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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@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.
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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 @etchedpixels @cstross
Does it matter if they have plutonium?Do they have Shaheeds? Yes
Is Russia willing to pay for them? YesWhat is the Shaheed to plutonium exchange rate on the black market?
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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 wonder if he will end up having reduced the CO2 emissions of the planet.
Hard to tell, plus Methane leaks. -
@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 @cstross Yes, all the other planes are also way too expensive. When Iran has only been able to shoot down 2 planes, the reason is that US and Israel have attacked primarily with land/ship-launched missiles, and possibly some plane-launched missiles and glide bombs. The planes are too vulnerable to get close to any target with a working AA system, that includes 1970's USSR spec.
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@isaackuo @cstross Yes, all the other planes are also way too expensive. When Iran has only been able to shoot down 2 planes, the reason is that US and Israel have attacked primarily with land/ship-launched missiles, and possibly some plane-launched missiles and glide bombs. The planes are too vulnerable to get close to any target with a working AA system, that includes 1970's USSR spec.
@NohatCoder @cstross Uhh no. 1970s era USSR SAMs have practically no chance of hitting an F-35, and little chance of hitting various 4th gen jets (thanks to ECM and countermeasures). I mean, assuming well trained pilots.
An F-35 is much more difficult to detect and track on radar than the (much older technology) Tomahawk cruise missiles that were expended at great expense in the initial wave of attacks.
Why did the US military do this? I don't know, but it could easily have been stupidity
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@NohatCoder @cstross Uhh no. 1970s era USSR SAMs have practically no chance of hitting an F-35, and little chance of hitting various 4th gen jets (thanks to ECM and countermeasures). I mean, assuming well trained pilots.
An F-35 is much more difficult to detect and track on radar than the (much older technology) Tomahawk cruise missiles that were expended at great expense in the initial wave of attacks.
Why did the US military do this? I don't know, but it could easily have been stupidity
@NohatCoder @cstross driven by Hegseth and/or Trump himself.
But then, they were expecting Iran to surrender within the first few hours, or maybe days, so who knows?
Anyway, USS Ford having clogged toilets had an "effect" on the viability of F-35 round the clock bombing of Iran anyway.
These are things which COULD have been ... I dunno ... PLANNED about and for. But Hegseth and Trump are just so stupid.
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@cstross really does not change the fact that there never was any way to "win" this Iran War. You just have to look at this size, terrain, population layout of Iran compared to Iraq 2003 to get an idea of what sort of invasion force would have been necessary.
And there aren't any neighbors to Iran eager to become an invasion staging area.
So ... Iran will win. Period. They'll get bombed and stuff, and then ... they'll win.
@isaackuo @cstross The US victory conditions are for the Islamic Republic to go away. (US elite consensus that it's illegitimate, generational offense at daring to claim ownership of oil, etc.) They don't need to be Napoleon and be lauded as a conqueror.
Take a look at Iran on Google Maps; switch on the traffic.
Sparse transportation network, very concentrated; single export economy.
Think kinetic sanctions; blow up the ability to export oil and the roads over the mountains. Mine the ports.
