[inglor_cz]

The gap between weeks and years is big, though. Even in peacetime conditions, this process could be sped up if necessary. Indeed it might not make any sense at all to think in years and decades when it comes to such a quick-evolving industry. Whatever drone the DoD sets in stone now, will likely be obsolete by 2030.

The Ukrainian drone industry isn't particularly expensive, BTW, and mostly grew up from private sector grassroots. Ukrainian military has had its own share of problems with ossified Soviet-era leadership. They were able to route around these, though. The US does not want to do this so far; probably too much money involved, and not enough risk to rock those boats (or yachts).

On Iran, describing the US as "inable" to win is structurally incorrect. The US could always win the war whenever it wants to.

Are you sure, with the shortages of equipment that take years to replenish? In what sense? I am not even sure if the US has enough naval capability to make a D-day-like landing in Iran right now. That requires specialized ships and training.

The US could probably win the war if it went in fully: as you say, if it was fully mobilized and restructured into a war economy like Ukraine. But that is already quite a bad situation to be in. If a superpower needs to do this in order to fight someone like Iran, it is not really a (conventional) superpower anymore.

The US could also wipe Iran using nuclear missiles, but the political ramifications of such a step would be catastrophic.

So could Pakistan. Pakistan has enough nukes to wipe Iran off the Earth (not that they want to). But no one mistakes Pakistan for a superpower just because they have deliverable nukes.

[tristanj]

My impression from reading your comment is that you do not understand US doctrine. The US focuses on blitzkrieg, air supremacy, and precision strikes. Its doctrine is totally opposite of what is happening in the Ukraine/Russia conflict, which is a protracted WWI-era trench warfare conflict with minimal airpower by either side. The US is not optimized to fight such a war.

Neither do you understand that the US has optimized its military around conflict against the PRoC. The US has fought multiple proxy wars against the PRoC. Arguably, the current Iran conflict is a proxy war against the PRoC. Future military spending is focused on countering China, not on the style of conflict Ukraine is facing.

That is why the US is phasing out military assets such as infantry forces and artillery, and is investing in unmanned vehicles and long-range missiles.

Further, you incorrectly quote and misinterpret what I wrote about ICBMs. The US (and Russia) could always win their current conflicts with ICBMs, but choose not to. That is a calculated choice, not an inability to win as you claim.

[inglor_cz]

I understand the US doctrine, which is also fine-tailored to buying very expensive systems from certain corporations that have few to none competitors and feel no real pressure to innovate.

"Arguably, the current Iran conflict is a proxy war against the PRoC."

That is stretching it. The vast majority of weapons that Iran deployed were of their own build, and China sends nowhere near as much equipment to Iran as, say, Europe to Ukraine.

"Future military spending is focused on countering China, not on the style of conflict Ukraine is facing."

Which is part of the problem. As a wanna-still-be-superpower, the US will face a lot of diverse conflicts in the world, with various characteristics.

"The US is not optimized to fight such a war."

The US is not optimized to a bombing campaign against countries the size of Iran anymore either. You are literally running out of things to throw at them after mere weeks have passed.

Good luck fighting China then, with its 16x as big population and 100x as big economy than Iran has.

"The US (and Russia) could always win their current conflicts with ICBMs, but choose not to. That is a calculated choice, not an inability to win as you claim."

War is continuation of politics, not just destruction for its own sake. To win the war does not mean "utterly destroy a certain region", but "make the opponent do as you wish, at least in some aspects, against his will, while not suffering catastrophic consequences elsewhere".

If political constraints stop you from deploying WMDs, and you cannot achieve your political aims with conventional weapons, that counts as an inability to win the war. Can the US make the Iranian leadership drop their nuclear ambitions? It does not seems so. Can the US wipe Iran off the map? Yes, but at the cost of becoming a pariah nation, which is worse than ayatollahs having a few nukes. Only a fool would call the latter "victory".

[tristanj]

You obviously don't understand US doctrine, since earlier you were complaining how the US hasn't adapted its arsenal regarding drones in just four years.

Iran would not be able to pursue nuclear weapons nor missiles without China's assistance. The precursors of the missile fuel, the precursors of yellowcake processing, the chips and hardware of Iranian drones, all come from China with its assistance and blessing.

China has provided military equipment and weapons to Iran. China has military personnel in Iran operating air defense systems. It is accurate to call this a proxy war.

The fact you are unaware of any of this, demonstrates your lack of understanding of the conflict.

Further proof you do not comprehend US doctrine, is that the US can always escalate the conflict and pursue a ground war. But is hesitant to do so simply because Trump does not want war. Trump prefers quick, surgical operations; and does not want to drag the US into a forever war like Bush Jr and Obama did.

You keep claiming the US is "inable" to win the war, yet you do not understand the definition of this word. Choosing not do pursue a strategy for political reasons is not inable. The US would win a ground war against Iran, full stop. Your analysis fails to consider this option. But it would win at the cost of thousands of lives, and likely the US would need to occupy the country, which is politically challenging, and Trump is savvy enough to be hesitant to pursue this option.

You also lack historical understanding of war. You forget that total destruction and capitulation was the default strategy of war for millenia, see strategies of the Mongols or the war against Japan, where the US firebombed and leveled Japanese cities, even nuking them, until capitulation.

[inglor_cz]

" that the US can always escalate the conflict and pursue a ground war. "

You seem to be stuck on repeat with "don't understand, don't understand, don't understand". Yet it seems to me that it is you who got sucked into some bizarro understanding of war being fundamentally an annihilation contest between the two parties involved. This very shallow understanding is now somewhat widespread in the blogosphere and pushed by, again, shallow types like Stephen Miller. Claims like "total destruction and capitulation was the default strategy of war for millenia" are just not true. It happened sometimes, but quite often also not, because warring parties always have some limits to their effort, be it ideological, economic or political limits. And this was no less true in Antiquity than today.

