[jsw97]

The author explains that this problem is actually adversarial, in the sense that the attacker gets to observe defenses and allocate warheads and decoys accordingly.

Thinking of our current circumstances, this suggests another cost of war: our offensive capabilities, as well as our defensive capabilities become more observable. Our adversaries are studying our strengths and weaknesses in Iran, and they will have a much improved game plan for countering us in future conflicts.

[myrmidon]

This is absolutely true, but there is a strong counterpoint: You also learn the limits of your own systems and how to operate them most effectively yourself (and better than adversaries can, too).

Just to pick a recent example: Russian air defense in the early stages of the Ukraine war was dismal (more specifically: defense against big, slow drones like Bayraktar), despite having sufficient AA capability "on paper"-- the war allowed them to visibly improve.

I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.

[dlisboa]

There is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example.

Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites. If Iran was routinely targeting desalination plants and refineries it wouldn't matter if it was 99%: one hit is all it takes. Similarly Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure.

Air defenses need to be 100% to prevent physical, economic and moral damage. That is an impossibility.

[lumost]

I don't see how drones don't make all conflicts into WW1. 100 Billion dollars buys about 3.3 million Shaheds assuming the manufacturing is not made more efficient. There are many questions on whether its possible to spend 100 billion dollars on Shaheds, or launch all of them. But this is more than enough to destroy any logistics and transportation infrastructure necessary for a ground invasion.

There are many many countries who can afford 100 billion dollars for stored military equipment that has a long shelf life. The US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

[2001zhaozhao]

From my extremely uneducated point of view it seems like that is true and probably what is already happening in Ukraine. However, at some point robots might be able to take and hold ground, and maybe they can be designed to require only decentralized, automated infrastructure to operate that is hard to strike economically even with drones. At that point, may the side with the most robots win.

[khafra]

George Lucas vindicated once again.

Of course, once loitering, intelligent munitions make it too dangerous to be an economically valuable human outside of a bunker, we'll need robots running the robot factories, then we get Philip K. Dick's scenario in The Second Variety.

[andrewflnr]

I think that what makes it not WWI is that not even trenches really save you from precision munitions.

[esseph]

Trenches didn't save you from artillery then either. By far the most casualty producing weapon.

[blitzar]

> stored military equipment that has a long shelf life

Given the pace of advance and changes in strategy, high production capacity is probably more beneficial than inventory.

[LadyCailin]

Maybe, until your production facility is destroyed. Storage is an easier problem to distribute than production.

[dlisboa]

Production is not a hard problem. Iran, a heavily sanctioned country, already has drone production in other countries. That's assuming no other country would want to sell them their own drones to boost their domestic industry, like Turkiye has been doing for Ukraine.

Most of the Iranian drones are quite sophisticated for what they need to do. On a pinch they could replace many of the non-critical components for cheaper parts. They don't need composite materials if they were simply trying to outproduce. Meaning their production facilities could be much simpler than they are currently and still sustain enough output to matter.

[Cpoll]

> US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

50000 * 10000 * 12 is 6B/year. I was surprised, but I suppose that passes the smell test for a ~1T/year defense budget.

[rdtsc]

Now imagine for the same $10k cost making a cruise missile, instead. This is close to what a Shahed is -- the estimate is $20k-$50k / unit, so close enough.

This is bonkers. Countries can now afford for the same cost * to make not a 10-20 mile range artillery shell, but a 1500 mile effective range cruise missile.

* Defense costs are "fake" to a large degree. A lot of that is really corruption with money flowing from the taxpayers to the arms manufacturers, but still if we go by the numbers...

[pyuser583]

They are fake in the sense individual items are listed as having costs that are not accurate.

But really the defense deals are very complicated, and not based around buying x number of items.

You’re making a not well-formed query. How much is a shell?

Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.

[fpoling]

It is vastly more complicated to find targets at 1500 miles than at 20. So drones are effective at destroying big stationary civilian infrastructure and much less at long distance strikes at military targets. Russia's inability to destroy Ukrainian aviation is a good example.

But then with solar and batteries civilian infrastructure becomes much more resilient against drone strikes.

[dgoldstein0]

1500 mile range is questionable in practice I've read - drones require remote control for maximal value and that's a capability that may not extend nearly as far as the paper range of the drones

[esseph]

> The US makes ~50k artillery shells a month at a cost of about 10k per shell.

Closer to $3000. Pre-2022 it was around $800/shell for standard 155mm HE.

[icegreentea2]

Air defenses do not need to be 100% effective to be... effective.

Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure, yet here Russia is, still fighting on. Ukraine cannot prevent Russia from targeting their energy infrastructure or apartment buildings, yet here they are, still fighting on.

If we're talking about strategic/civil air defense, then you must figure out what's tolerable to your population (and how to increase and maintain that tolerance), and then figure out all the means to reduce the incoming attacks to below that tolerance. That must include the full spectrum of offensive, counter offensive, defensive, and informational options.

[energy123]

In the Ukraine-Russia war, air defense is used to deny air superiority to the enemy. Just a few days ago, Ukraine blew up Russia's helicopters in the air with drones. It's not the successful hits that matter, it's the capabilities that you deny by posing that credible threat.

[bojan]

The difference being, Ukraine has no choice but to fight on.

[yosefk]

What produces this Iranian "mercy" at a time when Iran is extensively bombed, if not a combination of defensive and offensive capabilities providing escalation dominance?

