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Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#81

Post by Planktonne »

spwa4 wrote: post #75
Planktonne wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The countries currently bombing Iran have boasted for years of their precision targeting systems. They've also made countless statements that show a willingness to targets civilians and infrastructure [1]. At this point, every direct hit on a school or a water source or a charity being accidental collateral damage just doesn't ring true. Either they've been lying about capabilities (and all the precision strikes were…

... and Iran's islamist regime has for 5 decades boasted of committing warcrimes, inside and outside of Iran. Btw: hitting water reservoirs is only a warcrime if the purpose is to kill (or at least replace) a civilian population from a large area. I don't see how this even qualifies that definition.

"But Iran did it!" is not the clinching argument you think it is. If killing civilians is bad for Iran to do, then it's bad for the US to do, and you can't commit the same evils as the ones you're using to justify your actions.

You need to have higher standards; "no worse than Iran" is not something the US should aspire to.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#83

Post by hnbad »

spwa4 wrote: post #75
Planktonne wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The countries currently bombing Iran have boasted for years of their precision targeting systems. They've also made countless statements that show a willingness to targets civilians and infrastructure [1]. At this point, every direct hit on a school or a water source or a charity being accidental collateral damage just doesn't ring true. Either they've been lying about capabilities (and all the precision strikes were…

... and Iran's islamist regime has for 5 decades boasted of committing warcrimes, inside and outside of Iran. Btw: hitting water reservoirs is only a warcrime if the purpose is to kill (or at least replace) a civilian population from a large area. I don't see how this even qualifies that definition.

True. Hitting the water reservoir is childsplay compared to the targeted attack on a girls' school with which the US decided to open this war when Iran was signalling agreement to make a deal. It also still makes the US far more reserved in its willigness to kill civilians than its ally which dragged them into this war.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#84

Post by hnbad »

panny wrote: post #82

>maybe by chance. Big sky theory says otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_sky_theory

The article also states that Iran shot down the fighter jet the US had to recover the weapons officer of. I recall news reports at the time insisting that this was actually an accident or friendly fire incident as it had been the previous time they lost an aircraft within the Iranian sphere of influence.

Given the US government's spiraling disregard for factuality, it's safe to assume any loss of equipment or personell in the area of operations is hostile, not accidental.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#86

Post by genxy »

spwa4 wrote: post #21
nehal3m wrote: post #13

Don't those Shaheds run on nVidia Jetson? Jensen cashing in again. Funny that most of the hardware in those drones is designed in the US. Stop hitting yourself.

No, they don't. In fact nvidia is one of the few that's NOT involved. It's definitely a group effort: https://militarnyi.com/en/news/czech-engine-and-western-elec... Component / part Company Company country Public factory / manufacturing-origin info TJ150 turbojet engine PBS Velka Bites Czechia EU Czechia; manufacturer is PBS Velka Bites TW1721 GNSS antennas, block of 4 Calian / Tallysman Canada Canada / West Ottawa,…

All of that stuff minus the turbojet is like water. It is everywhere. No supply chain control is going to stop it. Not only are these specific parts ubiquitous, but they have set the standard in the industry, so there are numerous compatible and competing parts that could easily substitute.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#87

Post by genxy »

SirFatty wrote: post #40
Planktonne wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, procurement times on new equipment is on the order of several years to nearly a decade. There's not enough time to produce nor acquire this hardware. This has not seemed to be a problem for the countries using them; what makes the US so uniquely inefficient?

Unlike Iran and Ukraine, the US military weapons are not manufactured in someone's garage or basement.

Are you sure it is because they aren't manufactured in a garage are they they are manufactured by MIC. The MIC is working as intended, it turns tax payer debt in MIC dollars. That by definition, can't happen in a garage.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#88

Post by expedition32 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #65
toxicunderGroov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local wood frames, carbon from Japan, hardware designed in the USA, produced in China with Nvidia soft. It's kind of funny if it wasn't so wasteful on global resources.

The ghost of Milton Friedman is preparing his "pencil" speech as we speak!

Friedman was right. Unfortunately the world does not consist of civilised nations trading with eachother.

If the entire world was Dutch we'd be colonising the stars by now...

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#89

Post by inglor_cz »

tristanj wrote: post #80
inglor_cz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" that the US can always escalate the conflict and pursue a ground war. " You seem to be stuck on repeat with "don't understand, don't understand, don't understand". Yet it seems to me that it is you who got sucked into some bizarro understanding of war being fundamentally an annihilation contest between the two parties involved. This very shallow understanding is now somewhat widespread in the blogosphere and pushed…

The US has a straightforward option to "win" the war via a ground invasion. First, a large scale bombing campaign, targeting Iranian infrastructure. Dropping bombs on every power substation, fuel plant, and generation plant would cripple the economy, and grind the country to a halt. A similar strategy was applied to Japan and Germany in WWII. If these facilities have military purpose, destroying these facilities is n…

There is nothing straightforward about the option you describe.

The necessary buildup would take several months and would happen within range of Iranian drones.

Neither Iraq nor Pakistan seem to be particularly likely to grant a permission to the US to stage a large-scale land operation against Iran from their own territory. Both have large populations partly sympathetic to the mullahs, the political destabilization caused by taking the side of "infidels" against the "faithful", plus suffering Iranian drone retaliation, would be just too costly for them.

"First, a large scale bombing campaign, targeting Iranian infrastructure."

The US already did that and emptied its arsenals to dangerously low levels. Were they replenished? Probably not yet, this is what we are discussing here; the military-industrial complex in America has grown fat and complacent and cannot quickly increase production beyond the very low level optimized out by post-Cold-War MBAs.

"Combat losses to the US would be minimal."

Uncertain. The US could probably swallow its pride and go to Kyiv to shop for anti-drone know-how and technology. In that case, the combat losses would be lower. If people like Vance and Trump cannot do that, I would rather expect the US losses to be at least in lower tens of thousands. A million cheap FPV drones can do a lot of dirty work, and this is probably the stuff that China can send to the IRGC quite quickly.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#90

Post by spwa4 »

Planktonne wrote: post #81
spwa4 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and Iran's islamist regime has for 5 decades boasted of committing warcrimes, inside and outside of Iran. Btw: hitting water reservoirs is only a warcrime if the purpose is to kill (or at least replace) a civilian population from a large area. I don't see how this even qualifies that definition.

"But Iran did it!" is not the clinching argument you think it is. If killing civilians is bad for Iran to do, then it's bad for the US to do, and you can't commit the same evils as the ones you're using to justify your actions. You need to have higher standards; "no worse than Iran" is not something the US should aspire to.

You misunderstand the argument I'm making. Legislation is only what is enforced, is only it's consequences, otherwise it is about as relevant as pointing out Iran has severely violated the "magic for all" legislation of Equestria.

As for standards: they are useless unless they allow for doing what is required to make the other side comply. Or at least, without that standards won't achieve their goal.

The world has chosen to not enforce war crime legislation under any circumstances, decades ago. Specifically, the agreement is the Rome statute, which essentially says that no government can ever be accused of a warcrime except in one of two circumstances. One, the government one whose soil it happened agrees to enforce war crime legislation AND asks for a conviction (Iran has not, and will not, do this). Either that or the UNSC convicts you.

Other than those 2 situations, war crimes aren't possible. And this is not something the US has chosen but the world has agreed. If any parties are responsible for that, it's Russia and China.

By the way, Iran has managed to commit bad enough warcrimes that China, Russia, US, France and the UK all agreed they were guilty of warcrimes. The US has not.

Someone call Celestia! Magic for all!

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