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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

#591

Post by rasz »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #33
wongarsu wrote: post #3

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 In previous conflicts the US military could get a lot done with bombs, but that's risky if you can't get air superiority and take out all enemy anti-air systems. Which is more difficult against an enemy who can shoot at your air bases…

Doctrine never intended for these bombs to be used almost exclusively as means to wage wars. These are meant for strikes that need to be precise and carried in a short notice. If you have 10 targets and use atacms in all 10, there's something wrong in the decision making process or the strategy.

>If you have 10 targets and use atacms in all 10, there's something wrong in the decision making process or the strategy.

but AI generated that target list so its all good!

"900 strikes on Iranian targets in the first 12 hours"

"1,000 targets were struck in the first 24 hours"

"2,000 targets in 96 hours"

keep shooting, Im sure those are all good targets and totally not a waste of ammo

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

#592

Post by elendilm »

mrweasel wrote: post #218
wongarsu wrote: post #3

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 In previous conflicts the US military could get a lot done with bombs, but that's risky if you can't get air superiority and take out all enemy anti-air systems. Which is more difficult against an enemy who can shoot at your air bases…

You can't really stockpile missiles, their explosives and fuel needs to be replaced with some interval, so having a massive stockpile doesn't make that much sense, because it's as you suggests expensive to maintain. In the case of an war (like you know, a war-war) the US is perfectly capable of ramping up manufacturing to ungodly numbers (but it won't be cheap). I would however like to see what Ukraine does, if they…

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

#593

Post by elendilm »

elcritch wrote: post #538
cwnyth wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saudi Arabia benefits just as much, if not more, from a diminished Iran.

Not just Saudi Arabia but the UAE, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, and Gaza. Iran has funded terrorism and religious extremism in the region leading to massive death tolls in many of them. Not to mention Iranians themselves.

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

#594

Post by _heimdall »

KaiserPro wrote: post #371
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…

> 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 che…

I would love to know the honest opinions of our top brass. They had to know sitting out of (most) drone range and leaning almost entirely on long range surface-to-surfsce missiles wouldn't even come close to clearing the way for more standard bombing runs.

They would have known going into this war the plan was fundamentally flawed before we even committed to firing a single munition.

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

#595

Post by pendenthistory »

only-one1701 wrote: post #398
adventured wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean it doesn't, it's just that Iran is ruled by fanatics who'd rather see their country cease to exist than to give up power. If your definition of winning is just infinite willingness to die then Iran definitely won.

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

#596

Post by michaelt »

bettercallsalad wrote: post #434

Not an American but live here. But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil. So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the exte…

> So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the extent campaign finding from Israel lobby as they say dictated much of the foreign policy than national interest?

An optimist would say:

America doesn't like Iran because it's a theocratic dictatorship that funds terrorist groups throughout the region, supplies drones to Russia, fires missiles at the only democracy in the region (Israel) and is pursuing nuclear weapons.

As energy markets are global, middle east politics impacts America's vital national interests, and prices consumers pay at the pump, even if America is a net exporter of oil.

Iran had a series of nationwide protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Iranian_prot... indicating there was widespread popular support for a new, less theocratic government.

Trump thought they could go in with a surgical strike, knock out the theocratic leaders and the nuclear facilities, enabling the protesters to overthrow the remains of the government, while the army steps back like we saw in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Then they'd turn into a peace-loving democracy, and Trump would go down in history as having defeated one of America's long-term antagonists, making him a winner and a tough guy, and really showing Obama how it's done.

A cynic would say:

Trump wanted a distraction from the Epstein files (which this war has 100% delivered) and/or a country that wanted this war to happen has the Epstein evidence to blackmail him with.

Having deliberately installed loyal incompetents in leadership positions, even though military planners were 100% aware the Strait of Hormuz would get closed, and that their drones are an order of magnitude cheaper than our drone interceptors, that knowledge was dismissed by the executive.

Being able to make oil prices rise and fall by tweeting is an easy way to make money if you're exempt from the justice system.

Having the war drag on might not be good for Republican performance in the midterm elections - but Trump can't run for a third term, so he doesn't much care if the party is left in a shambles.

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

#597

Post by nemothekid »

mrguyorama wrote: post #552
nemothekid wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

>We aren't losing in Iran because of military incompetence, but policy incompetence.

My point is these two things are inseparable, and to conflate them is simply Call of Duty-esque military fantasy. It's a feel good war story that doesn't actually reflect the reality of actually winning a war.

If the US military does not have the ability to hold, occupy, and install allied regime change, then the US military cannot win a war with Iran. You cannot separate the short term wins from the long term objectives. No one looks at Imperial Japan and says "they easily bombed pearl harbor, but due to policy failures they couldn't keep control of the South West Pacific theatre.

The US winning WW2 wasn't just dropping the nukes and high fives. There was rebuilding the Japanese nation, aligned to the US, becoming a long term ally.

This is no different than Afghanistan. Future humans aren't going to look back and say "the US easily controlled Afghanistan for 12 years, and then just returned to the Taliban". The lessons learned will be the US failed to hold Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power and it was a military failure.

No matter how you dress it up, I can't afford the ferrari.

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

#598

Post by pendenthistory »

Zigurd wrote: post #423
adventured wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of these things is not like the other. Russia is a threat to Europe, and is in the midst of invading a country with a lot of agricultural, industrial, and cultural upside that should be on the road to EU integration. Bombing the snot out of Russian trenches in eastern Ukraine might even be a good idea. And the reasons for bombing Iran are...?

Perhaps letting Iran, a country ruled by fanatics, build enough military infrastructure to the point that they're able to hold a significant part of the world's energy hostage was the original blunder?

You could argue they'd never use their power unless attacked, but I don't think you can be certain of that. It comes down to if you can accept that a non-rational actor can be allowed to have this power (or nuclear weapons for that matter).

Now that the cat is out of the bag it would be a terrible idea not to finish the job and make sure Iran doesn't have this power ever again.

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

#599

Post by jmyeet »

bettercallsalad wrote: post #434

Not an American but live here. But I don’t understand the fixation of US in middle east theatre. With the abundance of onshore oil through fracking revolution, presumably US doesn’t need to police the Middle East. The president himself said US doesn’t need their oil. So what is this conflict all about? Is there bigger geopolitical price tag attached to victory in Iran? Or US is just besieged by corruption to the exte…

I've linked this article several times on HN. Nobody goes to war over a solar panel [1].

You have to understand that the US is an arms dealer empire. We now spend >$1T/year on the military and a huge chunk of it is basically looting government coffers. Pretty much all post-WW2 moves by the US can be boiled down to selling weapons to somebody, sometimes both sides.

There is no pie anywhere in the world that the US doesn't have a finger in in some way unless they can't (eg China can't be bullied in this way). Global trade is a complex web. And even though the US is a net energy exporter now, there are second-order effects if, in the mind of US administrations, other countries start denying oil to allies, for example.

[1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...

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

#600

Post by missedthecue »

bhelkey wrote: post #586
missedthecue wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I know. That sounds about what it should be. Maybe less actually.

Why should drugs in America cost >2x the price of drugs in other countries?

Invert the question. Why do other countries pay half as much? Because they can't afford to pay more.
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