[seer]

MAD

If they strike desalination plants, Israel/us can do the same … really mass casualty event could follow.

And they might, at some point the Iranian gov might feel desperate enough to be like “fuck it, we have nothing to lose” … Dubai could end up with a lot more graves.

Almost all of their water comes from these plants, and humans can’t survive without water for more than 3 days …

There are reserves/stores sure, but how long will they last, and which part of the population do they cover? In a week you could have thousands of civilians dead on both sides.

So MAD keeps things in check.

I think this is whaly Iran has invested so much into rockets - they are very ineffective at providing decisive military victory by themselves, but without them, Iran will be at Israel’s mercy, and they have proven to not possess that in great amounts lately

[watwut]

Israel already attacked desalination plants. Iran already responded by doing the same to the surrounding countries.

[zardo]

It's been tit-for-tat though.

[afdbcreid]

There are two reasons this logic is incorrect.

1. It's not Iran's mercy, but deterrence. If Iran was to target critical infrastructure constantly, Israel and the U.S. would bomb its much more easily. Both sides currently avoid doing that for the same reason.

2. Targeting the same places again and again will mean they cannot target other places, like cities, where even a miss has greater impact. So the economy of munitions make them prefer to not do that.

[fakedang]

Uh, Israel and USA are already bombing core infra in Iran. Iran is retaliating against Israel as your point 2 states, and against the Gulf countries on their critical monetary assets - because that's where it hurts either party. Targeting civilian infra in Israel means Israel's image of infallibility is shattered, while targeting monetary assets in Gulf countries (like gas fields, refineries, financial districts, etc) means that they're intent on applying pressure to the Gulf countries. They can't do the former to the latter because of the extremely large (90%+) expat populations, and they can't do the latter to the former because Israel's sensitive assets were presumably prepared for the long fight, so are likely to be heavily guarded.

[infinitewars]

It doesn't have to work, when the military industrial complex benefits either way.

The U.S. is on a path to spending trillions of dollars to putting missile defense (and offense) systems in space with the Golden Dome.

[breppp]

> interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites

And what this site and you don't account for, is Iranian rather low missile accuracy.

If Israel was at the mercy of Iranian attacks, Iran could have simply struck Israeli airbases to the point they cannot be used, and then stop any Israeli attacks on its territory.

It's pretty obvious they don't have the capabilities of doing that

[cheney_2004]

Iran has successfully targeted countless bases around the Middle East, a lot of this news simply isn’t being covered. Most of these strikes are on static assets like radar, depots, and other structures. If you are thinking about the F35s, strikes that hit runways are repaired in a matter of hours. As for the F35s themselves, they are constantly on the move or simply kept in the air. Service and storage is done on remote bases outside of the target zone. This has been standard practice since military aircraft has been introduced.

[breppp]

That's certainly what Iranian propaganda is saying, as if everybody is censoring their great successes. Fact is there is no meaningful reduction in Israeli attacks, while Iranian launching ability had greatly suffered. So these air bases are probably not being hit. Apart from it in the era of OSINT satellite imagery, it is no issue to publicize such damage, I don't know of any such imagery

Regarding the gulf, there the Iranians are having better success as at those ranges intercepting drones is harder and due to the general military ineffectiveness of the gulf nations

[anonymous_user9]

> Apart from it in the era of OSINT satellite imagery, it is no issue to publicize such damage, I don't know of any such imagery

Not sure about other providers, but Planet Labs has applied a 14-day delay to satellite images of the middle east.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/satellite...

[tmnvix]

I haven't seen imagery of damage to Israeli airbases, but plenty of imagery showing damage to US military bases. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cIOMVBSbU . Worth keeping in mind that in the case of Israel, censorship is very effective.

From the Iranian perspective, the overall strategy seems to have been:

1. Deplete intercepter stock and probe US/Israeli defences using large amounts of older less accurate missile stock and waves of drones.

2. Target radar and early warning systems.

3. After 'blinding', make further use of more vulnerable but cheaper and more accurate drones to target specific infrastructure.

Given this approach it makes total sense to see their 'rate of fire' reduced by 90%. This is not necessarily an indication of reduced ability to launch attacks - their attacks are now more effective. They have demonstrated that each time the US and Israel escalate they successfully respond almost immediately. Talk of their capabilities being wiped out is demonstrably nonsense.

Ted Postol makes much the same points. He also claims to be surprised by the accuracy of recent missiles launched by Iran and assumes that his earlier analysis underestimated this because it was done based on the older stock Iran was using.

It seems pretty clear to me that Israel and the US are on the back foot here. Defences are inadequate. Economic pressure is building. Iran still has plenty of options to increase pressure (e.g. Houthi involvement, further infrastructure targeting, additional constrictions on the strait of Hormuz). By comparison US ability to increase pressure now seems limited to threatening major war crimes (wiping out Iran's power grid and putting the country into blackout). Not to say many of Iran's actions haven't also been war crimes.

How much more damage can Iran accept? Nobody is about to be voted out of power there so I would think quite a bit (as unpleasant as that is for the millions of innocent people caught up in this madness). I think the truth of all of this is that the US and Israel have no way to wipe out Iran's missile and drone capabilities. Postol even suggests nukes wouldn't even accomplish that. So now what? Taco or push further for Iranian political unrest or division.

My feeling is that this is going to get a lot worse for everyone involved.

