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War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

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Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#91

Post by breppp »

fmajid wrote: post #87
breppp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"2500+ years of continuous operations" I see it repeated a lot, but Iran is not a direct descendent of some Persian empire, it was conquered by Greeks, Arabs, Turks and Mongols and ruled by Arabs and Turks for most of its history. These nationalist myths are not taken seriously for western countries but that criticism usually does not extend to foreign myths

More like 5000 years, Susa is nearly as ancient as Sumer. Also the Iranians have cultural continuity going back that far, unlike the Egyptians, Iraqis or Indians. Only the Chinese rival them in that respect.

What is cultural continuity? Is France, a far more coherent nation is cultural continuous to the Gauls? Even though completely subjugated by the Romans?

Is the Islamic Republic more culturally similar to the Arab Khalifate it professes to emulate or Cyrus?

Also you brought up Sumer, how is Iran related to Sumer more than it is related to the actual Mesopotamian empires? I never heard someone claim that

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#92

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

DANmode wrote: post #37
milkshakes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is a superdome?

Giant metal cover, maybe like an eyelid. See also: NFL stadiums in the US

This is like if Inspector Gadget were responsible for defense countermeasures.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#93

Post by cwillu »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #83
cwillu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the point of the wargame is that it's a training exercise for everyone involved, right down to the crews of the ships involved, not an nfl game. If the free-play portion ends up not exercising a bunch of expected scenarios because of an unexpected tactic, it would be monumentally wasteful to not make a note of the lesson and then reset with a script.

Right. Did they make a note of the lesson? Did anything change? I mean, I guess they noticed enough to classify the results for 25 years...

They have sang lalalala with their fingers in their ears instead of noting the lesson, and it still would have been a monumental waste to not reset and continue the exercise.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#94

Post by DANmode »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #92
DANmode wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giant metal cover, maybe like an eyelid. See also: NFL stadiums in the US

This is like if Inspector Gadget were responsible for defense countermeasures.

It was last on the list for a reason, lmao ^_^

Also, it’s not even a bad idea.

What, is it too heavy?

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#95

Post by fmajid »

breppp wrote: post #91
fmajid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 5000 years, Susa is nearly as ancient as Sumer. Also the Iranians have cultural continuity going back that far, unlike the Egyptians, Iraqis or Indians. Only the Chinese rival them in that respect.

What is cultural continuity? Is France, a far more coherent nation is cultural continuous to the Gauls? Even though completely subjugated by the Romans? Is the Islamic Republic more culturally similar to the Arab Khalifate it professes to emulate or Cyrus? Also you brought up Sumer, how is Iran related to Sumer more than it is related to the actual Mesopotamian empires? I never heard someone claim that

I never said that. I said Susa/Sush, the beginning of Iranian civilization, is nearly as old as Sumer, by about 500 years. Historians generally consider Sumer the oldest true civilization, even if there are older settlements that didn't rise to the level of complexity rating as civilization.

Being occupied by foreign powers doesn't break cultural continuity, otherwise you'd claim the modern Greeks don't have continuity with ancient Athens, despite speaking the same language.

Continuity also doesn't mean being static. Modern Greek is not the same as classical Attic. Modern Greeks are Christian, not again, and so on.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#96

Post by GJim »

nradov wrote: post #49
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no ships were lost how much ammunition did the US navy use to shoot down incoming drones, and what are the cost of those vs the attacker's cost?

Does that even matter? US GDP is orders of magnitude larger than Iran. The American way of war has long been based on minimizing casualties through overwhelming materiel superiority and profligate ammunition expenditure. Back in WWII the USA literally out produced Japan by 1000:1 in some types of munitions. Our industrial base has decayed a bit lately but that's a fixable problem.

> Does that even matter?

Yes.

800 Patriot missiles were used within the first 3 days in the Iran war. This is greater than the total number of Patriot missiles received by Ukraine during the entire war with Russia.

