81–90 of 198 posts
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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.
the question how efficiently they can be hunted, if ROI is that high.
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The US will never recover from the reputation damage they sustained by voting in a mindbogglingly stupid buffoon. Twice.
Memories are short. Neither Andrew Jackson nor Nixon improved the reputation of the US.
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Memories are short. Neither Andrew Jackson nor Nixon improved the reputation of the US.
Andrew Jackson was around 150+ years ago. Nixon was fairly competent diplomatically even if he was horrible domestically. Trump is a whole different breed that seems to switch his actions based on whim and who he spoke with last.
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It was an honest question.
I would point you to Gen MacKenzie's interviews as the reference on that question, I would just be regurgitating his views. 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 l…
Shaheds can be launched from trucks from inside densely populated cities. Good luck with those raids.
> Eventually, because they don't have an industrial base and cannot effectively replenish their stocks
Modern drones are cheap and easy to assemble, Iran's allies (Russia, China) can easily smuggle them inside country.
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Not new. These drones were in production in Iran since 2016 after the capture of the downed Reaper Drone in 2011. What is new is Irans willingness to use them. Which skyrocketed after a few missiles assassinated their supreme leader.
The part where you are wrong is not that reaper or other highly sophisticated drones were available in 2011. In 2026 we have swarms of cheap drones that are fire and forget and they are cheap for mass production. That’s totally different game.
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the question how efficiently they can be hunted, if ROI is that high.
my best guess is any information on the topic is... classified
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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…
> doing it is slow and expensive, so there is insufficient political will to do it So the US Navy is unable to achieve the objective in a reasonable timeframe and cost. That's the same as failure.
Hell there's an argument to be made that the US should downsize its military because there's no universe in which exercising its full capability is not either the end of the world as we know it or absolute political suicide.
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It was an honest question.
I would point you to Gen MacKenzie's interviews as the reference on that question, I would just be regurgitating his views. 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 l…
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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…
>at a cost you are willing to bear. 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 f…
That means effectively taking out 25℅ of global oil supply -> oil at 150-200 a barrel -> Trump and the Republicans lose the midterms badly -> Trump gets impeached. I'm sure somebody explained it to him that this is exactly what would get happened, which is why he did not overextend or let Israel do so.
So, Trump claimed the closure and the attack "was a “foolish violation” of the ceasefire". However - that is not the case. The first and foremost item of the Iran-US MOU is the following: 1 — The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon…
Iran never had the right to close the strait or attack neutral merchant ships exercising their right of innocent passage in the first place, regardless of anything that Israel or Lebanon does. The MOU doesn't change that.