[dlisboa]

You're making the same argument I am. If Iran had a small increase in accuracy they could hit targets that'd disable a lot of Israel military and civilian infrastructure. A lot of stuff is getting through. To counter that Israel has to achieve a perfect interception record. The balance is throughly on the side of offensive drone/missile warfare.

[breppp]

I don't think we are arguing the same thing. I am arguing that even without any air defense, Iran would have difficulty hitting its targets in Israel with ballistic missiles due to low accuracy. When adding interception rates they have a real problem in attacking strategic facilities, air bases is a good example, which would be much more important than desalination plants.

You can then see that they shifted to completely attacking large cities, usually with cluster bomblets. The reason is when you are bombing a large area, aim is less of an issue, similar to WW2 carpet bombing

Your post alludes to drones, these do not reach Israel (from Iran) at all and are all intercepted

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Shahed drones have a maximum range of 25000 km [bbc_1]. The distance from e.g. Isfahan to Tel-Aviv is ~1592 km [google]. Shaheds can reach Israrel from Iran.

As to them all being intercepted, in the 12-day war that seemed to be the plan, i.e. force Israel to waste interceptors on cheap drones [bbc_2]. That seems to have changed in the current conflict.

_______________

[bbc_1] With a maximum range of 2,500km it could fly from Tehran to Athens.

[bbc_2] When Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of drones in 2024, the UK was reported to have used RAF fighter jets to shoot some down with missiles that are estimated to cost around £200,000 each.

Both exceprts from:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b3a272f0-3e10-4f95-...

[google] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Isfahan,+Isfahan+Province,...

[corimaith]

That's only if you continue to assume vulnerable and unfortified critical infrastructure. Did you know the majority of damage from a nuke is more from the aftermath of the blast in fires and crumbling infrastructure than the blast itself. And that can be adequately prepared for one if one needs to.

[rcxdude]

This is part of the logic behind strategic bombing, and there's a lot of writing on how it doesn't win wars and can sometimes be counterproductive: firstly it's harder to hit and damage infrastructure than you might think (especially once your target stars fortifying at all), secondly it can be easier and faster to repair critical infrastructure than you might think, thirdly it can easily get way more expensive than you might think, and lastly it doesn't demotivate people like you might think, in fact it tends to will people to fight harder, just because spite is such a motivating force.

[energy123]

Practise is good, but exhaustion is bad. Russia is getting exhausted, which is why their influence collapsed in Syria, Azerbaijan and Armenia, allowing the US to overtake those vacuums.

The US in WW2 staged their 20th century by letting others (China, South East Asia and the British/Soviets) get exhausted first. This was more an accident of geography rather than US grand strategy, but it worked all the same.

[ceejayoz]

Except this looks likely to exhaust the US/Israel alliance, if it continues long, leaving China in the "US in/after WWII" spot in the analogy.

[elfly]

USA won't injure or kill 1 in 25 of young adults in the Iran war, unless somehow Iran does have a nuke and wants to use it, come on.

[pjc50]

Quite possibly would end up killing or injuring that many Iranians, though.

Gaza is up to 10% of the population killed or injured in the Oct 7 reprisals: https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/HumanTollGaza

[ceejayoz]

Raw manpower is hardly the only aspect of war.

Especially in modern war.

Running out of fancy equipment, for example, causes quite a few problems if your opponent hasn't. Like interceptor missiles.

[jopsen]

Currently conflict is a really good sales pitch for buying more interceptors.

You could expect order books to get so thick that production increases.

I mean looking from the side lines, I could see why many countries might want to have a few interceptors on hand. Just in case, it's certainly a nice way to buy some time.

[don_esteban]

The defense against Bayraktar at the beginning (the big column to the north of Kiev) was dismal because AA assets were turned off, not because they were unable to shoot Bayraktars.

The problem was command and coordination.

Darwin worked and Russians learned (as did Ukrainians).

Regarding your last point: In peace time, you want to prioritize hiding your true capabilities (perhaps inflating them in (misleading direction) to deter them from attacking). Once the ware breaks out, you want to improve your capabilities as fast as possible.

[fpoling]

With Bayraktar it was a software update for radar that allowed for Russian to destroy them. The radar signature of Bayraktar was way off from a typical target that radars were looking for at the beginning of the war.

[myrmidon]

I'd argue that few things are more dangerous for a country than drastically overestimating your own military assets while trying to do big stick diplomacy-- that's how you end up completely lost (WW2 France), or throwing away hundred thousands of lifes for little gain (Russia now).

Sure, opponents thinking your "stick" is bigger in peacetime is nice, might save you some money and improve diplomatic outcomes, but those gains are marginal compared to overestimating yourself and then finding out the hard way...

[neutronicus]

"Data moats" are a problem for military tech, too, I guess.

[btown]

One very interesting instance of the "military data moat" is Ukraine's annotated database of drone footage, perhaps the first of its scale from live engagements [0]:

> They can now draw on an enormous pool of real warfare information. Last year alone, Ukrainian drones recorded around 820,000 verified strikes against Russian targets... Meanwhile, the country’s Avengers AI platform detects upwards of 12,000 enemy targets every week. Developers can now access these sources and the data that they gather to train their systems on the movements of a real Russian turtle tank or a camouflaged Lancet launcher.

> “Ukraine currently possesses a unique body of battlefield data unmatched anywhere in the world,” recently appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement. “This includes millions of annotated frames collected during tens of thousands of combat drone missions.”

With the latency and offline constraints of battlefield technology, smaller models, trained with better data, may prove to have a significant edge. But it's still early days on how data like this might prove advantageous in other environments.

