Egregoros

@deprecated_ii @cjd >supposed to be a quick little raid, not a full blown total war
to the point that people, to try and defend this debacle, will even conflate "goals" and "means":
>The US military and its ally achieved operational victory on day one with a mass decapitation strike.
that wasn't the goal. The goal was (Israel:) a failed state, or (US:) regime change and US occupation. Decapitation was supposed to achieve that, or if failing to achieve that, at least improve the situation while leaving the US with convenient off-ramps to reevaluate and then strike again later.
Instead of giving the US more options while reducing Iran's options, the day one strikes freed Iran and destroyed our off-ramps, which is locking us into a catastrophic strategic defeat.

I wanted the girl. I proposed to the girl. The girl shot me down. This was an operational victory as soon as I proposed to the girl. Cease your attempts to describe this as a failure to get the girl.

> this was supposed to be a quick little raid, not a full blown total war

Over the past couple of decades I've heard a million variants of "we weren't really fighting to win" - particularly in relation to Afghanistan. I have to admit I'm kind of jaded about it.

When you enter some kind of a conflict and you come out worse off than you started, the correct word for that is Losing.

I think we learn something in every war. What we learned this time is that if a hypersonic can get past interceptors and C-RAM, then it can deny naval access and destroy nearby bases, which completely undermines an air first strategy.

It also challenges how you would even get infantry and equipment into the area to stage a ground invasion. You can't sail too close if they can just shoot your ships.

If interceptors, C-RAM, and DEW can't be improved to the point of beating hypersonics, this might be the end of war as we know it...

Okay so basically you're saying that People Who Actually Know What They're Talking About already knew that hypersonics are alpha-dominant, C-RAM is dead, interceptors are expensive fireworks, and ships are all sitting ducks?

Because, I mean, is there any major military in the world that has stopped buying these things?

Who are these People Who Actually Know What They're Talking About? Are there more of them or is it just you?

And, did you ever announce that you think hypersonics make ships obsolete before this battle, or were you keeping it a secret?

@cjd are you fucking kidding me? people have been talking about the missile threat to carriers since the 1950s

point defense systems like CIWS and C-RAM have been known-worthless since BEFORE they came online. they're last ditch defenses. ever do the math on that yourself? engagement window, accuracy, number of rounds fired, effect on target? of course not. you trusted the brochure

the same thing applies to terminal phase interception only the problem is MUCH WORSE. you think patriot missiles worked in gulf 1? that iron dome has EVER been effective on even minor ballistic threats? do you know ANYTHING about this? the patriot missiles were known ineffective in 1992. I was reading about iron dome's shitty real world performance as early as 2015, just a few years after it went online

it has been known since the invention of ballistic missiles that boost phase interception is the only realistic way to kill them. terminal phase interception is pure fantasy. it's technologically impossible to achieve a high hit rate

the only new technology on this battlefield since WWII is guided air defense missiles (1950s technology) and that's not an exaggeration. effective military drones were operational by 1942. they sucked but the writing was on the wall

why does the US buy this shit? because 1) it's not *completely* worthless in all scenarios but mainly 2) because procurement is driven by bribes and graft, not military effectiveness. why does a military project get split up so work goes to companies in 45 states, tripling the cost and doubling the timeline? because that's what congress demands before it'll sign off on it

why are other countries developing systems similar to ours? because they can't think for themselves and just copy us

now what did iran do? did it try to go symmetric and build a bunch of stealth planes and THAAD clones and carriers and all the other trillion dollar horseshit we have? no, it didn't. iran stands alone as the one country on earth that actually built its military for effective wartime performance from first principles, instead of trying to be a worse version of the US military

So this 'hypothetical raid' was planned out to assassinated a head-of-state along with a large portion of that state's military decision making structure... in a joint operation... as a starting move... during diplomatic negotiations.

How is it possible for you to arrive at a conclusion that some mid-level planners cooked this up in a conference room (completely unaware of the outcome), sent it upstream for approval, then watched unknowingly as billions of dollars of assets were moved into place.

You're just trolling. No one is that stupid.

@cjd @deprecated_ii Israel wasted a lot of time blowing up police boxes in Tehran is reduce Iran's ability to control any uprising, and at every stage of the conflict there have been appeals to the public for an uprising, and popular uprisings with a great deal of foreign support aren't new. Even just a couple of years ago Ukrainians showed up in Georgia to try and pull one off, and Ukraine in 2014 is a successful example of a coup like this.

Iran has large minority groups and separatist groups that could be mobilized, like the Kurds and the Baluchis and the Azeris.

It might be harder to believe if you haven't heard of any theory where it'd work:
1. foreign money pays people to protest
2. foreign terrorists sneak into the crowds and snipe both police and protesters to turn the crowd violent
3. coincidentally the government is decapitated
4. the government loses legitimacy and already compromised leaders step out to gracefully surrender to the mob. In any case the country falters and can't mount a military resistance

The big failure here was (3), the decapitation came a month after #1 and #2 started, because Trump called off the strikes at the last moment and called in more assets to support the op while Iran crushed the protests. And the called-off op was already late, probably surprised by how effective Iran's suppression was with the internet shutdown and Starlink hunts.

The USS Tripoli just today got into theater. We didn't have any ground assets ready to move because the plan was to support Mossad's ground assets in the country.

Hmm, I see... It sounds at least plausible and I shouldn't fall for the "it didn't happen so it was obviously impossible" bias.

I think one major challenge was the fact that Iran did a major crackdown like 6 months or so ago, also a shitload of deportations. Maybe it was even a year or more ago, but they were definitely planning on this.

But they've been building up their country into a weapon for 40ish years planning on this war, so not exactly the same battle as Ukraine 2014...

I kind of have a feeling that even if 1,2,3 worked out really well, 4 might have failed to land and instead they just shutdown the internet, disappear the protesters, and then proceed with the same plan anyway...

@cjd @deprecated_ii a big argument against the uprisings just being propaganda for our consumption, was how long it got talked about after this war started. There's no more need for public buy-in after Iran attacked US bases all over the region, now we're just "defending ourselves", or as Rubio put it very early: we knew Israel was going to provoke this response, so we needed to preempt the response and join Israel on the attack.

But it was two solid weeks of talking about an Iranian uprising, and only in the third week was there news like "uh ok intelligence agencies have evaluated this as having a 0.00% chance of happening"