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Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

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Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#131

Post by petesergeant »

chneu wrote: post #122
petesergeant wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, at the heart of this is that the Commander in Chief and Secretary of War are idiots. It's not clear how any of this situation would be any different if America had a dramatically higher production capacity.

Correction: Hegseth is a crusader. He is a super zealous religious fanatic who very much wants to destroy as many Muslims as possible. He has a crusades tattoo and openly talks about killing heathens in his WEEKLY SERMON. He might be an idiot alcoholic, but he very much knows what he is doing.

> he very much knows what he is doing

Nothing about how this war is going suggests he has any idea what he’s doing as SecWar

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#132

Post by justacrow »

pjc50 wrote: post #97
pydry wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America. The soviet union collapsed as a result of military overspending and massive supply chain corruption in an attempt to keep up with an opponent with lower levels of corruption and a far more powerful industrial base. Which is to say, inviting the gold toilet brigade from Ukraine to come and build our weapons while showerin…

Reality of course is the other way around: the US defense industry gets to build gold toilets (for the White House ballroom built on the ruins of the East Wing), while the Ukranians absolutely must build stuff that works and is cheap or they get a missile on their heads. The US survived spending a trillion dollars to achieve very little in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm sure they'll survive spending another trillion over…

What do you mean "achieve very little"? A lot of American oligarchs made boatloads of money!

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#133

Post by freefaler »

chneu wrote: post #120
Balgair wrote: post #113

In chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front Paul and his unit find an abandoned food cache in the middle of no mans land. Instead of secreting away the food back to their lines where they will have to share it, they decide to just cook and eat it right then and there. But a spotter plane from the allies sees the smoke and then begins shelling their position. Cue a terrifying, if hilarious, scene where the soldier…

This just came up yesterday in the sauna with a bunch of dudes. Everything feels unique and special, but we're just repeating history again. Nothing about this situation is actually unique. Change a few names, a few numbers like the year or GPS coords, but most everything today is just history repeating itself. Don't let capitalism convince us to do bad stuff cuz it makes us feel like the moment is special. It isn't.…

How is capitalism in the wrong here? Resource warfare is universal trough the history in any society.

The check and balances of the US President that can start an offensive war is more a political problem, not "capitalism" problem.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#134

Post by freefaler »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #130
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale We make plenty of stuff at scale. We just haven’t designed any of military around it since WWII. > unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America.

I think there's very little to be learned from Ukrainian technology. They dont have unprecedented servos, software, or manufacturing. What they have is a dire situation that drives efficient and pragmatic proucurement. This is much harder to export.

They have a working operational system and battle tested tactics, not only procurement. It's not the rifle that distinguishes the special forces, but how it's used.

They built a network centric warefare with starlink and cheap android tablets down to the drone teams in the field.

They built a network of cheap acousting sensors (old phones) as passive sensors and using ML models to find the drones cheaply and increase the coverage. (Radars are expensive and easy to hit because they emit).

What they achieved is a "sensor fusion like" distributed system buid on cheap components and updated realtime. And all this is battle tested in the new environment of transparent battlefield (there is always a drone looking).

Also a lot of real-life electronic warfare stuff and drone applications.

This is what's missing in the US army. They are optimized for a symetrical 20th century warfare.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#135

Post by scott_w »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #88
arkensaw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump casually talks about destroying the energy infrastructure, power plants, desalination plants etc. This is one of the most controversial things that the Russians do in Ukraine - attack the grid when it's cold to try and freeze people to death. To willingly deprive a country of 100,000,000 people of water and power coming into summer would surely be a war-crime.

> This is one of the most controversial things that the Russians do in Ukraine - attack the grid when it's cold to try and freeze people to death But the Russians have been doing it. Iran may have targeted an Israeli power plant. The precedent, unfortunately, is set.

They have and Ukraine haven’t surrendered (nor do they look like they will any time soon), so I don’t see how it wit k a in Iran.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#136

Post by mmh0000 »

fooker wrote: post #73
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale We make plenty of stuff at scale. We just haven’t designed any of military around it since WWII. > unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America.

> We make plenty of stuff at scale Maybe this video of a rather famous YouTuber trying to manufacture something as simple as a grill scrubber with a US supply chain would help you understand how bad it is? https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY

TL;DW: skip to 17m55s for the important bit

[1] https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY?t=1075

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#137

Post by citrin_ru »

guzfip wrote: post #123
citrin_ru wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both can be true - carriers and traditional air force are not obsolete but also western armies are unprepared to deal with the threat posed by a large number of cheap drones which can quickly deplete traditional air defense (based on SAM systems).

Wasn’t this the exact sort of reason we were developing laser weapons? I thought at least one US Navy ship was equipped with one now.

From what I see in news both the US and the UK are using expensive missiles to shut down Shahed drones and laser weapons are not mentioned at all - either they are too rare or not yet working reliably enough to risk letting a drone to get withing the range or laser weapons (which I assume is smaller than for missiles).

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#138

Post by ben_w »

freefaler wrote: post #133
chneu wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just came up yesterday in the sauna with a bunch of dudes. Everything feels unique and special, but we're just repeating history again. Nothing about this situation is actually unique. Change a few names, a few numbers like the year or GPS coords, but most everything today is just history repeating itself. Don't let capitalism convince us to do bad stuff cuz it makes us feel like the moment is special. It isn't.…

How is capitalism in the wrong here? Resource warfare is universal trough the history in any society. The check and balances of the US President that can start an offensive war is more a political problem, not "capitalism" problem.

Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?

To the extent it's a money making scheme, well, capitalism gets blamed for all money making schemes even if it's supposed to be a specific subset of them which is useful for the feedback one can get from open markets.

(As that's a caveat inside a caveat, I'm mostly agreeing with you).

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#139

Post by fooker »

mmh0000 wrote: post #136
fooker wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We make plenty of stuff at scale Maybe this video of a rather famous YouTuber trying to manufacture something as simple as a grill scrubber with a US supply chain would help you understand how bad it is? https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY

TL;DW: skip to 17m55s for the important bit [1] https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY?t=1075

There are multiple interesting bits, worth watching the whole thing at some point.

Something that stuck with me was that dude had an uncle that worked at a bolt factory down the road, and now there is literally no way to source domestically made bolts. And that they could find one retired guy after scouring multiple states who could help make an injection mold. I'm sure some of the larger defense contractors have a few guys who can do this, but that makes for a pretty low bus factor.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#140

Post by bluegatty »

Caius-Cosades wrote: post #116
cyanydeez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, there's going to be a dumbenough general to try to paratrooper their way in. They've spent the past year trying to cull "dysloyal" troops, so at some point, the delusion will surface is an absurdly dumb attempt. Hard to see it any other way.

Military does as the Civilian leadership orders them to, there is no other way in the west, and if the civilian leadership demands that they want an ground invasion, then they'll get one, even if it's the most moronic waste of human life in the world.

It's true that 'civilians are in charge' but it would be an oversimplification to suggest that the military will just 'do what they are asked'.

Civilian leadership takes a few forms, there is a division between the powers of Executive and Congress. The military won't pursue anything long term without the backing of both.

There are a lot of legal thresholds, Congressional approval being just one of them.

There is institutional incumbency, and the military will push back extremely hard on things that it deems impossible, or excessively risky.

Populism etc. etc..

There are so many factors.

If they want to mount a risky 500 000 person invasion of Iran, they'll have to do a lot of 'convincing' and get a lot of buy in from stake holders. There is no chance that the Executive count mount that kind of operation without a lot of institutional buy in.

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