[0] https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-b... (unconfirmed source, this is not an endorsement)

[thaumasiotes]

> I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.

That depends on how far out of touch your reputation was with the facts. If you're not able to live up to your preexisting reputation, being tested is all downside even if it improves your actual capabilities.

[jsw97]

Definitely, you have to weigh the benefit of experience against the cost of revelation. (And all the other costs of course.)

[maxglute]

>much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.

The value of carrying a big stick is lost when others see the stick breaks after a few swings. There's value in maintaining military kayfabe - revealing hand in sideshows and losing deterrence for main events as result can be much costlier down the line. What was learned that wasn't already known and deliberately avoided in polite conversation?

[roysting]

There is no amount of math that can make up for the lopsided dynamic of hypersonic missiles. The only reason the “iron/gold dome” con job was even plausible to plunder trillions in U.S. Monopoly money was because missiles were crude, slow, and not MIRVed or had decoys at one time. That was a long time ago though.

MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now. However between the indifference because the party was still in high swing and the plundering was making people rich who could pay professional lobbyists/liars, very few people were paying attention or really cared, even though it’s clear fraud and just a false confidence; as is the objective of a con job, which comes from “confidence trick”.

There are several lectures he gives and more recent appearances on various YouTube channels where he clearly describes the inherent fraud in “missile defense”.

Here’s the synopsis; it’s like trying to prevent sand from hitting you once someone has thrown a fist full of dry sand at you.

It’s basically just the end game in a long history of American snake oil salesmen turned missile defense salesmen. You get useless junk, they run off with your wealth.

[twoodfin]

MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now.

Indeed, there are any number of very smart people who made up their mind 40 years ago in opposition to Reagan and SDI.

Surprisingly, very few of these folks have evolved their position over decades of changes in the strategic and technology pictures:

Defensive systems can’t work and are inherently destabilizing even though everyone knows they can’t work.

(I’m modestly agreed on the second point!)

[roysting]

> Defensive systems can’t work and are inherently destabilizing even though everyone knows they can’t work.

All of those clauses are immensely important for everyone to understand.

First, "can't work"; because the math simply does not math, so to say.

Second, "inherently destabilizing"; among other reasons, if you think your imaginary "iron/golden dome" will protect you, you do all kinds of insane and reckless things that could quite literally at best be civilizational collapse, or even human life ending.

Third; "everyone knows they can't work" is not something I am at all convinced of, or at the very least those who should and really need to know that, don't actually know it, because "DC" is a self-licking ice cream cone that huffs its own farts to the point that the system reinforces those characteristics by selecting for them. The result is that the whole narcissistic system believes its own decadent nonsense.

[srean]

I agree that a barrage of maneuvering missiles can be neigh impossible to defend against.

Regarding these cluster munitions though, other than very densely populated areas, do they inflict much damage ? Are they more powerful than a grenade, say ?

It's going to devastating to soft tissue surely, and pierce through ordinary sheet metal, but normal concrete walls might offer sufficient protection. Unless, of course, it punches through the ceiling by virtue of sheer kinetic energy.

BTW I have no expertise in these matters, so corrections would be very welcome. I also recognize that I am commenting about something from the comfort and of being out of range and this discussion can be very distressing.

[m000]

> Regarding these cluster munitions though, other than very densely populated areas, do they inflict much damage ? Are they more powerful than a grenade, say ?

Also not an expert, but I get the feeling that "cluster munitions" is pretty much an umbrella term.

Because of the CCM [1], we tend to associate the term with the "ligther" variants, which are used as anti-personnel weapons. These variants probably wouldn't be much more destructive than a few grenades.

But what Iran is currently using, appears to be missiles with 500-1000kg payload. This puts each submunition in the 50-100kg range. This should deliver a lot more of a punch than a grenade. Also, because of their weight, they probably wouldn't be covered by CCM, had Iran ratified it.

And, yes, it is unsettling geeking out on this stuff, that may actually be killing people as we write our comment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munition...

[reillyse]

Instead of a cluster of grenades think many drones, the numbers start looking pretty bad when you have 100s of drones rather than a couple of missiles.

[elzbardico]

Technically those are ballistic missiles with Multiple Independent Re-Entry vehicles not cluster munitions.

[stinkbeetle]

> There is no amount of math that can make up for the lopsided dynamic of hypersonic missiles. The only reason the “iron/gold dome” con job was even plausible to plunder trillions in U.S. Monopoly money was because missiles were crude, slow, and not MIRVed or had decoys at one time.

Isn't that exactly what it was for? They never hid their paranoia of Iranian ballistic missiles or pretended iron dome would be a fool proof protection from them, did they?

> That was a long time ago though.

> MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, has been trying to warn about this basic, mathematically proved fraud for many years now. However between the indifference because the party was still in high swing and the plundering was making people rich who could pay professional lobbyists/liars, very few people were paying attention or really cared, even though it’s clear fraud and just a false confidence; as is the objective of a con job, which comes from “confidence trick”.

> There are several lectures he gives and more recent appearances on various YouTube channels where he clearly describes the inherent fraud in “missile defense”.

> Here’s the synopsis; it’s like trying to prevent sand from hitting you once someone has thrown a fist full of dry sand at you.

Ukraine's defenses are reported to intercept between 80-90% cruise missiles and 10%-40% of hypersonic and ballistic missiles, depending on what source you read and what stage of the cat and mouse game they are. It seems quite good.

