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Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

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Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#111
post #104
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh me? Nope I think that's nothing new and that was already in the news like months ago when countries started asking Ukraine to buy drone warfare know-how.

Really not sure how to interpret this thread. I could buy a drone for 100 bucks 10 years ago. Using cheap drones for asymmetric warfare can't be new or surprising for a country with a supposed vast intelligence network. Or for a country that's supposed to have a modern military which means having effective answers to what an enemy throws at you in battle.

My favorite example is how NATO recognized cyberspace as operational domain in 2016 — like no one there watched or heard about a movie from 1983 called „War Games”.

I think you vastly overestimate speed with which people acknowledge new facts.

Second best is only Catholic Church fully acknowledging heliocentric theories in 1992.

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there. Shaheds can be launched from trucks from inside densely populated cities. Good luck with those raids. > Eventually, because they don't have an industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks Modern drones are cheap and easy to assemble, Iran's allies (Russia, China) can easily smuggle them inside coun…

The win condition is not zero Shahed attacks, the win condition is to open the strait.

Its the same thing. Businesses won't move ships if there are shahed attacks.

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The win condition is not zero Shahed attacks, the win condition is to open the strait.

Its the same thing. Businesses won't move ships if there are shahed attacks.

And yet they are moving ships despite Shahed attacks that occurred yesterday, so by this empirical observation, you must conclude that you are operating under a flawed worldview.

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the same thing. Businesses won't move ships if there are shahed attacks.

And yet they are moving ships despite Shahed attacks that occurred yesterday, so by this empirical observation, you must conclude that you are operating under a flawed worldview.

yesterday's attack happened allegedly because Iran didn't allow specific ships to move. Those which are moving today likely received permission from Iran.

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#115
post #2

Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to ach…

Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it. It's still a strategic defeat, but for different reasons than what you are saying. Recommend studying the public comments of General MacKenzie who was the previous CENTCOM commander, comments from Admiral Cooper before he was appointed to current CENTCOM comman…

> Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want

This is not true.

There is too much coastline to guard to protect from coastal drone launches.

There are too many cheap drones and not enough cheap drone counters.

There are still a LOT of working ballistic missile launchers.

There are still a lot of anti-air threats, including medium and short range anti air, and combination infared+electro-optical MANPADS capable of shooting down true 5th gen stealth fighters.

They don't need to hit 999 of their drone or missile launches, they need to hit 1 or 2 to make insurance companies unwilling to take the risk of allowing movement through the straight.

Not to mention the cost of this... military excursion has been extensive in both depletion of competent military officers, depletion of strategic use precision guided weapons, we have lost some very expensive and critical airframes, and politically and around the world, have shown to be somewhat of a very expensive paper tiger in modern large scale operations that is clearly not yet ready for the realities of a modern conflict that isn't being fought by a state in the middle of a civil war.

I could go on and on from both a tactical and strategic angle about why this was awful, but I don't think I'd sway the minds of anyone already set in their perspective.

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, but everything short of committing the whole country to total war will always come down to “we could do it, it’s just too politically expensive”. Even in authoritarian countries, there is a limit to what you can get away with. That “we could do it, we just don’t want to” argument will face its acid test later in the year when the midterms are closer, but certainly if I were in charge of Iran I’d be feeling…

Do you think the military gave a realistic assessment of what time and resources it would take to control the strait? Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?

> Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?

That has been the military assessment in leaks, yes.

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#117
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it. It's still a strategic defeat, but for different reasons than what you are saying. Recommend studying the public comments of General MacKenzie who was the previous CENTCOM commander, comments from Admiral Cooper before he was appointed to current CENTCOM comman…

I assume you're talking about "slow and expensive" like sending tens of thousand of troops to occupy at _least_ the ~entire shore around the narrow part of the Strait, indefinitely? Yeah, shocking there's no political will for that.

Hundreds of thousands

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#118
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was an honest question.

I would point you to Gen MacKenzie's interviews as the reference on that question, I would just be regurgitating his views. He says that a sustained coastal invasion is not necessary. Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there. Other than this you need more of what they were already doing, "shaping operations" as he calls it, which is ISR drones overhead and l…

If the truth is that our extremely expensive military is relatively useless in this situation, do you really think he'd admit that?

Re: Ships keep moving through Hormuz despite strike

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, but everything short of committing the whole country to total war will always come down to “we could do it, it’s just too politically expensive”. Even in authoritarian countries, there is a limit to what you can get away with. That “we could do it, we just don’t want to” argument will face its acid test later in the year when the midterms are closer, but certainly if I were in charge of Iran I’d be feeling…

Do you think the military gave a realistic assessment of what time and resources it would take to control the strait? Was this pitched as an operation that would take a huge political commitment of troops and drag on for years?

No idea. Do you think it was pitched like that before the conflict began?
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