Oh good grief, this summary is both farcical and tragic: also, Trump has fucked air travel for at least the next two years, never mind automobiles and logistics.
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@caesarologia @cstross @isaackuo Actually, Iran is about 2.5 times bigger than Texax, with land area 1 648 195 km² vs 676 587 km²…
@blotosmetek @caesarologia @isaackuo Iran is very nearly as large as Mexico (90% of the area), 75% of the population (with a LONG history of resisting invaders), surrounded by mountains, and the closest points in CONUS and Iran are 7500km apart. (Unlike Mexico, where there's a land border.)
US folks who think "Iraq, Iran, what's the difference?" need to think in terms of "one is Ukraine (only crappier), the other is Russia (minus Siberia)" to get anywhere close to the scale of the problem.
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@etchedpixels @cstross The worst case I've seen suggested is Iran setting off a dirty bomb in an important population centre (do they have any plutonium?), thus rendering it uninhabitable for centuries. Somewhere like Manhattan or the City would be awful
@rpluim @cstross Manhattan wil be under water in 50 years anyway at current rates.
The previous Iranian leader issued a fatwah prohibiting nuclear weapon usage but they blew him up so who knows
Seems they like finely calculated responses. Like the DIego Garcia attack when Starmer decided to help the US. Easy to shoot down but the clear message being "actually we can hit London if we want"
And for the world cup they just need to blow up one stadium that's empty just before a game.
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@cstross @isaackuo From where I’m sitting Iran has won the gulf by logistics - there’s no reason to hide under the American shield when Paedopotus Rex (the leading light in Just Stop Oil apparently) will stomp hard on you anyway and Iran has the biggest supply of drones and missiles.
I expect Iran to demand withdrawal of US forces from these protectorates and I suspect they’ll get it because you want to deal with a organisation that is reliable and consistent. The USA is neither.
@green_bens @cstross I'm not an expert in the region but I'm pretty sure they will remain strongly opposed to Iran. But they may seek different strategic defense partners, such as Turkey or Ukraine.
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@isaackuo Yep.
For people who've never looked at a map (most Americans, apparently), my synopsis is, "Iran is Mordor". Big-ass empire surrounded on all sides by water or mountains. Also, it's on the other side of the world from the USA. Also-also, the littoral approaches are all naval death-traps. There's a REASON the Persian Empire didn't get conquered very often, and it's geopolitics!
@cstross @isaackuo I think its even simpler - Iranian leadership has been planning for this for 50 years and are clearly prepared to extract maximum pain from the world until the us is stopped.
Meanwhile us leadership appears to have thrown out 50 years of knowledge about Iran, strategic alliances, soft economic power, and every other advantage they had that wasn't "more expensive weapons" and started a war with about 5 seconds of thought
More planning went into the Iraq War for fucks sake
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@rpluim @cstross Manhattan wil be under water in 50 years anyway at current rates.
The previous Iranian leader issued a fatwah prohibiting nuclear weapon usage but they blew him up so who knows
Seems they like finely calculated responses. Like the DIego Garcia attack when Starmer decided to help the US. Easy to shoot down but the clear message being "actually we can hit London if we want"
And for the world cup they just need to blow up one stadium that's empty just before a game.
@etchedpixels @cstross Is a bunch of enriched uranium combined with conventional explosives a "nuclear weapon"? I suspect radioactive uranium dust is pretty nasty, especially in large quantities.
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@cstross @isaackuo I think its even simpler - Iranian leadership has been planning for this for 50 years and are clearly prepared to extract maximum pain from the world until the us is stopped.
Meanwhile us leadership appears to have thrown out 50 years of knowledge about Iran, strategic alliances, soft economic power, and every other advantage they had that wasn't "more expensive weapons" and started a war with about 5 seconds of thought
More planning went into the Iraq War for fucks sake
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@cstross @isaackuo I think its even simpler - Iranian leadership has been planning for this for 50 years and are clearly prepared to extract maximum pain from the world until the us is stopped.
Meanwhile us leadership appears to have thrown out 50 years of knowledge about Iran, strategic alliances, soft economic power, and every other advantage they had that wasn't "more expensive weapons" and started a war with about 5 seconds of thought
More planning went into the Iraq War for fucks sake
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@cstross @isaackuo I think its even simpler - Iranian leadership has been planning for this for 50 years and are clearly prepared to extract maximum pain from the world until the us is stopped.
Meanwhile us leadership appears to have thrown out 50 years of knowledge about Iran, strategic alliances, soft economic power, and every other advantage they had that wasn't "more expensive weapons" and started a war with about 5 seconds of thought
More planning went into the Iraq War for fucks sake
@Jer "Until the US is stopped"? And who's going to stop them? The only way this ends is from within the US. There is zero chance of an external party forcing the US to see reason. Their poltical leadership is too far down the shitter.
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@etchedpixels @cstross Is a bunch of enriched uranium combined with conventional explosives a "nuclear weapon"? I suspect radioactive uranium dust is pretty nasty, especially in large quantities.
@rpluim @etchedpixels Turns out Iran's HEU stockpile last year was ALREADY bomb-ready, it would just need somewhat more of it to assemble a critical mass than top-flight fully-enriched U235.