> It’s basically just the end game in a long history of American snake oil salesmen turned missile defense salesmen. You get useless junk, they run off with your wealth.

Yet Zelenskyy has been crying out for this "useless junk" and his military has been making good use of it. I think I will trust the person with real skin in the game and real experience in the battlefield as opposed to MIT Prof. Emeritus, Theodore Postol, claiming to have "mathematically proved fraud" from the safety of his ivory tower.

[EthanHeilman]

It doesn't have to be, defender reveals everything and attacker chooses best strategy.

1. The defender could use both electronic and physical decoys, use air and sea mobile platforms that are always in motion and are difficult to track.

2. The defender can fire at decoys, to convince the attacker the decoys work when they don't.

3. The defender could mix in cheap decoy interceptor missiles that miss so the attacker concludes defenders need 10 missiles to intercept when the real number if 3 and the attacker thinks the defenders are running low on interceptors, when in fact the defenders have held most of their interceptors in reserve.

4. Defender can pretend that expensive systems have been destroyed so that attacker adapts their strategy. For instance, if your defense hinges on a small number of extremely expensive fixed X-band radars and the attacker targets them. Allow some of them to be appear to be destroyed when in fact, you have disassembled them and moved them somewhere else to use later in the war.

I see no evidence anyone is doing any of this today, I'm not making any sort of claims about deception operations in the current conflict.

[dotancohen]

Many historical wars have been won by deception.

Sun Tzu taught us: When you are weak, appear strong. When you are strong, appear weak.

[simonsarris]

On the other hand, the best way to improve your capabilities is to use them frequently.

The Russian army assumed a state of readiness for the Ukraine invasion that turned out to be, well, less. Their special forces floundered, their logistics were (are still!?) unpalletized - using bespoke metal containers and wooden crates! Whereas the US military learned an awful lot from its (mis)adventures over the last decades.

[elzbardico]

I think Russia's strategy fault was more that they didn't expect the amount of support Ukraine could coalesce in such a short time.

[standardUser]

Take China for an example. No one knows China's true military capabilities, because they're rapidly evolving and because they virtually never use them. If there's an element of surprise to be had, they have it. But that cut's both ways, because China itself doesn't have experience exercising those capabilities. The learning curve could be noticeable. Meanwhile, no one doubts the ability of the US military to execute.

[srean]

China uses wars like these to test their equipment for example the s300 knockoffs. These were not effective in Iran nor in Pakistan. I am sure the Chinese have made a note of that and debugging the failure.

[elzbardico]

Basically the only country left in the world with expeditionary capabilities is the US.

It is hard to compare this with China. Different goals and philosophies.

[standardUser]

China is building force projection rapidly. But it's a huge gap.

[SegfaultSeagull]

Or perhaps they will learn they are outmatched, lack the resources and technological capabilities to compete, and deterrence will have been established.

[dlisboa]

Very few countries lack the technological capabilities to produce these kinds of drones.

What most countries don't have is, for lack of a better term, the resolve Iran has shown. Venezuela could have built drones and resisted just the same, but it's internally divided enough that it was possible to strike a deal with an inside faction and have a coup from within.

[elzbardico]

Iran can establish deterrence with asymetric means and let's not forget, that contrary to what most americans think, Iran is not a backward hell hole like Somalia or Afeganistan. For a third world country we could say they have a competent R&D infrastructure, with a good number of STEM graduates every year (with roughly half of them being woman, which shows they are casting a wide net for talents).

They also have a lot of leverage points in their geography, in the fact that the US is at a historical low point in its military capabilities.

US and Israel strategy seems to be to completely destruct Iran's economy, but the problem is that this is a game where they can also shoot back.

[don_esteban]

There is a huge difference between 'deterrence' in the sense of deterring a country from taking aggressive action it might have otherwise considered, and 'deterrence' in the sense you are using here (surrender without fight, we are so much stronger than you).

[pjc50]

Iran has always known that the US is a higher tech nation, but you should not just expect them to surrender on that basis.

[deburo]

That's not what deterrence means. From google: the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences.

It's meant to avoid conflict altogether, say with China and Taiwan.

[swat535]

Iranian here, you're assuming sanity.

That doesn't work when your opponents pray for death and see martyrdom as victory.

This is genuinely how Shia extremists think. They have nothing to lose and will sacrifice everything and everyone for their cause. They don't care about Iran or Iranians or prosperity of the nation.

[elzbardico]

Every country that has a opposition diaspora says the same stuff you're saying here. For what is worth, you could be from a family of Savak secret police members.

And frankly that's not how it looks to me.

[rendang]

Every country's diaspora claims their country is ruled by Shia Muslims?

[biker142541]

History would suggest otherwise; rarely is this ever the case.

[quietbritishjim]

History doesn't necessarily make it clear when a war might have started but didn't because of some specific factor. Mainly you see the wars that did happen. (It has a strong survivorship bias in the sense that a war "survived" history if it went ahead for real rather than being considered and decided against.)

[marcosdumay]

You seem to be implying that there is a long history of countries starting wars against the USA?

[gzread]

More like the USA starting wars against countries, and those countries not immediately surrendering, to which the USA is shocked.

[falcor84]

I think that there's a more general issue here with the US and the West in general having a mindset built up on playing Risk and Civ, which considers the foreign country as a whole as their opponent, whereas in practice, the adversaries are a multitude of individuals, for almost none of whom a surrender is the rational choice, especially (as sibling comments pointed out) when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate.

