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

cnbc.com

291–300 of 775 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until there is. We have thus far been supremely lucky that irrational actors have not acquired a nuclear bomb. But the reality is that throughout history most leaders have been irrational. My country (America) is behaving increasingly irrationally. I've been hearing fringe conservatives calling for nuking the middle east since the early 2000s, but the rot has spread and became deeply religious. Now I hear talk of the…

The US is still fixable if young people will just fucking vote. Irreparable damage has been done, which means the old structures are gone, but they can be replaced with new ones -- a hypothetical Democratic president would need to clean house top to bottom. Obama's greatest flaw was that he didn't see the need to do that after Shrub.

I don't fall in the ring category, but I will be voting Democrat for the first time. That's how bad this is getting for me. I have real reasons to hate the Democrats as a party, but I'm scared of them less than the modern Republicans .

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

#292

I'm always confused by prices of "highly regulated" goods in the United States. When I get a $150,000 bill for a 15-minute hand-reconstruction surgery, how much of that bill is the total margin vs self cost? And how much of that is warranted / acceptable? When a single Tomahawk missile bills the taxpayer $3,600,000, how much of that bill is the total margin? When I say "total margin", I mean not just the margin of th…

If you were to count the margin of everything it would be 100%. At the end of the day everything is either a resource harvested from the earth or human labor.

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

#293
post #49

3 generations of wealth poured into the most expensive military in recorded history - the reason that we don't have health care, clean energy, decent social safety nets and so many other things... and they can't even control a small stretch of water. What a waste.

The health care issue in the USA isn't due to lack of funding, the US spends more on health care per person than any other country, double that of many European countries with single payer systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for…

>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 guns.

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

#294
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you set out to achieve an objective, but the enemy prevents you from achieving that objective, you lost.

I wouldn't say they lost . They failed their strategic objectives, but they're still out there, intact and combat capable. Losing is what happened to Germany after both World Wars.

Going back to Clausewitz, war is a continuation of politics through other means. Moreover, victory is achieved by using force to compel one's opponent to carry out one's will.

> intact and combat capable

On its own, this claim is likely true. Nevertheless, this does not mean one's opponent is going to carry out one's will. Hence, one cannot declare victory. It follows that anything short of achieving one's goal is a loss. A loss doesn't have to be complete and utter destruction. It's fair to say that Argentina did not achieve its strategic objectives during the Falklands War, no?

> Losing is what happened to Germany after both World Wars.

Yes, but Germany is not as good of an example in this case as Japan during WWII. Japan would have likely accepted something short of unconditional surrender much sooner than August 1945, but the U.S. insisted on unconditional surrender. As such, the U.S. did not win until Japan agreed to unconditional surrender.

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

#295

The US only used long range precision missiles for the first 3 days of the war. Since then, its been almost all JDAMs. The interceptors got used a lot more but even with those we only went through about 5% of the stockpile. This is CNBC. If you trust them on topics like this, well...that's on you. Please remember that they don't have a single person on staff with any military experience or expertise. PS Their source…

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle. Nothing. No one has any rank that has bearing on any kind of combat. Just decades of self-congratulatory war games. China has tons of weapons and resources. But it would remain to be seen if they can actually fight when every single person along the entire chain is a total day one rookie.

NATO exercises and, ya know, the war in Iran, seem to suggest there's limited applicability of the US's experience.

Dropping bombs and evading live anti-aircraft fire is of limited applicability? Are you sure you're not confusing combined arms exercises that the US has, and continues to engage in (Venezuela comes to mind recently) with your personal opinion on the validity of the war in Iran?

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

#297

The US only used long range precision missiles for the first 3 days of the war. Since then, its been almost all JDAMs. The interceptors got used a lot more but even with those we only went through about 5% of the stockpile. This is CNBC. If you trust them on topics like this, well...that's on you. Please remember that they don't have a single person on staff with any military experience or expertise. PS Their source…

Where is your 5% used quote from?

All the estimates for interceptors like patriots I've seen are north of 50% used so 5% certainly seems like an outlier

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

#298

I'm always confused by prices of "highly regulated" goods in the United States. When I get a $150,000 bill for a 15-minute hand-reconstruction surgery, how much of that bill is the total margin vs self cost? And how much of that is warranted / acceptable? When a single Tomahawk missile bills the taxpayer $3,600,000, how much of that bill is the total margin? When I say "total margin", I mean not just the margin of th…

If you were to count the margin of everything it would be 100%. At the end of the day everything is either a resource harvested from the earth or human labor.

Help me understand this.

There's the cost that the employees pocket, and then there's the share that the shareholders pocket, right? Doesn't "margin" represent the latter?

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

#299
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is production capacity. The US has gutted the lower-value parts of its supply chains, closed refineries and foundries left and right, and is thoroughly unequipped to even produce cheap weapons at the rate required to support a war. The number of airplanes built in the US during WWII is greater than all the airplanes NOT in that category. Obviously we can't maintain that level of industry during peacetime,…

And we still manage to spend more than the next six countries combined on our military!

That's because the primary goal of the spending is not to produce a capable military. It's an expensive, inefficient jobs program, but one that you can get conservatives to support

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

#300
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…

China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle. Nothing. No one has any rank that has bearing on any kind of combat. Just decades of self-congratulatory war games. China has tons of weapons and resources. But it would remain to be seen if they can actually fight when every single person along the entire chain is a total day one rookie.

> China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle.

I wish people would take a short stop here and contemplate a bit on this sentence.

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