in total value added. 2. Only low skilled jobs were shipped overseas. Lower-value consumer goods like clothing and basic electronics are heavily outsourced, whereas complex machinery, aerospace equipment, chemicals, and medical devices are largely built domestically https…
Cheap toys? You seem stuck in the 90s, and you're quoting a 10 year old article. Since then China has taken over the car industry with EVs, solar industry, building more new energy every than the us has installed total, leading in humanoid robotics and drones. WTF are you talking about?
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#397Earlier 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…
Military competence has nothing to do with running low on munitions after months of war. There are four ways to address the issue: have larger stockpiles before the war, ramp up production during the war, end the war, or don't go to war in the first place. None of those can be done by the military. It's all up to the civilian leadership, and the current civilian leadership is catastrophically incompetent. The current commander in chief is a "fucking moron," to quote his former Secretary of State.
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How many lives has the US lost? What has Iran lost so far in the conflict with the US and Israel (a conflict which is not over)? The propaganda attempting to spin this as setting up as a strategic defeat for the US, is almost comical. As is, the US can stand-off and torment Iran for a very, very long time. $31 trillion economy. $94,000 GDP per capita (nearly 3x Japan for reference). The US can spend $100 billion annu…
Damn the USA seems really powerful, I’m assuming handling a country like Iran shouldn’t give them any trouble
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#399Earlier 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…
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.
But running out of missiles—which is the accusation being made above—would be a tactical and logistics failure, not a strategic one.
Re: U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US killed almost the entire Iranian regime leadership with minimal cost. What definition of competence are you going by?
I'd argue that seriously upending global energy markets (and perhaps the entire economy) is quite a high cost.
Politically, yes.