[testaccount28]

to be clear: your claim is that the us military is misinformed because key constituents have played too many board games?

does hearing it back like that make it seem absurd to you as well?

[marcosdumay]

> when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate

If you are atheist is becomes rational to surrender to the people that are invading your house and killing your friends at random?

[varispeed]

You miss the fact that many adversaries will not act rationally.

[iso1631]

Yes, if it was acting rationally the US Would not have spent billions trying to blow up an 80 year old man while massively increasing the price of oil and fertiliser globally leading to economic instability

But the US has not acted rationally. It hasn't since January 2021.

[varispeed]

There could be a rational explanation if you assume US administration is compromised by Russia and Ayatollah's son wanted him out to assume power. One phone call to Putin, Putin's one phone call to Krasnov and everyone is happy. Son gets the power, Russia gets sanctions lifted, higher oil price, US and allies spend kit that cannot be now sold to Ukraine, Krasnov gets to play the stock market. Win-win-win.

[kakacik]

That son almost died during US strike and survived by pure luck, so unprobable. The rest, not so much.

Free democratic world loses, dictators around the globe win. Sad days for mankind.

[varispeed]

> That son almost died during US strike and survived by pure luck, so unprobable.

It is not verified and probably a cover story for why he flew to Moscow to personally thank Putin.

[baxtr]

Especially when they're optimizing for afterlife.

[elzbardico]

A big part of the US involvment in the current war is driven by Christian Zionists, that literally believe that there needs to be a fucking end-of-the-times war in the region so Christ comes back.

[breppp]

The fact that many Iranian officials optimize stealing millions from the state, means they aren't optimizing for the afterlife

[baxtr]

Fair point. It seems to be a weird mix of people who optimize for afterlife and a mafia that lives their best life now.

[keybored]

This thread is talking about how the adversaries will attack America based on the current events that Iran is counter-attacking Israel and American bases since Israel and America invaded them illegally.

Lots of smugness about the supposed irrationality of the adversaries considering that backdrop.

[nerfbatplz]

The Iranians just hit an F35 with a proverbial box of scraps they put together in a cave. The Chinese military must have experienced collective euphoria when they saw that.

[9cb14c1ec0]

To be clear, that F35 was being incredibly careless, flying low in broad daylight. All the stealth features of an aircraft are useless if you can look at it with your own eyes. In any conflict with China, F35s would not be flown that way.

[iso1631]

You're holding it wrong?

How many cheap-ass drones could you buy for the cost of one F35. 100k? A million?

[breppp]

None of these reached Israel from Iran this war, so maybe their superior quantity is not enough

[don_esteban]

Iran does not have a million of them, the numbers they have are better utilized on targets in Gulf states.

If Iran launched 10000 Shaheds towards Isreal, you can be sure quite a few would get by.

Maybe Ukrainian drone interceptors can be made cheap enough to be good enough against massed Shaheds.

We are still early in the new paradigm, there will be significant developments.

[pjc50]

In a direct conflict with China, the ICBM exchange would destroy the F35s on the ground.

[mrguyorama]

China doesn't seem to think so. China believes they need to fight those F35s in the air.

Why would the opening salvo be ICBMs?

[don_esteban]

To deny the US the use of any nearby airfields (Okinawa, several others in Japan an Philippines). This will limit US airpower to carriers, which are few and sinkable.

Of course, China wants to be able to fight those F35s in the air - to mitigate the damage they can do to them (while the F35s still have airfield/carriers to land on) - also in order to make it easier to sink those carriers.

Still, you can bet that all US nearby airfields would be peppered very early in the conflict.

[elzbardico]

There won't be a direct conflict with China, at least not in the last 10 years, because the US first needs to complete de-coupling his economy from China more, re-industralize in-shore or at least near-shore, and dramatically build up its military and logistic capabilities to fight an expeditionary campaign on China shores.

China also is not stupid, and no matter how much they posture, they won't invade Taiwan.

[bilbo0s]

This analysis is insane.

No one is invading China. Coupled or de-coupled is a completely irrelevant consideration. People think MAGA are crazy, but no one is suicidal. A war with China would be over in a matter of hours. And anyone who did not manage to get to Africa or extreme South America before the outbreak of hostilities would have a great chance of dying. The only question is will death be quick in a blast, or slow as you try to walk out of the US.

[nerfbatplz]

To be clear, Trump announced that the US had destroyed Iran's air defenses, missiles and missile launch capabilities. Trump also said that the US enjoyed air supremacy over Iran and were flying when and where they wished.

Maybe one of these days we'll see a B-52 take off with JDAMs and not JASSMs but probably not, kind of scary to try and drop gravity bombs on a country that your stealth fighters can't fly over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU

[breppp]

B-52s takeoff with stand-in weapons when attacking Iran, as their air defense is largely destroyed

https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-r...

[drak0n1c]

The "pen-testing" discoveries go both ways. In Iran, Chinese HQ-9B surface-to-air missile systems and YLC-8B anti-stealth radars failed to intercept any aircraft. In Venezuela, Chinese JY-27A early warning radars failed to detect approximately 150 incoming U.S. aircraft. In Pakistan, Chinese HQ-9B and HQ-16 systems failed to intercept Indian strikes.

[maxglute]

Not really. US, a competent operator of US made platforms losing hardware to Iranian box of scraps is different than third party operators vs overmatch environment, i.e. Pakistani had pathetic amount of IADs vs India, and by all accounts VZ didn't even integrate theirs.

