71–80 of 198 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective. The U.S. has been secretly moving ships for months. And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out. What is difficult to completely stop, short of glassing the entire country, is harassment by drones or other forms of "asymmetric warfare."
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Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to ach…
As others have said, the US can “reopen” the straight at any time they want. It’s not an issue of capabilities. But it’s very resource intensive and very expensive.
The logistics of escorting ships in and out of the straight isn’t trivial. I forget the name of the operation, but they did implement it for a few days before shutting it down. Politically, I imagine it’s pretty hard to justify the cost /benefit
On the Iranian side it takes a very small amount of resources and logistics. All they have to do is project power, whether they have it or not, and the shipping & insurance industries have to respect it.
Drones are really cheap, and that’s about all it takes for Iran to leverage their influence over the straight. Which is kind of crazy when you think about it. But it’s about the only bargaining chip they have left and they aren’t going let go of it easily.
Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to ach…
This is fundamentally a failure of political leadership. You don't try to achieve a goal when you don't have the military means to achieve at a cost you are willing to bear. There are endless numbers of military objectives that the US military that could have been sent on where they would have had no chance to succeed. That they generally weren't is a function other administrations, however bad, not being so embarras…
It's pure greed. The IRGC relies heavily on oil money for funding the massive militia (hundreds of thousands of Basij) that allows it to stay in power; if that income collapsed then it would eventually lose control. Trump however not only refused to bomb Iran's oil infrastructure but even stopped the IDF from doing so, just because he thinks he'll somehow be able to take that oil for himself and his cronies in future like he did in Venezuela.
Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to ach…
Controlling the straight was never one of their objectives. Decapitating the regime and degrading their military capabilities was the primary objective. As others have said, the US can “reopen” the straight at any time they want. It’s not an issue of capabilities. But it’s very resource intensive and very expensive. The logistics of escorting ships in and out of the straight isn’t trivial. I forget the name of the op…
Those are tactical objectives, not strategic aims. The US is very good at winning tactically, but losing strategically. This is yet another example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy this function is outdated since u-boat appearance, and now cruise missiles and drones. More important modern function of navy is projecting power.
Submarines can be hunted (and are) and drones and cruise missiles can be shot down. These things are what navies are supposed to do nowadays. US Navy in particular has not read the memo for about 20 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You assumed wrong. Maybe listen to the interviews before responding with aggressive sarcasm.
It was an honest question.
He says that a sustained coastal invasion is not necessary. Raids would be necessary to destroy any buried weapons, but these troops wouldn't need to stay there.
Other than this you need more of what they were already doing, "shaping operations" as he calls it, which is ISR drones overhead and lots of bombing/strafing runs.
Eventually, because they don't have a remaining industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks (excepting more simple one way attack drones), they will lack the ability to project enough power beyond their borders to keep the strait closed.
Operation Praying Mantis is a somewhat dated case study, but still required reading.
The reason it's so expensive should be more intuitively obvious - interceptors are expensive and are needed to pace China, and a few more months of closure is significant inflation before the midterms.
Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to ach…
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective. The military objective can be achieved, it would just require the 'No New Wars' party to implode from having 272 seats to having ~150 seats after the midterms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to achieve a purely military objective. The U.S. has been secretly moving ships for months. And Iran no longer has any significant naval force, it's all been wiped out. What is difficult to completely stop, short of glassing the entire country, is harassment by drones or other forms of "asymmetric warfare."
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It's about time to have a serious talk with the Saudis and redirect all that money that is being stupidly spent on all those vanity projects such as NEOM and The Line towards pipelines running through the Desert , end point the port of Yunbu & Jeddah and make the Strait of Hormuz irrelevant . This is the quintessential American project, the U.S. has invented and developed the oil industry in Saudi. Saudi Aramco was o…
Doesn't matter how many pipelines Saudi has when Iran could just bomb them and the refineries again. The best strategy would be for Saudi and the UAE to invest in mass drone production; drones are becoming like WMDs, and MAD will similarly apply. The IRGC is more dependent on oil revenue than Saudi and UAE, and relies on that money for funding the massive militia that allows them to stay in power, so they've got more…
Haven't you seen the amount of sand they displaced for the foundations of "the Line" project?
Let's say dig a hole in the desert build the pipeline and then cover it with 15ft of sand that you previously excavated , can't be that hard for a country that is boasting about building a 1mi tall skyscraper and a 100mi long 1000ft tall Line , or a floating NEOM city
The exception is that this project would actually have positive ROI .
I agree that the point of arrival of the pipelines would present a vulnerabily but look at the map , Jeddah is about 1000mi from Iran coast.
That buys you a lot of time and a lot of opportunities to intercept the drones
> > extended war of oil infrastructure destruction.
My point was that ingenuity could be used to avoid oil infrastructure destruction , which is not desirable anyways.
Your point is to get there via drone MAD. I don't think Saudi and Iran can be trusted with MAD
Nobody is talking about how big of a failure this has been on the part of the U.S. Navy. Controlling and securing shipping routes has been a fundamental function of a navy since Roman times. The U.S. Navy was unable to achieve that objective in this war. Ill-advised American wars often end up as losses because we fail to achieve our political objectives. But this may be one of the few times we have been unable to ach…
Because it's not true. CENTCOM can reopen the strait whenever they want, but doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it. It's still a strategic defeat, but for different reasons than what you are saying. Recommend studying the public comments of General MacKenzie who was the previous CENTCOM commander, comments from Admiral Cooper before he was appointed to current CENTCOM comman…