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@etchedpixels @cstross Is a bunch of enriched uranium combined with conventional explosives a "nuclear weapon"? I suspect radioactive uranium dust is pretty nasty, especially in large quantities.
@rpluim @etchedpixels @cstross You wouldn't even need a lot of conventional explosives, if you know how to re-enact assorted industrial disasters in the UK over the last fifty years and place a few innocent looking oil drums full of metal powder in strategic locations ahead of time. Imagine how much fun Flixborough would have been with bonus uranium dust.
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RE: https://infosec.exchange/@bontchev/116271481696841313
Oh good grief, this summary is both farcical and tragic: also, Trump has fucked air travel for at least the next two years, never mind automobiles and logistics. The supply chain shock will get as bad as 2022 within a couple of months—then keep getting worse.
@cstross I mean... yay?
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@cstross @isaackuo I think its even simpler - Iranian leadership has been planning for this for 50 years and are clearly prepared to extract maximum pain from the world until the us is stopped.
Meanwhile us leadership appears to have thrown out 50 years of knowledge about Iran, strategic alliances, soft economic power, and every other advantage they had that wasn't "more expensive weapons" and started a war with about 5 seconds of thought
More planning went into the Iraq War for fucks sake
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@otmar @cstross @isaackuo I mean, religious fanatics whose fetish is martyrdom (for others) riddle the Trump administration. The us secretary of "war" belongs to a Christian apocalypse cult. The us military- especially the Air Force - is completely overrun with them at all levels
Too many people think they can trigger the End Times by starting the right kind of wars and that coloring all of this too
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@jmax@mastodon.social @Jer@chirp.enworld.org @cstross@wandering.shop @isaackuo@spacey.space Planck time. As in "as thick as two short plancks".
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@cstross Trump and the people around him are absolute morons, yes, but there is a weird motivated thinking desire among many to breathlessly claim US military hardware - which Trump had no hand in the development of - somehow sucks.
The F-35, for all its infamous flaws, is working better than experts expected. It was never designed to be fully stealthy - it emits radar so it can see and shoot at enemy aircraft.
And SM-3 continues to be phenomenal.
But the awesome performance of some systems
@isaackuo @cstross It is not that they are bad planes per se, they just don't deliver $100M worth of fighting power. And it is basically the same story with everything that is more advanced than a rifle, it is way too expensive, leading to way too few items being produced for a war at scale. SM-3 sounds great as an anti-ICBM weapon, but if you need them against intermediate range misiles as well, a stockpile of 100 or so could run out rather quickly.
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RE: https://infosec.exchange/@bontchev/116271481696841313
Oh good grief, this summary is both farcical and tragic: also, Trump has fucked air travel for at least the next two years, never mind automobiles and logistics. The supply chain shock will get as bad as 2022 within a couple of months—then keep getting worse.
@cstross See how the 'Master Race' fucks up everything it touches....
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@isaackuo @cstross It is not that they are bad planes per se, they just don't deliver $100M worth of fighting power. And it is basically the same story with everything that is more advanced than a rifle, it is way too expensive, leading to way too few items being produced for a war at scale. SM-3 sounds great as an anti-ICBM weapon, but if you need them against intermediate range misiles as well, a stockpile of 100 or so could run out rather quickly.
@NohatCoder @cstross F-35s do absolutely deliver $100M worth of fighting power. The initial costs are remarkably low compared to other fighter jets, that provide a lot less capability.
HOWEVER, the running costs of the F-35 are not great, and it's a reason why we're spending money on F-15X (which actually costs more than F-35, but the running costs are lower).
SM-3 costs a lot, but still less than the ballistic missiles they shoot down. And they're also a lot smaller and the magazine depth of
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@NohatCoder @cstross F-35s do absolutely deliver $100M worth of fighting power. The initial costs are remarkably low compared to other fighter jets, that provide a lot less capability.
HOWEVER, the running costs of the F-35 are not great, and it's a reason why we're spending money on F-15X (which actually costs more than F-35, but the running costs are lower).
SM-3 costs a lot, but still less than the ballistic missiles they shoot down. And they're also a lot smaller and the magazine depth of
@NohatCoder @cstross the hundreds of destroyers and cruisers the USA and Japan have is such that it's not really realistic for Russia or China to saturate them, much less Iran or North Korea.
SM-3 also has a range of thousands of kilometers, which is an order of magnitude greater than other BMD missiles.
Basically, the fantasy Star Wars missile defense POTUS Reagan dreamed of ... became real. Not overnight, but over decades.
Aegis BMD is truly a "game changer".
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@NohatCoder @cstross the hundreds of destroyers and cruisers the USA and Japan have is such that it's not really realistic for Russia or China to saturate them, much less Iran or North Korea.
SM-3 also has a range of thousands of kilometers, which is an order of magnitude greater than other BMD missiles.
Basically, the fantasy Star Wars missile defense POTUS Reagan dreamed of ... became real. Not overnight, but over decades.
Aegis BMD is truly a "game changer".
@isaackuo @NohatCoder Noted: Reagan's "star wars" pipedream was mooted in 1984. That's nearly 50 years ago! The tech arrived incrementally, in a steady drip. It still won't suffice to block a full-scale strategic attack by a superpower, but for anything much short of that, it's changed the rules of the game.
