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

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411–420 of 775 posts

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

#411
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not American, need to preface with this) I think the US military has shown itself to be extremely competent in the last war. Reading about Desert Storm and later the invasion of Iraq it's just insane. It's still possible they miscalculated how rapidly warfare would change, but to call them morons... As far as I can see, there are only three proven militaries in the world, the US, Israel and Ukraine, and the US is or…

I think their point is that it doesn't really matter how competent the lower levels of the command structure are if the ones at the very top are bumbling fools unwilling to listen.

If you don’t have an objective, no amount of military might is going to get you there. This was the USA’s biggest mistake in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran.

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

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that seriously upending global energy markets (and perhaps the entire economy) is quite a high cost.

Politically, yes.

Nobody stateside is immune from the very real, very steep, very ongoing financial costs of this “conflict”.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Wow, yeah, you'd need to have morons at the top of the chain of command and subordinates afraid to speak out in order for something like that to happen. Nothing like the US government today at all.

(Not American, need to preface with this) I think the US military has shown itself to be extremely competent in the last war. Reading about Desert Storm and later the invasion of Iraq it's just insane. It's still possible they miscalculated how rapidly warfare would change, but to call them morons... As far as I can see, there are only three proven militaries in the world, the US, Israel and Ukraine, and the US is or…

(Am an American, don't know if it matters that I preface with this)

The US military is quite powerful.

Donald Trump is a moron.

Pete Hegseth is also a moron whose only qualification is that he looks like what the moron Donald Trump imagines someone playing his role would look like in the movies/TV.

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

#414

>The U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military’s readiness for future conflicts. >The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used “v…

Two birds with one stone for benefit of Putin.

Likely son of Ayatollah wanted to get rid of his weak father and Putin wanted the US to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. So Putin asked Krasnov to get rid of Ayatollah and empty the stockpile of weapons.

Trump always delivers for Russia.

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

#415

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…

I think most of the cost is in R&D

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

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the US has shown itself as to be extremely competent in the Iran war? If you were talking about Iraq, that was completely different leadership.

The US killed almost the entire Iranian regime leadership with minimal cost. What definition of competence are you going by?

You don’t know the difference between tactics and strategy.

The US has been consistently tactically excellent. Strategically this is a blundering loss.

If you strategically aim your awesome unmatched powers the wrong way you can still lose.

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Wow, yeah, you'd need to have morons at the top of the chain of command and subordinates afraid to speak out in order for something like that to happen. Nothing like the US government today at all.

(Not American, need to preface with this) I think the US military has shown itself to be extremely competent in the last war. Reading about Desert Storm and later the invasion of Iraq it's just insane. It's still possible they miscalculated how rapidly warfare would change, but to call them morons... As far as I can see, there are only three proven militaries in the world, the US, Israel and Ukraine, and the US is or…

Regarding Iraq, please Google “Dick Cheney 1994” he predicted exactly what happened in 2003.

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

#419
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.

Didn't at least some living generals fight in Vietnam?

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a tactical failure of the US; it's a strategic one. The US operates a tremendously powerful military, but that doesn't change the fact that the war with Iran was a tremendous strategic blunder. "Moronic" is a pretty fair characterization.

But running out of missiles—which is the accusation being made above—would be a tactical and logistics failure, not a strategic one.

> But running out of missiles—which is the accusation being made above—would be a tactical and logistics failure, not a strategic one.

It's absolutely a strategic failure to enter into a war without sufficient munitions or logistical capability to sustain the war.

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