ArtemisSo it turns out that having the most *expensive* military tech in the world may not be the best strategy, huh?
Who could have known that having very expensive equipment & arms/ammunition that take a long time to make might not be an advantage?
I think the entire world is going to watch as it is proven that for all its swagger & all its fancy equipment, the US military is perhaps not *quite* the unstoppable juggernaut it claims to be.
As we have ALREADY seen in Ukraine, military "superpowers" have a real problem facing off against forces defending their homeland using cheap & quick-to-manufacture arms & equipment.
It's not a great time to be a "military superpower." All of your equipment costs too much, is overcomplicated & over-engineered & everyone involved is complacent & overconfident.
This is like in Stargate when the Asgardians ask the humans for help because "we're too smart to think of the silly things you humans do, like using projectile weapons."
Iran appears to be using shortwave radio to send cyphered messages. It's an old school Soviet method of communication. And guess what? It works. None of it goes through a computer, so there is nothing to hack. It's inexpensive & easy to do, & you can just keep changing frequencies when your opponents start interfering with the one you're using.
All the fancy spy equipment the US has? Not meant to deal with that simple, low-tech tactic.
I do not think the US is prepared for how this is going to go.
I think we might just get stomped down by a country many folks here think of as "backwards" & believe to have far inferior military capabilities.
If Iran is laying mines using small boats, & the US has just 4 minesweeper ships, who is better equipped? Seems to me, the US can keep shooting those boats & Iran can just get more. But if Iran destroys their minesweepers, well, they're gone.
The thing about the minesweepers comes from my ex-Navy spouse. He pays attention to exactly what equipment the US Navy has, how much it costs, how old it is, & how difficult it is to replace (they have a lot of ships & equipment that are very difficult to replace because they just stopped making any more of them a very long time ago).
Last year, the Trump admin decommissioned HALF of the US Navy's Avenger-class mine countermeasure ships. So there were 8. Now there are 4.
Since he keeps up on all this stuff & has knowledge of naval operations, spouse has a pretty good idea of what the Navy is capable of, & he thinks the US is pretty much fucked when it comes to the Straits of Hormuz.
They didn't even THINK about this once before doing it.
I also think they didn't comprehend that Iran has prepared for this. I don't mean bracing up due to recent threats. I mean, the US has been threatening their very existence for such a very long time.
They are prepared, they have strategies, they don't use expensive tech where something else will do, & they have made themselves intimately familiar with their enemies' capabilities. What else would anyone expect them to do?
They knew we intended to come for them eventually.
Delusional racism...
These motherfuckers think they are the Master Race so they can't actually comprehend that brown people could beat them. They think they win by default.
Their brains are so cooked. They did not fucking believe this could possibly be difficult.
The Trump administration is possibly the most hopped-up on their own propaganda administration the US has ever seen. These people are drunk on it.
They think they have a literally invincible army, & they believe that it is impossible for white people to lose to brown folks (among many, many other false beliefs that are going to kick them in the ass).
Also, I suspect the US is going to turn out to not be as well-armed or prepared as they think because in Trump's kleptocracy, you gotta think some wild corruption is going to come to light & some armaments that are supposed to be there aren't & some equipment that is supposed to work doesn't.
Theft. Fraud. Graft. Cutting corners. It's a mess for sure.
Would you honestly believe that there is a single part of the federal government that is not currently being stripped for parts & sold off? Is there a single part that isn't filthy with fraud & bribes & payouts?
They have been destroying the ground beneath their (and our) feet for a while.
Frankly, the entire military-industrial complex IS a con. That huge military budget sure has gone to a lot of boondoggles & overpriced crap, huh?
This has been true for a while, but just like everything else right now, we are reaching the point where the bottom is going to fall out because everything has been so eroded over time.
The US is a hollow nation. Hollowed out over decades. In the coming years, everyone is about to find out that there is not much left.
We haven't quite reached the point where they try to strip the last of the drapes & furniture out of the White House to sell, but it feels like we're close, doesn't it? They are stealing & grifting absolutely anything & everything that they can.
Irenes (many)@artemis yeah we've been chewing on this for a few months now (the military part)
and on the whole hollowing-out thing for quite a while
Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)Nah, the White House is the only place they are dressing up instead. AFAIK, all that gold wasn't there a year ago.
Like the kings of old, they waste money on the palace, letting everything else to waste.
Violet MadderThe stated goal is to "destabilize" Iran.
I'm thinking the goal is to destabilize EVERYTHING, almost everywhere.
....Including the USA itself.
They don't need or want us prosperous or even stable. This administration has entirely confirmed my sinking feeling that the government is a shambling husk, already disemboweled and just stumbling towards its final collapse. They let DOGE play around with it like a tired toy, and they're leaving a depraved buffoon in the driver's seat and he's wildly twisting knobs and pushing levers while the ceiling comes down around his ears.
It's a lot easier to play profiteer in war-torn countries where everyone is desperate and anybody rich can just pay off some of the rampant gangs for errands, or offer treats like life-saving healthcare to get people to betray each other.
Corporate feudalism is the new order. Cliques of billionaires using everything and everyone else in the world as game pieces as they jockey with one another for status and power.
Woozle Hypertwin@artemis I've heard that the pattern with really powerful empires (Heinlein described them as "water empires", but I think we fit the pattern one way or another) is that they erode from within until they are so weak that the smallest push from outside can topple them. (I'm given to understand that this is what happened to the Romans.)
JuneSim63 💚
Faith, Purple haired feminist 🧋 
@artemis Oh, it always has been. See also the F-104 Starfighter.
That plane was so bad it got the nickname "widowmaker" from the Germans because so many pilots died flying them. The reputation was so bad that the US (or Lockheed?) paid for an entire Top Gun knock-off movie to be made about them to try and salvage their reputation.
