121–130 of 198 posts
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> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective. The U.S. has been secretly moving ships for months. And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out. What is difficult to completely stop, short of glassing the entire country, is harassment by drones or other forms of "asymmetric warfare."
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The US will never recover from the reputation damage they sustained by voting in a mindbogglingly stupid buffoon. Twice.
That's just not true. Most people forgot Bush by Obama's second year.
USA's reputation has taken a severe beating, because of Trump.
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> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective. The U.S. has been secretly moving ships for months. And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out. What is difficult to completely stop, short of glassing the entire country, is harassment by drones or other forms of "asymmetric warfare."
> And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out. A naval force isn't required to control the Strait. Artillery, drones and missiles fired from inland can do that quite easily.
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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-op…
About half or so have been destroyed if one averages various estimates. The continuation of combat operations was the sensible option: not finishing off a wounded but aggressive animal is always a mistake. Iran will put whatever sanctions relief they get out of a "deal" towards rearming and rebuilding their nuclear facilities, and we will be back to square one in a decade or so, only against a more emboldened enemy.
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This is fundamentally a failure of political leadership. You don't try to achieve a goal when you don't have the military means to achieve at a cost you are willing to bear. There are endless numbers of military objectives that the US military that could have been sent on where they would have had no chance to succeed. That they generally weren't is a function other administrations, however bad, not being so embarras…
>at a cost you are willing to bear. It's pure greed. The IRGC relies heavily on oil money for funding the massive militia (hundreds of thousands of Basij) that allows it to stay in power; if that income collapsed then it would eventually lose control. Trump however not only refused to bomb Iran's oil infrastructure but even stopped the IDF from doing so, just because he thinks he'll somehow be able to take that oil f…
Imho the regime was made stronger because of this war. It was really a bad moment to strike. Khomeini had a cancer, and waiting for his death and the succession crisis that would have ensued would have been a better choice. Now the regime is stronger than ever.
Although my real thoughts is that this strength the Khomeini project is temporary, in the sense that the only reason the regime lasted this long before was because the power was shared. If they keep pushing for more control, without sharing, they will end up loosing everything.
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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.
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> Then why is "glass the entire country" not an option? It is an option, but civilians bear most of the cost of it. That being said, I do think more could have been done militarily. The U.S. should have continued combat operations for at least a few more weeks and taken what is left of ballistic missiles, drones and arms facilities, etc. Striking dual-use infrastructure such as bridges and railroads is also fair game…
When Arab hit civilian targets, it's terrorism, when the US does, it's freedom. I personally fail to understand the difference, but I'm an europoor
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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?
So, to me, the two possibilities are: the military told the administration it couldn’t control the strait without boots on the ground, and Trump disregarded that advice.
The other possibility is that the military was overconfident. We know it has been developing plans to attack Iran for decades. It’s possible the military thought it could control the strait based on obsolete plans that didn’t account for new developments like Iranian fast boats and drones.
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Iran never had the right to close the strait or attack neutral merchant ships exercising their right of innocent passage in the first place, regardless of anything that Israel or Lebanon does. The MOU doesn't change that.
The US and Israel never had the right to attack Iran in the first place
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Cancelling the LCS construction program was the right move. There are still a number of hulls in commission and they have some utility as minesweepers, but can really only operate when the air threat has been neutralized. They have only limited defenses against drones and cruise missiles, and none at all against ballistic missiles. They're simply no longer survivable.
I don't think Iran has homing ballistic missiles. Only maybe China has those. As such, the best defense vs ballistic threats is simply moving around, if they can't home then who cares? I mean, buildings and hardened targets do care. But ships can just move and the missile will miss. But yes, defenses vs Drones and Cruise missiles is more than sufficient vs Iran. And navigating narrow waters with higher degrees of mob…
https://warontherocks.com/irans-anti-access-and-area-denial-...
Even setting the ballistic missile threat aside, LCS can't defend itself against regular drones and cruise missiles. It's severely limited in terms of sensors, fire control, and magazine depth. In order to operate in that area with reasonable survivability it would have to be escorted by a more capable surface warship with area air defense.