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

cnbc.com

551–560 of 769 posts

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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? Obviously there have been a ton of issues due to the US’s strategy in Iran. But almost nobody in the US has any affect from this war. Gas prices are up a bit. Mildly inconvenient for the majority of people, and that’s the biggest failure people are mad about. Meanwhile Iran is in rough shape

Gas prices are up a bit? In my area it’s gone up at least $2 from before the war. Which is just another way that everything has gotten so much more expensive recently (not that all of that is caused by the war).

Agreed yes that’s not great. But really if that’s the worst thing you’re noticing in your daily life at home, things must be pretty ok?

You must see the difference between us being unhappy that gas is more expensive, versus somebody living in Iran worrying that their entire government and country is in chaos.

Obviously this war is bad for a bunch of reasons, but the US is completely fine at home relatively.

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

#552
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…

> As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control. This is like saying "I could easily afford a Ferrari. It's just that I wouldn't be able to make the interest payments on the loan". Military conquest is more than just gun…

No, it's like saying "I can easily afford a ferrari but I won't be able to afford groceries for a year after that because I've emptied my savings account.

The military might be capable of a ground invasion and succeeding. It would be Pyrrhic. Even if Iran was a genuine nuclear threat (I am not convinced at this point that Iran would launch a nuke at anyone if they had it), is it worth 500k dead Americans?

There was never a path to victory that didn't involve ground troops. We aren't losing in Iran because of military incompetence, but policy incompetence. Previous administrations did not do this because the cost was well understood.

There has never existed a military who could win this conflict without ground invasion. This was understood when this administration started it.

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

#553
This article seems strange to me talking about the lack of ATACMS mattering for a war against China. The publicly available range of the ATACMS is 300 km. Seems to me an ATACMS could not reach China from American bases in Japan, South Korea or the Philippines. The only place you could launch an ATACMS from to hit China would be Taiwan. But Taiwan is so small and likely so well covered by Chinese air defenses that I don't think ATACMS would be that effective there.

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle. I wish people would take a short stop here and contemplate a bit on this sentence.

Goals tbh

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

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

“They didn’t want to” is hiding some of the complexity behind it. Vietnam had turned into a political crisis at home; there were widespread protests and lots of people openly dodging the draft. Grunts would sometimes “frag” commanders who pushed them into overly risky missions. Running up the casualties would have created a real risk of a violent revolt at home and mutiny among the soldiers. The US as a society was l…

Additionally, early success doesn't mean long term success. The US won in Afghanistan initially, then they got dragged in a conflict for 20 years and ultimately Taliban came back.

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

#556
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until there is. We have thus far been supremely lucky that irrational actors have not acquired a nuclear bomb. But the reality is that throughout history most leaders have been irrational. My country (America) is behaving increasingly irrationally. I've been hearing fringe conservatives calling for nuking the middle east since the early 2000s, but the rot has spread and became deeply religious. Now I hear talk of the…

Incompetence is one thing, but the aspect of the current leadership that I (as a non-American) find most shocking is the corruption. That is, the use of state power to enrich an individual and his family members and to bend state institutions into tools for conducting petty personal vendettas. Pardons are sold for “investments” into private business owned by the president. Legal “settlements” agreed with organs of st…

> That over 35% of the population are completely fine with this stuff is frightening

Most literally don't even know, because what little information filters down to them, is all radical right-wing propaganda from Fox or worse. The country has been drowning in it for decades.

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

#557

The US only used long range precision missiles for the first 3 days of the war. Since then, its been almost all JDAMs. The interceptors got used a lot more but even with those we only went through about 5% of the stockpile. This is CNBC. If you trust them on topics like this, well...that's on you. Please remember that they don't have a single person on staff with any military experience or expertise. PS Their source…

> Please remember that they don't have a single person on staff with any military experience or expertise.

Do you care to clarify this? This can't possibly be accurate across their entire staff.

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

#558
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 situa…

the US can make Iran look like Afghanistan and still loose the war.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China imports food and has stressed or extremely stressed fresh water reserves. You take out the method they keep alive hundreds of millions of citizens, you think they won’t launch a nuke? Although for all the strategic thinking we’ve seen out of the “department of war” (that offers gender affirming testosterone shots and then runs out of missiles), I wouldn’t be shocked if you worked at the Pentagon, hahahaha.

China is already sending their fishing fleets to just off the EEZ of South American and is rapidly depleting their stock. https://latinamericanpost.com/americas/environment-en/a-sile...

This interesting way of saying PRC distant fishing fleet fishing in international waters. Geopolitical drama aside, DWF is like 3% of PRC fishing catch, much of it just luxury consumption or resold globally. Reality is PRC more or less absolute caloric self sufficient on staples, chicken/fish. They import a lot of soy for animal feed but shit hits fan, people eat less pork/beef.

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

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you view what would be the worst crime against humanity ever to be committed (and yes, I really do mean to include all the previous ones in that statement) to be an acceptable answer to “oh, we have no more smart bombs, let’s just kill everyone in this country”? Not committing a crime against humanity is not “good will”.

Then what is good will? A movie character?

Not killing someone when one can (in a not them or me situation) is not “good will”, it’s one of the most basic ethical principles. I’m surprised you need to ask this question.
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