The USA is rapidly depleting it's missile stocks, and the Orange president is displaying some funny priorities.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#97

Post by b65e8bee43c2ed0 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #76
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran doesn't have real-time spy satellites and Starlink. it can only launch their shitty shaheds at stationary targets in impotent rage like Russia does.

Exactly! That's why the US won so decisively in Afghanistan! ;)

>the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001, alongside the United Kingdom. The two countries were later joined by a large multinational force, made up of multiple NATO members and two of their major non-NATO allies, as well as Afghanistan's local Northern Alliance. The invasion effort made rapid progress for the next two months as the coalition captured Kabul on 13 November and toppled the Taliban by 17 December, after which international military bases were set up near major cities across the country.

>13 killed (including 1 CIA officer and 4 non-combat deaths)[11]

if that was not a decisive victory, then I don't know what is.

the rest of the so-called war was a low intensity insurgency during 20 years of which the US lost fewer soldiers than Russia loses in 20 hours.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#98

Post by defrost »

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #97
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! That's why the US won so decisively in Afghanistan! ;)

>the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001, alongside the United Kingdom. The two countries were later joined by a large multinational force, made up of multiple NATO members and two of their major non-NATO allies, as well as Afghanistan's local Northern Alliance. The invasion effort made rapid progress for the next two months as the coalition captured Kabul on 13 November and toppled th…

and a not inconsiderable amount of US PMC pork barrelling, related lobbying, contracts and business.

It's not nothing, and it seems that the scale of such things are enough to impact decisions and directions and lead to long low level churn with no particular outcome.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#99

Post by JoshTko »

apelapan wrote: post #28
JoshTko wrote: post #21

War game is not needed. The war with Iran has already proven that a relatively tiny but sophisticated opponent can have massive asymmetric impact on USA.

Relatively tiny? It is a 92 million person organisation with a 1.7 trillion dollar turnover, 2500+ years of continuous operations and covering an area 1/6th the size of USA.

Ok. tiny might have been a stretch but Iran spends $10B a year on military compared to $900B for the US. Iran has 500 aircraft (pre conflict) vs 13,000 for US.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#100

Post by jjk166 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #78
jandrewrogers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Shahed is only useful against stationary soft targets, which an aircraft carrier is not. It also doesn’t have the kind of heavy warhead or terminal guidance required to defeat the armored structure of naval ships. Shahed doesn’t have any kind of countermeasure avoidance. Adding these would massively increase the cost. Naval anti-ship drones have been around for many decades. This is a highly evolved area of militar…

I feel like this and many other responses are missing the point, e.g. focusing on the specifics of a current Shahed drone. My main thesis is that the cost of small autonomous drones have dropped enormously over the past 20 years, and that increasingly drone swarms look like a much more capable and cost effective way of waging war than giant, incredibly expensive, slow moving targets. These giant but powerful machines…

> My main thesis is that the cost of small autonomous drones have dropped enormously over the past 20 years, and that increasingly drone swarms look like a much more capable and cost effective way of waging war

And how about the cost of drone countermeasures? Ukrainian interceptor drones are already a fraction of the price of a Shahed, and drone jamming systems are evolving at a lightning pace. Every weapon development seems like an unstoppable game changer until an effective defense is widely fielded, but that defense does tend to wind up getting fielded, or the offensive technology is completely superseded, by the time the next major conflict breaks out.

In the current Iran conflict not a single US warship has been damaged by a drone or similar system. Iran is among the leaders in drone technologies and started the war with a substantial stockpile. The US navy had not previously gone up against an adversary in the drone age and all of its ships were designed prior to the start of the Ukraine war. If there was ever a time where a large number of drones could overwhelm a ship with inappropriate defenses, it would have been then. In 5 years there isn't going to be a combat vessel in any first rate navy without dedicated counter-drone defenses and every officer will be well versed in counter-drone tactics. The best drones in the hands of the most experienced units may still be able to defeat these countermeasures, but the idea that you're going to overwhelm an aircraft carrier with 10,000 cheap drones is a fantasy.

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