So it turns out that having the most *expensive* military tech in the world may not be the best strategy, huh?

[artemis@dice.camp]

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."

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@artemis it's too bad there is no Palestine Action equivalent in USA nor Canada. they could have been shutting this shit down years ago.

[artemis@dice.camp]

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.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@artemis we've watched the same thing play out with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia has expensive miltary hardware and tons of untrained soldiers. Ukraine has had to make do with obsolete equipment, or come up with low-cost solutions that result in high costs for the enemy.

and really, what else is new. the Picts destroyed an entire Roman legion with guerrilla warfare and left the mutilated corpses behind as a warning. that's why Hadrian's wall exists.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@artemis lawl, didn't see this before i wrote my reply.

[artemis@dice.camp]

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.

[quixoticgeek@social.v.st]

@artemis aren't the mine sweepers all stateside currently anyway?

[artemis@dice.camp]

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.

[artemis@dice.camp]

@quixoticgeek
I believe so. They didn't plan for any of this.

[teflontrout@beige.party]

@artemis

goddamn how are we the protoss and zerg at the same time

[artemis@dice.camp]

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.

[quixoticgeek@social.v.st]

@artemis yikes. If Wikipedia is right. The last four were moved *from* Bahrain in January. Madness.

[jeffrey@tooting.ch]

@artemis @quixoticgeek There are UK minesweepers in Bahrain. I hope we don’t join this illegal and stupid war.

[quixoticgeek@social.v.st]

@Jeffrey @artemis Wikipedia disagrees. Suggests the last of the UK mine hunter fleet was returned to blighty last year...

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@artemis Iran is not ill-equipped to fight a war. it is very good at restraint. the reason there are no USA boots on the ground is because the commanders are chickenshit assholes who know they'll get torn to peices the moment they do that. Iranians are armed. Iran has a professional military. and like Hezbollah, they will sacrifice cheap hardware for as long as they can before they get into heavier weaponry and sacrificing soldiers' lives.

[avuko@infosec.exchange]

@artemis Asymmetric warfare is a real thing.

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.raf.mod.uk)

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.

[jeffrey@tooting.ch]

@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.

[artemis@dice.camp]

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.

[artemis@dice.camp]

@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.

[rndanger@infosec.exchange]

@avuko @artemis
That's State Power, baby