Outside the bizarro "total destruction" corner, war between organized states has been understood primarily as a continuation of politics, with the goal to make your enemy do something that they don't want to. Even the Mongols you mentioned usually gave a besieged city an option to surrender, because their primary goal wasn't simply to kill, but to conquer and rule.

Yes, there are exceptions (Carthago delenda est), but these exceptions aren't the historical rule.

Let us look at the situation in Iran now.

The US seems to want something from Iran. It is not very clear what, but probably free movement of ships through Hormuz, nuclear disarmament and maybe even regime change.

It also does NOT want to genocide the Persians out of existence. While doable, it would carry a heavy reputational penalty and cause significant friction back at home. Not even Trump wants to add tens of millions of civilian lives to his conscience, hence WMDs are out of question.

A ground invasion is thinkable, but I am much less persuaded about its efficiency than you are. As you yourself say, this has a risk of turning into a forever war and the US isn't equipped, mentally nor doctrinally, to fight forever wars.

Which means that you likely won't get what you want from the current Iranian leadership by the sort of military means you can feasibly use against them, and that is not a victory.

Please give me a plausible scenario in which the current US is capable of winning a ground war against Iran in the presence of all the current political limitations, which are quite fundamental. You can't.

Ultimately it does not matter if you can't win because you cannot muster the political will to engage in a costly war, or if you can't win because you run out of Tomahawks (both are correlated, btw). It is still an inability to win, which is obviously detrimental to the US imperial standing.

[tristanj]

The US has a straightforward option to "win" the war via a ground invasion.

First, a large scale bombing campaign, targeting Iranian infrastructure.

Dropping bombs on every power substation, fuel plant, and generation plant would cripple the economy, and grind the country to a halt. A similar strategy was applied to Japan and Germany in WWII. If these facilities have military purpose, destroying these facilities is not necessarily a war crime.

A modern economy cannot function without fuel and electricity. The economy will quickly grind to a halt, and Iran will be forced to confront internal problems before mounting a concerted response.

After 2-3 weeks of chaos, the US would launch a ground invasion, though Pakistan and Iraq. It would then remove the nuclear material, clean up Iranian missiles that target ships in the strait, and the US would leave.

It achieves the primary, secondary, and tertiary goals of the war: no more nuclear weapons, removal of nuclear material, and reopening of the strait.

Combat losses to the US would be minimal. The cost for Iran, though, is astronomically high. It would take years for the country to rebuild, and set back the nation economically for decades.

Trump is trying hard to avoid this option. Many other presidents (I'd wager Kamela) would have gone down this path by now.

[inglor_cz]

There is nothing straightforward about the option you describe.

The necessary buildup would take several months and would happen within range of Iranian drones.

Neither Iraq nor Pakistan seem to be particularly likely to grant a permission to the US to stage a large-scale land operation against Iran from their own territory. Both have large populations partly sympathetic to the mullahs, the political destabilization caused by taking the side of "infidels" against the "faithful", plus suffering Iranian drone retaliation, would be just too costly for them.

"First, a large scale bombing campaign, targeting Iranian infrastructure."

The US already did that and emptied its arsenals to dangerously low levels. Were they replenished? Probably not yet, this is what we are discussing here; the military-industrial complex in America has grown fat and complacent and cannot quickly increase production beyond the very low level optimized out by post-Cold-War MBAs.

"Combat losses to the US would be minimal."

Uncertain. The US could probably swallow its pride and go to Kyiv to shop for anti-drone know-how and technology. In that case, the combat losses would be lower. If people like Vance and Trump cannot do that, I would rather expect the US losses to be at least in lower tens of thousands. A million cheap FPV drones can do a lot of dirty work, and this is probably the stuff that China can send to the IRGC quite quickly.

[watwut]

> 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 could win, they would do it. Heck, if USA was able to walk away from the conflict, at this point it would. It just so happen that Israel does not want to allow it and Iran thinks they are getting into better position with each passing week.

[tristanj]

> [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 conflict. The Russia/Ukraine war is a double-proxy war; both the US and China are arming their respective sides.

The current conflict is also a proxy war. Without China's support for Iran, this war could not have happened. China provides the precursors for Iranian missile fuel, Iran purchased tons of sodium perchlorate from China; China provides the chemicals that are needed for yellowcake and Iran's nuclear program; China provides the parts for Iran's drone program. China also provides the anti-aircraft systems that Iran uses, though so far these have proven to be questionably effective. China has an active part in this conflict, there are Chinese military personnel in Iran actively maintaining their radar systems.

Without China, there are no missiles, there are no nukes, there are no drones. There is no 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 trying to play both sides, but that is not a viable long term strategy.

The previous poster is claiming the US is 'inable' to end the war with Iran; this is trivially false, the US has ICBMs, and can trivially end the war. You have listed the consequences of doing so, yet I was responding to their claim, which is separate matter.

[ponector]

>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.

[watwut]

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.

[brokenmachine]

Please look up the difference between losing and loosing.

Call me pedantic but it just makes it unpleasant to read.

[defrost]

You should assume that a 13 year HN veteran likely knows the difference, is human, and had a mild bout of misfiring fingers.

Small beer in the greater scheme ... and unable to be edited / corrected by the user in question some 12 hours after the comment.

If you're realy that upsit, cun I seggust you emraile HN @ Ycombingnater and ask for a m0d to intravein?