askchapo

The final point I want to make is that the U.S. loses nothing from performing a large-scale military exercise, scaring a shit out of everyone, pushing Iran to the limit and seeing if they can get concessions, like they have tried with Russia, and utterly failing because the other side recognizes it as an existential battle at this point. They do lose an immense amount by engaging here. It will foreclose on the possibility of aggression against China, although maybe they already believe that's a lost cause. That will be a political struggle within Washington. The nuclear options seems unrealistic in light of that.

But what about the EMP options? Can someone call in another military obsessive? We are nothing alone.

If you're scared of more terror attacks with said extremely limited standoff munitions, that's very real and I'm not mitigating that. A deterrence equation doesn't foreclose on the real possibility of insane, counterproductive cruelty. It is not as if dying in a terror attack that has little-to-no strategic value would be any less horrible, though knowing the dogs all across the region are coming with you might be some consolation. These are very very limited stocks of weapons that cannot be swiftly replenished and for that reason they need to be reserved for high-value targets. The political and terror usage of them last time was completely ineffective. I have zero respect for most of the online discussion around this subject, which consists mostly of reiterating popular commentators. You should log off so you can't let people like me get you panicking about the worst possibilities. The Pentagon is going to be considering the actual results of the attack in addition to the large number of mysterious shipments from Russia and China which have arrived that we know have included very powerful anti-stealth long-range radars a game changer here since the successful the penetrations last time exploited their absence extensively apologies for any dictation errors and I will throw in the wild card of EMPs, which are another GWOT fixation betraying US malice I could be biased due to reading kooky Bush admin officials' mutterings on the subject. Ask yourself who led you to believe that imperialists unable to subdue Yemen have free reign over Iran, and you will probably end up purging a lot of useful idiots. Nobody in their right mind is basing the risk reward of attacking Iran on fake news about F-35s flying over unhindered. Just to remind you what carpet bombing actually is. It's not like I didn't consider conventional options before I jumped to secret gas worse than sarin. If you're concerned with more terror attacks with said extremely limited standoff munitions, that's very real and I'm not mitigating that. A deterrence equation doesn't foreclose on the real possibility of insane, counterproductive cruelty. It is not as if dying in a terror attack that has little-to-no strategic value would be any less horrible, though knowing the dogs all across the region are coming with you might be some consolation. These are very very limited stocks of weapons that cannot be swiftly replenished and for that reason they need to be reserved for high-value targets. The political and terror usage of them last time was completely ineffective. You might be shocked by how low-yield the cruise missiles deployed by the RAO1 are, military equipment can be very niche. I have zero respect for most of the online discussion around this subject, which consists mostly of reiterating popular commentators. They act like you're supposed to believe they've filtered out all the fake news by having a conscience. Which is really sad. You should log off so you can't let people like me get you panicking about the worst possibilities. Something seems very off here, and I can't be satisfied with market manipulation as an explanation when so many lives are at stake. Don't talk about people dying from such an abstract standpoint. It's wrong. They deserve to have the details explored. The 12 day war is the most interesting strategic event of our lifetimes, a thousand times more interesting than 911. Yet people seem so eager to brush past the details. I just can't understand it. It makes my head shudder uncontrollably. Oh how it writhes, writhes inside my head. Anyways.

@daniyeg@hexbear.net also https://hexbear.net/comment/6940952 PLS I YRIED TO BE BRIEF SIRS

You're really teeing me up by opening with US can carpet bomb anything it wants so let me try to keep it short let me know what about this doesn't jive I might not be back for a few days the internet here is stinky ass. If that is all you are concerned about, you must relax. My rising panic comes from an awareness of the shortcomings of Western conventional kinetic options. This is the point where cautious, outraged pessimism crosses over into a defeatist ceding to all premises claimed by the enemy, even those they do not internally believe. Reread Mao perhaps. During the last event, almost the entire fleet of Western Air Forces was involved in non-kinetic operations against Iran. The Israeli Air Force that was involved in kinetic strikes on Iran is substantially larger than the additional force brought to bear in the built-up being trumpeted as a certain lead-up to war. Breaching Iran's air defenses, even in their somewhat dilapidated state, was far more difficult than Western news outlets would have you believe, and utilized tools that have been taken out of the game completely (Starlink plus cellular hooked up smuggled ATMGs, drone trap houses, saboteurs in a now exposed network). I would be happy to break down the entire aerial attack step by step, but I get the feeling that would actually start running into the character limit. I would need to speak continuously for 35 minutes. They cannot just fly over and plop down JDAMs everywhere, Iran is not Gaza. In order to believe conventional weapons can completely eliminate Iran's air defense systems and enable carpet bombing of the entire country, one would need to believe that already happened during the last attack, but that isn't the case. What you saw planes like the F-35s and the RA01 stealth drone, hidden to all except very large sitting-duck radars, essentially, prior to shipments from Belarus, China, Russia, but it was still confined to the sea near a refueling station. Being used to ferry cruise missiles to soft targets within Iran, utilizing neighboring regions and terrain masking. It was complex and very limited due to the long range of the operation. Effectiveness rapidly degraded as the operation was prolonged. So, what has really changed on the US side? Obviously they have aircraft carriers in the region to close the distance. They can launch a bunch of tomahawk missiles at them. But they still cannot carpet bomb a country like Iran, or accomplish anything close to that with standoff munitions, and aircraft carriers are a gigantic target. On top of that, we still haven't seen Hezbollah's missile deterrence eliminated by any of the Israeli operations. Some might disagree with that, but I just haven't seen any evidence of it. We saw perfidy with pagers turned into bombs, and an assassination with more firepower than ever used in history directed at an arranged negotiation table.