IADs not integrated by marginal operators =/= stealth radar didn't work aka, physics of stealth detection is basic, and parsimonious likelihood is US gave up strategic intangibles for VZ and IR side shows. Even if IADs wasn't integrated it would still be worthwhile for PRC to send out stealth radars knowing they'd get glassed because it's rounding error investment to get near F35s without luneburg. At the end of the day, these radars are networked/uplink to beidou3 for a reason, their primary function for PRC is to serve as cheap telemetry gathering nodes that gather strategic US ephemera like stealth profiles, ew, order of battle and beamed it back to CETC.

[baxtr]

While this is true it's also impossible to avoid.

So you could also argue that this war will help the US to gain experience it didn't have before which might be favorable in future conflicts with parties that didn't have this experience.

[renewiltord]

Veterancy is more valuable. Observers can tell only a certain amount about what you can do, but you know your limits much more deeply and you can adapt. In fact, it's much better we get our nose bloodied repeatedly now¹ so that we learn how fallible we are and make sure our processes involve aircraft carriers not being put out of commission during wars because of dryer lint fires.

¹ in a military sense; in a geopolitical sense obviously it's clear that Iran has been a misadventure

[testaccount28]

there is a benefit as well, though, as it makes your threats credible.

[DivingForGold]

Did I miss this ? Missing from the discussion is that Iran's cluster munitions in each single missle have absolutely overwhelmed Israels defense and would likely do the same to US military as well. Also to consider, Iran's $20,000 drones versus our $1 million dollar interceptors.

[maratc]

Cluster munitions are great against infantry in open field; less so against population centres equipped with advance warning systems. As it stands, they fail to even cause the damage worth offsetting by firing interceptors. The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.

Given a choice of conventional 500-800 kg warhead or cluster munitions warhead, I think that the nations in the current conflict would prefer being on the receiving end of cluster munitions (as a less bad option) every time.

[mamonster]

>The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.

Has there been a study on this? What is the GDP loss of having however many Israelis go to bunkers due to incoming ballistics instead of working ?

If a trash cluster missile that costs 100k USD to build causes 1mio USD worth of GDP to not be produced (numbers completely made up) then it's very worth it.

[maratc]

No idea about studies or GDP; just observing that the losses inflicted by Iran on Israel in June 2025 did nothing to deter Israel from going on offence again eight months later.

[mrguyorama]

Ballistic missiles do not cost only 100k USD to build. They are very unlikely to ever be that cheap. Rocketry requires enough precision to not explode on the launcher. Ballistic missiles with conventional munitions are only useful for point targets. Cluster munitions like Iran uses are an admission that they aren't targeting specific systems, aren't expecting to penetrate defenses, or other reasons why they would waste a ballistic missile on the modern equivalent of the Paris Gun.

Harassment weapons don't do much. None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.

Modern Shaheds can be possibly built at a scale to affect that, but we really haven't seen it happen yet. That would be something like thousands launched in a single wave against a single city or installation. But they still lack the precision and warhead to be targeted meaningfully.

You need WW2 industrial scale manufacturing lines worth of Shaheds to get beyond harassment. You need to be producing hundreds a day or more. That kind of industry is nearly impossible to protect from your adversary so unlikely to take shape.

[WalterBright]

> None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.

I hate to say it, but the aerial bombing campaign against Germany in WW2 was not terribly effective. The Germans were quick to decentralize the factories, and burning down houses did not impair the war effort much.

What did work was bombing the oil infrastructure. Germany ran out of gas.

What also worked was using the B-17 fleet as bait for the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe could not help but rise to defend the country, and then they were shot down by P-51s and P-47s and Spits. The goal was to erase the Luftwaffe, and it worked. (Even though German warplane production increased, the pilots were dead and irreplaceable.)

[don_esteban]

Depends, blanketing Ben Gurion (or any airbase) with parked aircraft on the tarmac with carpet munition is a really bad day.

But yes, against protected targets cluster munitions do not achieve much.

If you have relatively few low-precision missiles, using single warheads means you are risking achieving NO damage (easier to intercept, a good chance that it will hit nothing), with a cluster munition you are guaranteeing at least some damage.

I think Iranians are mixing both types of warheads.

[maratc]

Tarmacs are really hard to hit exactly, especially so when you fire from 1500 miles away. Each angular second turns into a big miss. Also, the launch goes towards the area where GPS denial is assumed. This denial can come in many forms.

There were reports about three small aircraft being damaged in Ben Gurion, one of them caught a fire. I guess three millionaires will have nothing to fly until they collect their insurance money.

[don_esteban]

There is no point in trying to argue that such an attack is extremely difficult, it already happened, and an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh damaged/destroyed E-3 Awacs and several tankers (see e.g. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-middle-east-news-u...).

It is not 1500miles away from Iran, but neither is Ben Gurion (Ben Gurion is cca 200-300km further away from the closest point in Iran that Prince Sultan).

[varjag]

Russia regularly uses cluster warheads on their ballistic missiles to a devastating effect. It all depends on the type of the target.

[wavefunction]

You could counter multipayload missiles by hitting the missile earlier in its trajectory before the payloads deploy, that was the plan for MIRV nukes but it requires usually forward interceptors or perhaps energy weapons we don't yet have.

[don_esteban]

Hm, Iran destroyed several of the radars used for seeing their missiles in the early stages of their trajectory.