Fix the problems? No. Just make a movie about how awesome our fancy plane is.
Simplicator@faithisleaping @artemis Chief designer Kelly Johnson so regretted that plane that he threatened to quit Lockheed if they kept selling it. I guess the compromise was they would only sell it overseas :(
@faithisleaping @artemis If there’s any saving grace, it’s that the #MST3K episode on Starfighters has one of the most hilarious lead-in skits of all time :)
@Simplicator @artemis Oh, that whole episode is a riot. One of my all-time favorites. The movie riffing and the host segments are all top-notch.
Laurent Bercot@artemis The Pentagon failed 7 audits in a row, and is currently unable to account for 63% of its budget.
63%.
I don't think this money is going into weapons or geopolitical strategy meetings.
Wulfy—Speaker to the machinesUK pioneer #Hacker Gary McKinnon fought an extradition to the US for 10 years.
Where he would be charged with crimes totalling 70 years jail.
One of the things McKinnon allegedly saw, were offworld personnel crew rosters.
This was back in the modem days and he was loading screens, so no files (before digital cameras)
Its potentially plausible the "missing" Pentagon budget is off-world special programs.
nanowiz
Elshara Silverheart
Urzl
Я⊛ḶḶ model ☭...that are going to kick all of us in the ass.
aburtch
🍄slow learner, ❤️🔥deep feelerKick us all in the ass though.
Jude🇵🇸
Aral Balkan@artemis Sadly, they have nuclear weapons and are just deranged enough to use them. (And are the only ones who ever have. There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t again.)
(((JaneinNJ)))@artemis Not just brown. Anyone who doesn’t fit the christian nationalist demographic profile.
Michael WestergaardI have for a while been saying that the Russians are right to believe they have the world's second strongest military. But that number 1 is Ukraine, not the US, and the Russians only becoming number 2 after being taught a long lesson by Ukraine.
The US together with China share places 3 and 4 (not so sure about China which has limited experience and their own problems, which might push the US to number 3).
The US together with China share places 3 and 4 (not so sure about China which has limited experience and their own problems, which might push the US to number 3).
@artemis The people doing the thinking want to weaken democracy worldwide, which means weaking nominally democratic governments worldwide -- which means weakening the US military, which is still not directly under the control of POTUS nor even the Wall Street oligarchy, is consistent with their goals.
Tiota Sram@artemis the saddest part is that what the US military *is* capable of at this point is basically just war crimes. We can bomb their desalination plants, oil reserves, electricity grid, etc.
And I'm worried that Trump is just going to push the "war crimes" button until the enemy surrenders, because when you take their civilian population hostage they have to surrender, right?
Except that the IRGC is actually quite resilient to that. They massacre their own population on the regular. Yes true scorched earth tactics will eventually wear them down but it will take years and be far bloodier than anyone imagines, and as with Afghanistan might still lead to ignominious withdrawal.
Truly a cursed timeline.
Robert H
AnneH
Steve Holden@artemis That will happen when you elect a dickhead (cf. Boris de Pfeffel Johnson).
Quixoticgeek@artemis aren't the mine sweepers all stateside currently anyway?
@quixoticgeek
I believe so. They didn't plan for any of this.
I believe so. They didn't plan for any of this.
@artemis yikes. If Wikipedia is right. The last four were moved *from* Bahrain in January. Madness.
Dubious Blur
Jeffrey Rogers 🏴@artemis @quixoticgeek There are UK minesweepers in Bahrain. I hope we don’t join this illegal and stupid war.
@artemis @quixoticgeek Ah, didn’t know that. I do know, though, that other vessels have been equipped to do mine hunting activities as older sweepers are phased out with crews redeployed as teams to those ships………don’t know if the US has also done this.
@Jeffrey @quixoticgeek
I think spouse said that technically the US Navy has other ships that are supposed to have this capability. They just aren't actually any good at it.
I think spouse said that technically the US Navy has other ships that are supposed to have this capability. They just aren't actually any good at it.
⠠⠵ avuko@artemis Asymmetric warfare is a real thing.
https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/raf-f-35-conducts-first-combat-shoot-down-on-operations/
Just one example.
The British RAF celebrates taking down two drones (I'll take those to be Shahed-136 drones, unit cost about $35.000) with two ASRAAM (Unit cost >£200,000) by scrambling a F35 (probably the F-35B Lightning II, unit cost $109 million to $135 million+) and two Typhoons (unit cost about $200 million to $300 million).
So that's roughly (not calculating fuel, deployment, training, personnel, etc. and taking the cheapest known costs)
$264.857 + $264.857 + $109.000.000 + $200.000.000 + $200.000.000 =
$509.529.714 versus $70.000.
LMAO.
2xfoOkay, okay, one more example, just for fun.
The sober comment of a NATO commander afterwards: “We’re fucked.”
sabik
The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉@artemis Right. Underestimating the ingenuity, strategic prowess and sheer, bloody-minded determination of the enemy is a mistake the USA will keep on making - in this case to the detriment of much of the rest of the world. 🙄
@artemis Also, it doesn't have to be old tech, or even non-digital, to be decisive: see, for example, how Ukraine has been using drones against the Russians.
(This also relates to a 1988 SF novel (I'm fulla those, aren't I) -- David's Sling -- about a battle to convince the US military to use mass-produced cheap weaponry when their entire model is based around gigacontracts handed out as political favors. #TASAT)
Mastodon MigrationKind of like the advent of the longbow. The more things change the more they stay the same.
https://www.historytools.org/stories/the-longbow-how-a-simple-weapon-reshaped-medieval-warfare
