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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

#91

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

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.

You sound like your problem with the horrible Iranian regime is that your own regime is not allowed to be as horrible as them.

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

#92

Post by watwut »

tristanj wrote: post #72
watwut wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has fought multiple proxy wars against the PRoC That is beyond absurd claim. But, if it was true, then the USA is loosing even more badly. This war is helping exactly two countries - Russia and China. > The US (and Russia) could always win their current conflicts with ICBMs, but choose not to. This is copium and in both cases. If Russia could win that conflict, if it could take over, it would do it. If USA c…

> [The claim that the US has fought multiple proxy wars against the PRoC] is a beyond absurd claim. It's easy to list these off the top of my head. There are multiple. Obviously the Korean War, China sent over a million personnel to aid the DPRK and directly battled the US. The Vietnam war was a proxy war, China had over 300,000 troops in North Vietnam, preventing the US from invading the north and ending the conflic…

USA is not Arming Ukraine anymore nor sending them financial help. Only Europe does that. USA is even refusing deliver arms Europe already bought and paid for.

> The current conflict is also a proxy war. Without China's support for Iran, this war could not have happened.

This is nonsense. War happened with or without Chinas support, because American leadership and Israel wanted it. Iran was not attacked because of Chinese support, Iran was attacked because USA and Israel thought Iran will be easy to defeat.

> Without China, there are no missiles, there are no nukes, there are no drones. There is no war.

Without China, USA would still be starting the war.

> And claiming China benefits from this war is myopic. China has massive investments across the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The war in Iran directly affects the value of these investments, and China's support for Iran is alienating Middle Eastern countries.

China is gaining through USA loosing position, wasting missiles and alienating, well pretty much everyone.

> The previous poster is claiming the US is 'unable' to end the war with Iran; this is trivially false, the US has ICBMs, and can trivially end the war.

USA is in fact unable to end the war with Iran. Trump would very much like to end it ... he just cant.

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

#93

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

juliusceasar wrote: post #85

2nd Epstein War, why? BECAUSE Israel controls the US presidents.

Ah yes, that’s why Obama worked hard for years to negotiate and sign the JCPOA against Netanyahu’s wishes.

It’s much more factual and useful to point out that Trump is remarkably easily influenced and Netanyahu was able to remarkably easily influence him.

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

#94

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

tristanj wrote: post #12
inglor_cz wrote: post #5

So, the US relearns all the lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian war the hard way? Choppers proved very vulnerable already in 2022. History often repeats itself. In a similar way, Great Powers like France refused to study the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 because it was something that happened in barbarian lands far away from glorious Europe, so it was obviously irrelevant to them, right? And then the shock o…

Absolutely incorrect. The attitude within the military industrial complex towards drone/UAVs has shifted enormously since the Russia/Ukraine conflict. 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. The US military is sitting on decades of older equipment. The Ukraine conflict started four years ago. Complai…

Trump class warships and plans for more aircraft carriers suggest otherwise.

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

#95

Post by everforward »

rbanffy wrote: post #69
SirFatty wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That should only make the US able to churn a lot more drones than a couple people working out of a basement. Assembly lines can work wonders.

Assembly lines are much faster but less flexible, which is probably a bad fit for something evolving as quickly as drone weapons.

A basement lab can start making new drones as soon as you can get them the components. An assembly line will take months to get any new machinery it needs, set it up, ensure production works, figure out how to QA it at scale, etc.

It doesn’t matter if you can make 8 million drones if the enemy already has a way to counter that particular kind of drone. Eg I think Ukraine has been through a bunch of iterations as they adapt to Russian tank armor, jammers, extended range, etc.

