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Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

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Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#891

Post by TheCoelacanth »

shadowtree wrote: post #324

Which is why taking out the political leadership is the better tactic. You don't need to fight armies - just make it suicide to command them. Decapitation strikes work. "What if you had a time machine and could go back to kill Hitler?" Well yeah, no need to fight all of Germany. Would the Ukraine war still be going without Putin at the helm? The logical conclusion of drone war is take out whoever controls the drones.

Decapitation strikes work well in highly personalist regimes (e.g. Russia). They work poorly in institutionalist regimes.

Iran is extremely institutionalist. You could keep killing leaders for years and they will just be replaced with similar ones.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#892

Post by LtWorf »

fny wrote: post #747
Animats wrote: post #426

A big mistake here was simply underestimating the scale of Iran. Iran has 90,000,000 people. More than 2x Ukraine. More than 2x Germany. More than 2x Iraq. More than any country in Europe. About 2/3 of Russia. Expecting to win a war on the cheap was a fantasy. Especially since Iran has been fighting Israel for years. On the naval front, Ukraine sunk the Moskva with a few truck-mounted missiles. That finally made it u…

The big mistake was underestimating the appetite for rebellion despite 70%-80% wholesale opposition to the regime.[0] I personally know many, many Iranians who welcome the attacks along with their families. All of the high-profile assassinations involve intelligence from Iranians. However, no one has guns, and government-backed militias roam the streets to maintain order.[1] There is no possibility of military coup.…

> I personally know many, many Iranians who welcome the attacks along with their families.

Yeah florida is filled with former cubans who want the USA to destroy cuba. The issue is what do actual iranians think? What people who used to live in iran or never lived in iran think is not that relevant really.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#893

Post by marcusverus »

tim333 wrote: post #225

>The era of carrier-dominated airpower is fading, as cheap, unmanned anti-ship weapons reshape naval warfare, whether US planners are ready for it or not. is not really backed up by reality. Pretty much the whole US operation so far, destroying much of Iran's military and leadership was done from US carriers. If anything it demonstrates how powerful they are. Also straits being closed to shipping by whatever power co…

Carriers are OP against middle powers, but they would be toast against another major power.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#894

Post by LtWorf »

bluGill wrote: post #779
ekianjo wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember, they killed 30K of their own to quell an uprising.[2] There is absolutely no way to know if it's true or not

There are ample indepentant sources for that estimate. We don't know an exact number but we know it is close to that.

I think there is ample independent consensus that the estimate came from israel?

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#895

Post by marcusverus »

sheepscreek wrote: post #803

The US Navy does not operate in a vacuum, it serves at the pleasure of the commander-in-chief. And when the current administration is hell bent on undermining and underestimating everyone and everything, you’d be a fool to believe any report or conclusion. While it may be completely true and reasonable, it does nothing to dictate the future outcome.

> the current administration is hell bent on undermining and underestimating everyone and everything

Welp, that's enough reddit for today.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#896

Post by MyHonestOpinon »

sfRattan wrote: post #274
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US no longer uses its army for defense. Nobody in their immediate region dares attack them, they're too powerful ("Godzilla", in the words of John Mearsheimer). All the wars that the US has fought since WWII are nothing to do with defense. Just look at the Wikipedia article on "power projection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection The leader image is ... a US aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz). That's…

As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war ? The same is even true of WWII, a more important marker afterward is that we spent the rest of the 20th century trading prosperously with Japan and Germany. Korea: the south became an economic powerhouse with whom we now tr…

Interesting idea. You are missing Cuba from that list. There was not a war but we haven't reestablished commerce with them.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#897

Post by pqtyw »

readitalready wrote: post #847
bluGill wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ample indepentant sources for that estimate. We don't know an exact number but we know it is close to that.

No, there aren't independent sources for that estimate, and we do not even know if it is close to that. That number was simply made up and comes from Iran International, a Mossad-funded Pahlavist site. Additionally, the Iranian government states that 2-3,000 were killed, mostly from Mossad-armed insurrectionists killing Iranian police. So who are you going to believe? Israel, or Iran? The vast majority of people trus…

> he vast majority of people trust the Iranian government

Right... Nobody sane would trust an authoritarian regime which suppresses any type of free speech and and even banned the internet regardless of everything else.

Mistrusting Israel is understandable but that seems tangential.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#898

Post by fny »

LtWorf wrote: post #892
fny wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big mistake was underestimating the appetite for rebellion despite 70%-80% wholesale opposition to the regime.[0] I personally know many, many Iranians who welcome the attacks along with their families. All of the high-profile assassinations involve intelligence from Iranians. However, no one has guns, and government-backed militias roam the streets to maintain order.[1] There is no possibility of military coup.…

> I personally know many, many Iranians who welcome the attacks along with their families. Yeah florida is filled with former cubans who want the USA to destroy cuba. The issue is what do actual iranians think? What people who used to live in iran or never lived in iran think is not that relevant really.

I know actual Iranians--not just expats, and I know even more people who hold Iranian passports.

The NPR article also quotes people on the ground who have managed to get messages out.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#899

Post by troyvit »

temp8830 wrote: post #730
whynotmaybe wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it will last long once we see a few videos of drone kill of US soldiers on /r/dronecombat Ukraine must defend itself against an authoritarian Russia where nobody can publicly complain about what's happening. This is not the case in the US, unless they go full dictatorship.

The people of the USA will just have to voice their complaints through the free media. The entirety of which is owned by 2-3 rich guys.

It's not quite that bad yet. Public media still love, for now.

Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

#900

Post by ACCount37 »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #882
ACCount37 wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a drone costing "a couple thousand" take out a plane? It doesn't. Shaheds and quads offer no threat to US air superiority. Iran can fling them at the ground targets willy-nilly, sure, and that will inflict causalities on FOBs and ground forces. There's no ready-made solution to low end attack drones. But the sky is going to remain with the US. This allows US to dispense JDAMs at anything that pops its nose o…

This war is unwinnable because there is no possible benefit that will outweigh the cost. You don't win a war when you cause the most destruction to your enemy. You win when you achieve a political objective.

Since when do wars have to be profitable?

This isn't middle ages. Most modern wars have dubious cost-benefit at best. Doesn't stop them from being fought and occasionally even won, no.

If US sets its war goal at "secure the strait and the oil fields" or "dismantle the regime" or "dismantle the nuclear program" and pulls that off, doesn't matter how many billions they would have sunk into the affair and how much they would actually have gained from it. From a military standpoint: a war goal was set and accomplished.

Whether US can actually set such a goal and then accomplish it is debatable, but it is not in any way impossible.

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