[mrguyorama]

Hitting Ballistic missiles "Midcourse" as you suggest requires interceptors that look more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3

It is.... Entirely infeasible to deploy these against tactical ballistics like Iran is using.

[srean]

Israel seems to be using Arrow 3s for this exact effect. If we are to believe the news, the Arrow 3s hit bomblet arme missiles attacking Dimona ( after the one that got through)

[vasco]

If we really want to put a certain hat on we can also say those adversaries have an incentive to not prevent (or even incentivize) those wars for that same reason. Even if that's by helping along a guy that is easy to manipulate through a childlike ego become president.

[GeorgeWBasic]

"Our adversaries" are in the US government, or is this not crystal clear by now?

[ReptileMan]

On the other hand the Air force is getting the workout of their lifetime. Which could come in handy. The low bodycount among US military so far makes the whole clusterfuck just and expensive training program.

[1234letshaveatw]

That seems like an acceptable trade off to get some real world experience with what works and what doesn't with regards to massed drones and swarming. There is a lot we can learn in this conflict with relatively low stakes

[lejalv]

Stakes for whom?

>100 kids got murdered the first day of this "low stakes" war

[teleforce]

Imagine the NATO reaction if on the very first day of Russo-Ukrainian war offensive is by Russia performing missiles bombing murdering 100 kids studying in Ukraine primary school.

Trump candid reaction to the Iranian school incident when asked by reporter was "I can live with that".

[pjc50]

There were significant civilian casualties right from the start of the war in Ukraine, and several massacred villages.

Russian air defense shot down a civilian airliner mostly full of Dutch nationals and the response was just condemnation and tweaking the sanctions a bit.

[teleforce]

My heartfelt sympathy to the MH17 victims and families, but the airplane was flying in the risky warzone. That does not discount the fact that it's an atrocious act by the Russian backed military.

However, to send missile to primary school killing hundreds of school girls on the very first day of the war, if intentionally is just pure evil.

[shiroiuma]

It wasn't intentional; the building was used by the military years before. The US had really badly out-of-date intelligence and was negligent in updating it. There's absolutely no military benefit to bombing a girl's school.

Remember Hanlon's Razor, and remember how incompetent the Trump Administration has been in everything ever since he took office.

[varjag]

We don't need to imagine. Hundreds of kids sheltered in Mariupol theater building were killed in one attack in the first weeks of the war.

[teleforce]

Am I missing something?

The attack on the Iranian primary school (not makeshift sheltered building) is on the very first day of the war, not several weeks, months or years.

Not to downgrade the incident, but the Mariupol incident you mentioned probably happened in 2022 while the all out war started in 2014 [1],[2]. If you can refer and link to the particular incident it'll be helpful for verification.

[1] Siege of Mariupol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol

[2] Russo-Ukrainian war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_war

[varjag]

While the Ruissan invasion was ongoing from 2014, the 2022 full scale invasion is different both in scope and volume. It is viewed as its own global event and has it own huge Wikipedia article. Iran had also been attacked by the USA (and Israel) previously.

The theater was marked with huge inscription of "CHILDREN" on tarmac, in the pilots' native Russian. They killed them regardless.

Either way do you think that if it happened on day one instead of 3 weeks in the reaction would be any different?

[1234letshaveatw]

How many protesters were killed leading up to it?

[keybored]

How does bombing a school help protesters?

[1234letshaveatw]

The USA

[keybored]

“Iranian kids may die... but that’s a prize I’m willing to pay.”

[1234letshaveatw]

"I much prefer nuclear conflict"

[keybored]

Propose a nuclear free zone in the Middle East, propose a global nuclear free zone, propose to cooperate with other nuclear powers to disarm.

But that’s apparently not the real concern at all.

[RobertoG]

This is a problem with a know solution, already applied by many in the world: don't start wars.

Specifically: don't start wars thousand of miles away of your borders.

[wodenokoto]

That’s why Russia cut cables in the Baltic Ocean and flew a drone around Copenhagen airport.

That’s why StarCraft players sends “scouts” into enemy bases in the early game.

[jmyeet]

In strategic circles, this was a common thought in the 12 day war: Iran was essentially mapping and testing defenses.

As evidence of this, the US was forced to hastily move THAAD ground station radar from South Korea because Iran destroyed a bunch of them in the Gulf [1][2]. Bear in mind there aren't many of these and they cost half a billion dollars each.

Further evidence of this is how quickly it happened. Iran most likely had detailed contingencies and battle plans for this kind of event.

As an aside, this is what militaries do. They plan for things. So whenever you see some conspiracy about how government X reacted to situation Y quickly and thus had foreknowledge, you can ignore it. Military planners are paid to make up fictional situations and figure out how to respond. That's what they do.

Weapons are the ultimate export. You use them and blow them up and the customer has to come back and buy more.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/redeployment-u...

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us-mis...

[jandrewrogers]

> Iran destroyed a bunch of them

If by "a bunch" you mean one.

[ssvss]

Literally a bunch,

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us...

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/the-awacs-scare

[p00dles]

who is our/us?

[grafmax]

"Our" adversaries, huh? There are more people in our country than pedophile billionaires, but it's this group starting the wars, murdering civilians, and producing generations of "adversaries".

[shiroiuma]

The pedophile billionaires are your leaders, because you voted for them. You have no one to blame but yourselves.

[grafmax]

Our government is captured by oligarchs. I realize it's a democracy on paper..