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Missile defense is NP-complete

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Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#361

Post by donkeybeer »

falcor84 wrote: post #305
marcosdumay wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yes and its much more rational to see that the invaders are natural born liars and they installed puppet dictatorships while talking "democracy" and very literally a few days ago backstabbed and invaded you while in the pretense of doing peace negotiations. Logically for an Iranian the most rational response would be to always kill Americans or Israelis in this case.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#362

Post by egorfine »

Havoc wrote: post #254

There is also a big real world experience element that is hard to account for mathematically. There are stories of ukrainian operators expressing bewilderment and BCC countries sending 8x interceptors at millions a pop at a 20k shaheed. The world doesn't seem to have acclimatized to well...how the world works now. There is a very fundamental disconnect at play here and I fear it'll get us all into trouble

> The world doesn't seem to have acclimatized to well...how the world works now

It has been observed that military bureaucracies will do everything in their power to ignore the fact that their experience is now obsolete and requires a complete refactoring.

This is why the countries were still not ready for Shaheds despite tens of thousands of them having been shot into Ukraine and despite enormous ukrainian experience and military know-how being readily available.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#363

Post by fpoling »

lumost wrote: post #301
fpoling wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is vastly more complicated to find targets at 1500 miles than at 20. So drones are effective at destroying big stationary civilian infrastructure and much less at long distance strikes at military targets. Russia's inability to destroy Ukrainian aviation is a good example. But then with solar and batteries civilian infrastructure becomes much more resilient against drone strikes.

At a certain distance, I'd contend all infrastructure is big and static. Our energy comes from large facilities, without these facilities continent scale infrastructure will grind to a halt at 1500 miles. Rail, power lines, warehouses, factories and trucks are all relatively static. It's not unreasonable to expend a Shahed type drone on a simple semi-truck parked overnight from nearly a continent away. There are only…

Ukraine tried to come up with drones that can fly over 1000 miles. But drones the size of Shaheds just cannot fly that distance without significantly reducing the warhead. To attack things beyond that range Ukraine have used essentially Cessna. Which is much more expensive and visible on radars.

Instead Ukraine came up with an idea of mass producing extremely simple cruise missiles that could fly 2000 miles and deliver up to a ton of explosives with a cost of 100K and make 1000 of them per month. But then it seems Russia was able to discover the production sites and destroy them.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#364

Post by kakacik »

varispeed wrote: post #154
iso1631 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if it was acting rationally the US Would not have spent billions trying to blow up an 80 year old man while massively increasing the price of oil and fertiliser globally leading to economic instability But the US has not acted rationally. It hasn't since January 2021.

There could be a rational explanation if you assume US administration is compromised by Russia and Ayatollah's son wanted him out to assume power. One phone call to Putin, Putin's one phone call to Krasnov and everyone is happy. Son gets the power, Russia gets sanctions lifted, higher oil price, US and allies spend kit that cannot be now sold to Ukraine, Krasnov gets to play the stock market. Win-win-win.

That son almost died during US strike and survived by pure luck, so unprobable. The rest, not so much.

Free democratic world loses, dictators around the globe win. Sad days for mankind.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#365

Post by ReptileMan »

jsw97 wrote: post #8

The author explains that this problem is actually adversarial, in the sense that the attacker gets to observe defenses and allocate warheads and decoys accordingly. Thinking of our current circumstances, this suggests another cost of war: our offensive capabilities, as well as our defensive capabilities become more observable. Our adversaries are studying our strengths and weaknesses in Iran, and they will have a muc…

On the other hand the Air force is getting the workout of their lifetime. Which could come in handy. The low bodycount among US military so far makes the whole clusterfuck just and expensive training program.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#366

Post by watwut »

seer wrote: post #339
yosefk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What produces this Iranian "mercy" at a time when Iran is extensively bombed, if not a combination of defensive and offensive capabilities providing escalation dominance?

MAD If they strike desalination plants, Israel/us can do the same … really mass casualty event could follow. And they might, at some point the Iranian gov might feel desperate enough to be like “fuck it, we have nothing to lose” … Dubai could end up with a lot more graves. Almost all of their water comes from these plants, and humans can’t survive without water for more than 3 days … There are reserves/stores sure, b…

Israel already attacked desalination plants. Iran already responded by doing the same to the surrounding countries.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#367

Post by watwut »

andrewflnr wrote: post #281
tmnvix wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> f Iran was having great success with their attacks, they wouldn't therefore tail off the intensity if they could help it.

They would for pragmatical reasons - they do not want to spend more ammunition then necessary. They very clearly do eye for eye thing - when something is attacked inside their territory, they attack similar thing outside.

They are not running the "operation epic fury to prove we are manly men" thing. They are running the "operation regime survives in a long term" thing.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#368

Post by bigfatkitten »

tmnvix wrote: post #244
breppp wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the things Iran figured out fairly quickly about Israel is that reducing their rate of fire is more effective for wearing down the population, and eroding political support for the war.

The longer Iran can keep the air raid sirens blaring in Israel, the better.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#369

Post by corimaith »

dlisboa wrote: post #55
myrmidon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely true, but there is a strong counterpoint: You also learn the limits of your own systems and how to operate them most effectively yourself (and better than adversaries can, too). Just to pick a recent example: Russian air defense in the early stages of the Ukraine war was dismal (more specifically: defense against big, slow drones like Bayraktar), despite having sufficient AA capability "on paper"--…

There is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example. Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the…

That's only if you continue to assume vulnerable and unfortified critical infrastructure. Did you know the majority of damage from a nuke is more from the aftermath of the blast in fires and crumbling infrastructure than the blast itself. And that can be adequately prepared for one if one needs to.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#370

Post by corimaith »

donkeybeer wrote: post #361
falcor84 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes and its much more rational to see that the invaders are natural born liars and they installed puppet dictatorships while talking "democracy" and very literally a few days ago backstabbed and invaded you while in the pretense of doing peace negotiations. Logically for an Iranian the most rational response would be to always kill Americans or Israelis in this case.

Iraq is many things but its not a puppet dictatorship, if anything it suffers from too much democracy in secterianism.
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