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War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

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Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#101

Post by jjk166 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #16
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

I'm not sure a carrier strike group would actually outright lose to a giant swarm of drones, at least in terms of the carrier being sunk. A Shahed warhead is pretty small once you're using it against large warships. That said, I wonder why you don't see Ukraine and Russia doing this more -- "saving up" for massive clouds of long range strike drones every couple weeks, instead of sending out a couple hundred every nig…

> "saving up" for massive clouds of long range strike drones every couple weeks, instead of sending out a couple hundred every night.

There are real technical limitations to operating large numbers of drones simultaneously. They are competing with eachother for bandwidth, and the more you squeeze in the weaker they all become to jamming. You need to coordinate larger teams with more resources to operate lots of drones all at once, rather than resupplying smaller teams periodically. Once you have enough drones flying toward a target to survive the defenses, any additional drones are wasted; and for the moment most air defenses are either too expensive or too limited in the number of targets they can simultaneously handle to require large swarms. Smaller numbers of more capable drones can outperform larger numbers of cheaper drones - 1 drone with an 80% chance of neutralizing the target might be cheaper than 2 drones which individually have a 50% chance for a total of 75%; and 2 such drones beat 5 cheap ones. Finally, big attacks are more likely to be detected, either prior to the attack by espionage or while in transit by radar and other sensors - minimizing the time that defenses have to respond or for targets to flee can be much more advantageous than having an extra munition.

All around you want the minimum necessary to get the job done.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#102

Post by jjk166 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #83
cwillu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the point of the wargame is that it's a training exercise for everyone involved, right down to the crews of the ships involved, not an nfl game. If the free-play portion ends up not exercising a bunch of expected scenarios because of an unexpected tactic, it would be monumentally wasteful to not make a note of the lesson and then reset with a script.

Right. Did they make a note of the lesson? Did anything change? I mean, I guess they noticed enough to classify the results for 25 years...

Well in the recent Iran war they kept their major ships far from Iran and didn't try to do any major operations in the area where small Iranian boats like those used in the wargame would be a threat. Indeed none of the vulnerabilities exposed by the Millennium Challenge were actual issues in the recent conflict. Whether that means the lesson was learned or the red team tactics were exploiting issues specific to the wargame is not clear.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#103

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #15
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

A Shahed is only useful against stationary soft targets, which an aircraft carrier is not. It also doesn’t have the kind of heavy warhead or terminal guidance required to defeat the armored structure of naval ships. Shahed doesn’t have any kind of countermeasure avoidance. Adding these would massively increase the cost. Naval anti-ship drones have been around for many decades. This is a highly evolved area of militar…

I can bankrupt you before running out of my arsenal of Shahed drones if you’re spending 1000 times the cost of a drone to bring it down.

The U.S. is incredibly rich but not that much richer.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#104

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

jjk166 wrote: post #100
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this and many other responses are missing the point, e.g. focusing on the specifics of a current Shahed drone. My main thesis is that the cost of small autonomous drones have dropped enormously over the past 20 years, and that increasingly drone swarms look like a much more capable and cost effective way of waging war than giant, incredibly expensive, slow moving targets. These giant but powerful machines…

> My main thesis is that the cost of small autonomous drones have dropped enormously over the past 20 years, and that increasingly drone swarms look like a much more capable and cost effective way of waging war And how about the cost of drone countermeasures? Ukrainian interceptor drones are already a fraction of the price of a Shahed, and drone jamming systems are evolving at a lightning pace. Every weapon developme…

And yet the U.S. navy is unable to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has no reason to take down a U.S. ship. In fact, it will try and avoid it as much as possible because taking down a ship would be an insult the U.S. would have to respond to with an incredible escalation of violence.

The purpose of the Shahed drones arsenal right now is to allow Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz, which it is achieving despite many promises/threats by the U.S. to wrest control from Iran, and to economically damage the US’s partners in the Middle East so they contribute pressuring the U.S. to end the war.

Thats also something Iran is achieving.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#105

Post by breppp »

fmajid wrote: post #95
breppp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is cultural continuity? Is France, a far more coherent nation is cultural continuous to the Gauls? Even though completely subjugated by the Romans? Is the Islamic Republic more culturally similar to the Arab Khalifate it professes to emulate or Cyrus? Also you brought up Sumer, how is Iran related to Sumer more than it is related to the actual Mesopotamian empires? I never heard someone claim that

I never said that. I said Susa/Sush, the beginning of Iranian civilization, is nearly as old as Sumer, by about 500 years. Historians generally consider Sumer the oldest true civilization, even if there are older settlements that didn't rise to the level of complexity rating as civilization. Being occupied by foreign powers doesn't break cultural continuity, otherwise you'd claim the modern Greeks don't have continui…

Yes, the context however is not cultural continuity but national continuity. When someone claims Iran is bound to win because of 2500 years of empire, that seems like a joke considering the amount of foreign rule it endured.

Some hermetic cultural continuity except for language is also doubtful, Iran culture is grounded in Arabian culture no less than it is grounded in Persian culture. Hence the entire national unifying concept of Islamic Republic and heir to the Khalifates.

Regarding Susa, as far as I understand they haven't spoken an Indo-European language and Elamite is not related to Persian at all, so why do you think it shows cultural continuity?

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#106

Post by pfisch »

adamors wrote: post #22
pfisch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is about force projection though. Ok, you have a bunch of drones in the US, now how do you use them to attack Iran or in the pacific theatre? Yes, aircraft carriers aren't nearly as unstoppable as they were in WWII, but they are still the most versatile mobile platforms the world has for projecting force around the globe.

Projection works up until someone calls the bluff, just like Iran did.

Projection always "works". If someone drives a car into a lake the car wasn't the problem.
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