341–350 of 446 posts
Add multiple decoys and the missile math tends to become an argument for the importance of preemption. Han shot first for a good reason.
Careful. Preemption takes many forms, some of them many would find unpalatable.
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We don't need to imagine. Hundreds of kids sheltered in Mariupol theater building were killed in one attack in the first weeks of the war.
Am I missing something? The attack on the Iranian primary school (not makeshift sheltered building) is on the very first day of the war, not several weeks, months or years. Not to downgrade the incident, but the Mariupol incident you mentioned probably happened in 2022 while the all out war started in 2014 [1],[2]. If you can refer and link to the particular incident it'll be helpful for verification. [1] Siege of Ma…
The theater was marked with huge inscription of "CHILDREN" on tarmac, in the pilots' native Russian. They killed them regardless.
Either way do you think that if it happened on day one instead of 3 weeks in the reaction would be any different?
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I haven't seen imagery of damage to Israeli airbases, but plenty of imagery showing damage to US military bases. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cIOMVBSbU . Worth keeping in mind that in the case of Israel, censorship is very effective. From the Iranian perspective, the overall strategy seems to have been: 1. Deplete intercepter stock and probe US/Israeli defences using large amounts of older less accurate mis…
If Iran was having great success with their attacks, they wouldn't therefore tail off the intensity if they could help it. They would just start scoring more hits with the same, presumably maximum, rate of fire. I think the obvious answer is the correct one here, that Iran's launch capacity has been degraded. That's not to say it will ever go to zero, so a lot of your other points still have some merit.
It could also backfire spectacularly. If a bunch of civilians suddenly get killed or other war crimes committed unilaterally by them (such as targeting energy infrastructure) their adversaries could gain political support for the current effort. Whereas gradually forcing all interceptors to be expended is a massively expensive slow bleed and gives the opponent little to nothing to spin in their favor.
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> when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate If you are atheist is becomes rational to surrender to the people that are invading your house and killing your friends at random?
Yes. Absolutely. If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy, I expect that I'll be very inclined to accept. Maybe afterwards, if I see it's not working out, I may still consider guerrilla resistance down the line, but I don't see the benefit of fighting and most likely dying just for the sake of def…
Why does Hamas hold hostages in tunnels under their own civilian populations? Not because they think Israel will hesitate to bomb there, they know they won't.
It's because the death of their own population is a goal in itself.
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That's certainly what Iranian propaganda is saying, as if everybody is censoring their great successes. Fact is there is no meaningful reduction in Israeli attacks, while Iranian launching ability had greatly suffered. So these air bases are probably not being hit. Apart from it in the era of OSINT satellite imagery, it is no issue to publicize such damage, I don't know of any such imagery Regarding the gulf, there t…
I haven't seen imagery of damage to Israeli airbases, but plenty of imagery showing damage to US military bases. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cIOMVBSbU . Worth keeping in mind that in the case of Israel, censorship is very effective. From the Iranian perspective, the overall strategy seems to have been: 1. Deplete intercepter stock and probe US/Israeli defences using large amounts of older less accurate mis…
US can destroy the entire Iranian economy that rests on oil. The only thing that stopping them right now seems like a fantasy by Trump that post-war Iran will become a Venezuela. Iran could then damage the Gulf oil facilities but does not have the same capabilities to completely destroy the facilities, due to problems getting the ammunitions to the targets
> I think the truth of all of this is that the US and Israel have no way to wipe out Iran's missile and drone capabilities
Everyday Israel is bombing the entire supply chain for drones and ballistic missiles in Iran. That means the companies making the explosives, optics, fins, stabilizers, engines, etc. The amount of destruction will greatly set back the Iranian ability to replenish their stockpiles and should also affect the war in Ukraine.
Iranian ballistic missile capability, at least the long range one is limited by its amount of launchers, and these are also hunted rather effectively.
I wouldn't underestimate complete air superiority, as the ability of the US and Israel to cause damage to Iran is far greater than otherwise, and Iran entire economy is concentrated on a very small number of targets
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They are fake in the sense individual items are listed as having costs that are not accurate. But really the defense deals are very complicated, and not based around buying x number of items. You’re making a not well-formed query. How much is a shell? Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.
> Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand. The shells are already made by the 10 and 100s of thousands, Shaheds are also not a research project, so either one is in amortized serial production now. What I meant is that a $10k shell doesn't cost that much. Russians are making the equivalent artillery shells for an…
Game theory would be useful for these kinds of modeling. Perhaps the government should have and advisory body that employs the smartest mathematicians for running these scenarios. Of course a lot of randomness needs to be modeled too. Wonder what would be a good name for such a body :) Paradoxically, if anyone leaks unpalatable information from the inside that would be a problem for the government. https://en.wikiped…
" .. the smartest mathematicians for running these scenarios .. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann > Claude Shannon called him "the smartest person I've ever met", a common opinion. > Von Neumann founded the field of game theory as a mathematical discipline. > .. leading him to a large number of military consultancies and consequently his involvement in the Manhattan Project. > In 1950, von Neumann beca…
Towards the end of his life as cancer metastasised in his brain he would ask his visitors to give him sums to do to reassure himself that he was still there. Towards the end he wasn't and couldn't. One of the saddest things.
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I don't see how drones don't make all conflicts into WW1. 100 Billion dollars buys about 3.3 million Shaheds assuming the manufacturing is not made more efficient. There are many questions on whether its possible to spend 100 billion dollars on Shaheds, or launch all of them. But this is more than enough to destroy any logistics and transportation infrastructure necessary for a ground invasion. There are many many co…
> stored military equipment that has a long shelf life Given the pace of advance and changes in strategy, high production capacity is probably more beneficial than inventory.
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I don't see how drones don't make all conflicts into WW1. 100 Billion dollars buys about 3.3 million Shaheds assuming the manufacturing is not made more efficient. There are many questions on whether its possible to spend 100 billion dollars on Shaheds, or launch all of them. But this is more than enough to destroy any logistics and transportation infrastructure necessary for a ground invasion. There are many many co…
From my extremely uneducated point of view it seems like that is true and probably what is already happening in Ukraine. However, at some point robots might be able to take and hold ground, and maybe they can be designed to require only decentralized, automated infrastructure to operate that is hard to strike economically even with drones. At that point, may the side with the most robots win.
Of course, once loitering, intelligent munitions make it too dangerous to be an economically valuable human outside of a bunker, we'll need robots running the robot factories, then we get Philip K. Dick's scenario in The Second Variety.