381–390 of 446 posts
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It's America that's waging this war, having attacked Iran for no reason the world can see It's somewhat similar to Russia waging a war in Ukraine, although I can see some reasons for Russia to attack Ukraine (mainly territory)
Ah yes, Russia, the famously territory starved country.
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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…
Fighting is rational when the alternative is being killed. FDR made a big mistake announcing that he was going for unconditional surrender. This resulted in Germany fighting to the bitter end. Hitler dragged it on to the last few hours - he knew what was going to happen to him when the war ended.
But allies had to achieve clear military victory, because of WWI aftermath. Germany did not believed it lost, it believed it was betrayed and wanted do-over. No surrender thing was to prevent next round with WWIII as Germans feel like betrayed again.
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And that's why nuclear deterrence is so key: the enemy can never be sure to destroy everything before being hit once. The Russian invasion of Ukraine really reminded everyone that nuclear deterrence is a nice thing to have for you security, and I suspect the Israelo-American attack on Iran is going to be the nail in the coffin of nonproliferation. I expect countries like Brazil, Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan or V…
There's a big difference between all the countries you named and Iran, the difference is jihad. You can't just let jihadists have nukes and hope they will only use them as a deterrent. They're not just joking around when they say things like "Death to America" or "Death to Israel". They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life". They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they ha…
It's the US that dismantled their democratic parliamentary system to maintain their hold on Irani oil. It's the US that shot down their domestic passenger jet with no apologies forthcoming. it's the US that foisted Saddam Hussein against them in a war where 30K Iranians perished to chemical weapons. I can understand why anyone who went through that would not like the US and its enablers much and I am not even Iranian or Muslim.
Add multiple decoys and the missile math tends to become an argument for the importance of preemption. Han shot first for a good reason.
Decoys are greatly over-rated in ballistic missile systems. Sensors are so good at discriminating decoys from warheads that decoys are largely ineffective and have been for decades. This has borne out in Ukraine. A decoy sufficiently sophisticated to look real to good sensors will have weight and characteristics that approach that of a real warhead, at which point you might as well add another warhead. Decoys only ma…
How are decoys discriminated? The acceleration due to gravity is the same for all. Radar reflectance could be manipulated. Drag and lift perhaps, but can't those be matched with the real thing ? What is it that gives up a decoy as a decoy ?
Yes I can distinguish a falling feather from a falling lead-shot. The more interesting questions is can one not make a featherweight that falls like lead-shot, reflects like lead-shot and be cheaper than lead-shot.
For a warhead decoy ten times lighter it needs to present an area ten times smaller to maintain drag induced deceleration parity. For radio parity the decoy needs to reflect more the actual warhead reflect less. Metal coated kevlar ribbons on the decoy might do it.
What I find interesting is that the curse of rocket equation makes decoys pretty expensive to propel. So if I am forced to incur that cost anyway, might as well put a real warhead on that.
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My heartfelt sympathy to the MH17 victims and families, but the airplane was flying in the risky warzone. That does not discount the fact that it's an atrocious act by the Russian backed military. However, to send missile to primary school killing hundreds of school girls on the very first day of the war, if intentionally is just pure evil.
It wasn't intentional; the building was used by the military years before. The US had really badly out-of-date intelligence and was negligent in updating it. There's absolutely no military benefit to bombing a girl's school. Remember Hanlon's Razor, and remember how incompetent the Trump Administration has been in everything ever since he took office.
Objection. For a hypothetical actor wanting to set the world economy on fire there might be a benefit of enraging the enemy to lower the risk of early deescalation.
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And that's why nuclear deterrence is so key: the enemy can never be sure to destroy everything before being hit once. The Russian invasion of Ukraine really reminded everyone that nuclear deterrence is a nice thing to have for you security, and I suspect the Israelo-American attack on Iran is going to be the nail in the coffin of nonproliferation. I expect countries like Brazil, Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan or V…
There's a big difference between all the countries you named and Iran, the difference is jihad. You can't just let jihadists have nukes and hope they will only use them as a deterrent. They're not just joking around when they say things like "Death to America" or "Death to Israel". They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life". They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they ha…
> There's a big difference between all the countries you named and Iran, the difference is jihad. You can't just let jihadists
Radical Islamism is very diverse, the Iranian regime is indeed an Islamic theocracy, but it's not jihadists, no more than Saudi Arabia or Qatar are.
> They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life".
Well, the past 2 and a half years prove that it's not just hyperbolic, but complete bluff. They wouldn't have tried to appease Israel and the US after 10/7 if that was the case. They would have attacked Israel the first with all their might, including Hezbollah, like Sinwar wished they do. Instead they cowardly watched their entire proxy network being dismantled by Israel before being struck themselves. That's definitely not the behavior of someone not afraid of death.
> They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they have it,
They wouldn't have accepted JCPOA if they wanted the bomb to use it. And they would have resumed their nuclear weapon program when Trump unilaterally left it, which they haven't.
Iran, like North Korea, is simply a corrupt authoritarian regime who wants to consolidate their power. Their bellicose rhetoric against the US or Israel is just that: rhetoric.
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…
Specifically: don't start wars thousand of miles away of your borders.
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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.
It is not verified and probably a cover story for why he flew to Moscow to personally thank Putin.
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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 no amount of math that can make up for the lopsided dynamic of hypersonic missiles. The only reason the “iron/gold dome” con job was even plausible to plunder trillions in U.S. Monopoly money was because missiles were crude, slow, and not MIRVed or had decoys at one time. That was a long time ago though. MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved frau…
Isn't that exactly what it was for? They never hid their paranoia of Iranian ballistic missiles or pretended iron dome would be a fool proof protection from them, did they?
> That was a long time ago though.
> MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now. However between the indifference because the party was still in high swing and the plundering was making people rich who could pay professional lobbyists/liars, very few people were paying attention or really cared, even though it’s clear fraud and just a false confidence; as is the objective of a con job, which comes from “confidence trick”.
> There are several lectures he gives and more recent appearances on various YouTube channels where he clearly describes the inherent fraud in “missile defense”.
> Here’s the synopsis; it’s like trying to prevent sand from hitting you once someone has thrown a fist full of dry sand at you.
Ukraine's defenses are reported to intercept between 80-90% cruise missiles and 10%-40% of hypersonic and ballistic missiles, depending on what source you read and what stage of the cat and mouse game they are. It seems quite good.
> It’s basically just the end game in a long history of American snake oil salesmen turned missile defense salesmen. You get useless junk, they run off with your wealth.
Yet Zelenskyy has been crying out for this "useless junk" and his military has been making good use of it. I think I will trust the person with real skin in the game and real experience in the battlefield as opposed to MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, claiming to have "mathematically proved fraud" from the safety of his ivory tower.