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

#97

Post by ponector »

tristanj wrote: post #72
watwut wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has fought multiple proxy wars against the PRoC That is beyond absurd claim. But, if it was true, then the USA is loosing even more badly. This war is helping exactly two countries - Russia and China. > The US (and Russia) could always win their current conflicts with ICBMs, but choose not to. This is copium and in both cases. If Russia could win that conflict, if it could take over, it would do it. If USA c…

> [The claim that the US has fought multiple proxy wars against the PRoC] is a beyond absurd claim. It's easy to list these off the top of my head. There are multiple. Obviously the Korean War, China sent over a million personnel to aid the DPRK and directly battled the US. The Vietnam war was a proxy war, China had over 300,000 troops in North Vietnam, preventing the US from invading the north and ending the conflic…

>Without China, there are no missiles, there are no nukes, there are no drones. There is no war.

You can say the same about other countries trading with Iran. Also Iran had missiles before China started to be a global player.

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

#98

Post by _DeadFred_ »

wolvoleo wrote: post #46
tristanj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the US/Israel didn't strike Iran, Iran would have ICBMs with nuclear warheads, which Iran could use for peace. Did you forget the purpose of the war?

The pretense that has already been debunked you mean. Iran was nowhere near having nuclear weapons. The purpose of the war was keeping Netanyahu in power by having a constant war going on. And Trump went along because he was promised a quick win which he could have used to turn his midterms around.

Why does HN flag valid replies like this dead?

tristanj 3 hours ago [dead] | root | parent | next [–]

> Iran was nowhere near having nuclear weapons. No, that's outdated. Iran had ~440kg of uranium enriched to 60%, enough for 9-10 nuclear weapons enriched to weapons grade. Given Iran's enormous centrifuge fleet, enrichment to enough material for a single weapons grade nuke would take 2-3 days. To enrich the entire amount would take 2-3 weeks.

This comes straight from the 2025 IAEA report.

https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...

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

#99

Post by upboundspiral »

expedition32 wrote: post #88
nozzlegear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Friedman's gift to the world was erasing the legacy of justice and desire to help the common person Keynes left behind.

Keynes lived through two world wars and learned that global trade does not in fact mean that nations won't irrationally attack each other. In Keynes' view, the purpose of the economy is to lift up the average person out of poverty, and is so doing greatly eliminate one of the causes of war.

Just a few decades after world war 2 Friedman would come along and talk about the power of "freedom" (ie, keeping the current status quo). He would repeat the ideological lies that led to people being unprepared for WW1 / WW2, namely being that free trade means nations won't attack each other, that there is a price at which racism is reasonable, among many other things.

Friedman on segregation for example:

“...consider a situation in which there are grocery stores serving a neighborhood inhabited by people who have a strong aversion to being waited on by Negro clerks. Suppose one of the grocery stores has a vacancy for a clerk and the first applicant qualified in other respects happens to be a Negro. Let us suppose that as a result of the law the store is required to hire him. The effect of this action will be to reduce the business done by this store and to impose losses on the owner. If the preference of the community is strong enough, it may even cause the store to close. When the owner of the store hires white clerks in preference to Negroes in the absence of the law, he may not be expressing any preference or prejudice, or taste of his own. He may simply be transmitting the tastes of the community. He is, as it were, producing the services for the consumers that the consumers are willing to pay for. Nonetheless, he is harmed, and indeed may be the only one harmed appreciably, by a law which prohibits him from engaging in this activity, that is, prohibits him from pandering to the tastes of the community for having a white rather than a Negro clerk. The consumers, whose preferences the law is intended to curb, will be affected substantially only to the extent that the number of stores is limited and hence they must pay higher prices because one store has gone out of business.”

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

#100

Post by conartist6 »

everforward wrote: post #73
roryirvine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also be a war crime even if it was merely reckless rather than deliberately targeted.

This is all wishy washy without an actual court, but I’m dubious this would rise to that standard. From what I can tell, international law requires attacks to be distinct and proportional. Distinct meaning they distinguish between civilian and military targets (you cannot intentionally attack civilian targets), and proportional meaning that the collateral damage to civilians is proportional to the military value of t…

My problem is that this happened after Trump repeatedly and emphatically threatened to target civilian infrastructure. It could be an accident, or it could be exactly what he said he would do.
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