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Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

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Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#81

Post by edanm »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #39

This is a great article and an excellent breakdown of how what we hear on the news can be so off base. Just to nitpick, this part stuck out to me: >Fast forward two decades, and this outlook looks dangerously naive. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s attacks on Israel, and a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan or the Philippines show the importance of ballistic missile defense as a way of blocking attacks by invading…

> It was definitely Israel who violated Iranian sovereignty first here, no? With the killing of IRGC commanders in a Syrian consulate. Neither country has attacked Israel recently.

Iran funds Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7th (and has attacked it many other times). It funds Hezbollah, which has been attacking Israel since October 7th, partially from Syria.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#82

Post by edanm »

leereeves wrote: post #80
edanm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Iranian general was actively working to help arm Hezbollah, who have been i a low-grade conflict with Israel since October 7th (and before). Think Israel and Hezbollah shooting rockets at each other back and forth for the last 6 months kind of conflict. Because of this conflict, Israel has ~80k citizens who have had to evacuate their homes because they are too close to the border, and they are afraid to come back…

In terms of international law (for what that's worth), that is a dangerous precedent. Is a US general a legitimate target for Russia now, because we're arming their enemy? AFAIK, even during the Cold War, when the US was arming Russia's enemies (like Afghanistan) and Russia was arming the US's enemies (like Vietnam), neither nation went so far as to assassinate generals from the other. We even asked Ukraine not to at…

I mean, the US did assassinate Soleimani, an Iranian general, in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleima... . So I wouldn't exactly call this a precedent.

But yes, this is a complicated issue.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#83

Post by leereeves »

edanm wrote: post #82
leereeves wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of international law (for what that's worth), that is a dangerous precedent. Is a US general a legitimate target for Russia now, because we're arming their enemy? AFAIK, even during the Cold War, when the US was arming Russia's enemies (like Afghanistan) and Russia was arming the US's enemies (like Vietnam), neither nation went so far as to assassinate generals from the other. We even asked Ukraine not to at…

I mean, the US did assassinate Soleimani, an Iranian general, in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleima... . So I wouldn't exactly call this a precedent . But yes, this is a complicated issue.

That link does say:

> Some experts, including the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, considered the assassination [of Soleimani] as a likely violation of international law as well as U.S. domestic laws.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#84

Post by edanm »

leereeves wrote: post #83
edanm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the US did assassinate Soleimani, an Iranian general, in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleima... . So I wouldn't exactly call this a precedent . But yes, this is a complicated issue.

That link does say: > Some experts, including the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, considered the assassination [of Soleimani] as a likely violation of international law as well as U.S. domestic laws.

Yeah, I was only pointing out that it wasn't a precedent.

(And btw, imagine Iran having then sent 150 missiles aimed at the US. Seems to me like the US would respond.)

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#85

Post by datascienced »

leereeves wrote: post #80
edanm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Iranian general was actively working to help arm Hezbollah, who have been i a low-grade conflict with Israel since October 7th (and before). Think Israel and Hezbollah shooting rockets at each other back and forth for the last 6 months kind of conflict. Because of this conflict, Israel has ~80k citizens who have had to evacuate their homes because they are too close to the border, and they are afraid to come back…

In terms of international law (for what that's worth), that is a dangerous precedent. Is a US general a legitimate target for Russia now, because we're arming their enemy? AFAIK, even during the Cold War, when the US was arming Russia's enemies (like Afghanistan) and Russia was arming the US's enemies (like Vietnam), neither nation went so far as to assassinate generals from the other. We even asked Ukraine not to at…

Is there any gentlemanlyness at play in those examples or is it just all tactics.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#86

Post by datascienced »

r00fus wrote: post #72
paulryanrogers wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know what motivated Israel's assassination of the Iranian general? It seems unwise to resort to assassination unprovoked.

Easy. They’re losing the Gaza war. Yemen’s blockade and full militarization is crushing Israel’s economy. Bibi is out of a job and possibly his freedom if war stops. Time for a trump card: escalation of the conflict will keep the extremists happy and keep the hostilities going for possibly years. Bibi’s best choice.

They are losing the Gaza justification. Obviously they have obliterated Gaza and Gaza had no way to defend itself.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#87

Post by bluGill »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #44
bluGill wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to choose when you are attacked. So despite your wishful thinking you need to prepare for war if you want to see results of your other actions.

We can be prepared for war without the enormous amount of waste we spend on "defense". We make so many tanks and gear that we outfit rural police with equipment they will never need just to get it out of warehouses

Those are old ane obsolete tanks. While I agree the police doesn't need them, the army both needs updated equipment and we need the assembly lines there and ready to produce lots of military stuff which we will need a lot more of in case of war then peacetime.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#88

Post by bluGill »

nirv wrote: post #34
bluGill wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They needed to do more damage. iran looks really bad when after such a large attack they hit to little. Iran didn't suceed in any retribution. (other than money spent on a defense test)

As far as I understand from what I've read, Iran even separated the attack times of missiles and UAVs to make them easier to monitor and shoot down without overloading air defense systems. For example, Russia deliberately syncs these attack with large numbers of aerial weapons to overload Ukraine's air defenses beyond their capacity—Iran could not have been unaware of this tactic, but it chose not to. Right after the…

they separeted the launch times so that slow and fast things would arrive at once. That meant the world had hours to shoot down slow drones.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#89

Post by CRConrad »

invalidname wrote: post #70
rokkitmensch wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't. That's not a meaningful claim about what other people would or wouldn't do. The juice looks entirely worth the squeeze from here. Iran now knows exactly the saturation point of your defenses with all allies engaged.

You're entitled to your opinion. I'm not making a claim on what people would do. That's just standard military practice when a missile is fired you fire back at the source to prevent additional firing. Iran has no clue about the saturation point and got nothing. First, this was 100% synthetic since Israel knew about the attack and was very prepared. It got help from Jordan, US, UK and even the Saudis. According to ar…

> Anyone in the market for Iranian tech now understands the quality of their product and its usefulness.

No matter, Putin is desperate enough to buy anyway.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#90

Post by MrSkelter »

datascienced wrote: post #11

My gut is Iran wanted the missiles to be intercepted. They wanted to show they are not pushovers but don’t want to escalate too much. In some sense the whole thing was a fireworks display by the countries involved. Like a warning shot.

This is exactly it. The easy way to get past missile defenses is to overwhelm them. Missiles are cheap. Interceptors are incredibly expensive. The attackers will always be at an advantage. Just throw enough to ensure that there aren’t enough interceptors. This warning shot required multiple nations to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to push back an attack that cost a few million and came from a single source.
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