Shrike
14d ago
Re: #1, the link you had includes something like a denial by Trump. I would not be surprised if the desalination plants were hit, but the neighboring states seem like more likely culprits than the United States to me. Iran claiming such a strike falsely, or using it on themselves, and then using it as a justification to strike said states desalination plants also seems quite conceivable. The targets I would expect the US to hit first if they were settling in for a longer phase of the war would be related to power generation.
Re: #2, it is possible the building was struck intentionally due to being misclassified as a target, or that the coordinates for the target strike were entered incorrectly (the school was near an IRGC facility, IIRC). Even a tenth of a percent of error makes a mistake likely over the course of thousands of target sets. That seems much more likely to me than a coordinated decision to strike a children's school.
Shrike
14d ago
On the one hand, I tend to agree with this.
On the other hand, it seems plausible that Congress would have signed off on the war, since the Senate declined to do anything about it under the War Powers Act.
On the gripping hand, the first undeclared* war waged by the United States was in 1798(!) by John Adams(!!) against the French(!!!) and the second was in 1801 by noted hawk** Thomas Jefferson against Algiers. A series of Supreme Court rulings essentially signed off on the use of military force without an explicit declaration of war, although it's important to note that Congress favored and at least to some degree authorized both actions, as I understand it.
I wonder if part of the reason Congress is so lackadaisical about using or tightening up the War Powers Act is because they are afraid the Supreme Court would rule against any really meaningful preemptive restrictions on Presidential use of military force, potentially even weakening their power to conduct oversight of executive action relative to the current status quo.
*at least by the United States
** this is sarcasm
Shrike
14d ago
destroying their desalination facilities
Is there evidence beyond the words of the Iranian regime that you support removing that the US has targeted Iranian desalination facilities?
It seems that even the attack on that girls' school was deliberate
Just to be clear, is your position that the US used a Tomahawk mission on a girls' school intentionally, knowing that is was a girls' school?
Shrike
14d ago
You already see "traditional marriage" or the even-more-unwieldy "marriage between a man and a woman" so there's clearly at least some demand.
Shrike
14d ago
any idiot on the street would tell you they'd threaten Hormuz
It's probably worth noting that not attacking Iran doesn't guarantee they won't threaten Hormuz. In fact the last time an Iran was involved in shutting down an international waterway was...2025.
Furthermore, if Iran develops a nuclear weapon (and allegedly their opening stance in negotiations with the US was "we're sitting on 11 bombs worth of uranium right now" then its ability to close the strait will arguably be enhanced, since they will be a nuclear-armed state.
I think it's all right to be skeptical of this action – I've argued against past proposals for intervention in Iran – and, well, we'll see how this one turns out. I think the points you raise here are fair. I just want to flag the counterpoint is that "Iran doing this but with nukes" is worse. And while Americans often flatter ourselves that just leaving everyone the heck alone would remove the incentive for people to do things that hurt us, the truth is that Iran might very well close the strait in a regional tiff with its neighbors that has nothing to do with us.
I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the US-as-global-hegemon. I think it corrupts our incentives and our institutions. But the benefits of someone saying "I will explode you if you touch the global trade routes" are greater than zero.
Shrike
14d ago
Is there reason to think the Iranians have procured tactical antipersonnel drones in large numbers? It would make sense for them to do that, it's just that most of the media I've seen covering Iranian done procurement has been about Shaheds.
Obviously they are trivially easy to make, but I'm not sure if Iran is in a position to procure them quickly in large numbers if they don't have them stockpiled.
Shrike
14d ago
It's kind of incoherent for an American to criticize treason.
Not really. A traitor breaks the social compact/sacred bond that binds countrymen.
And a big grievance of the American revolutionaries was that (from their perspective) the British government broke that social compact/sacred bond first.
Shrike
15d ago
But is the US military actually involved in decision-making
Yes.
The serious strategists have been saying for years that the US needs more cost-efficient SHORAD and anti-drone weapons and large-scale production of munitions yet the message doesn't seem to have filtered through.
This isn't true at all, as you'd know if you've been reading my posts - the Navy's been testing improved ammo for the 5-inch gun, we've deployed lasers and we've used laser-guided rockets (which pretty much fix the cost curve for Shahed-type weapons). Similarly the large-scale production ramp up is (at least supposedly) underway.
If the US and Chinese Navies sink eachother in a Taiwan fight, the Chinese build a new navy much faster and win.
If the US ramps up said production to 1,000 Tomahawks a year (stated goal) then it can just blow up their port infrastructure and call it a day.
That's where I disagree with the CSIS wargames, they assume a very rosy picture
Possibly! But it's not exactly an EZ win for the United States, either, which means people are paying attention.
They also bomb Taiwan's ports and energy infrastructure to threaten or actually inflict intolerable suffering on the island.
We'll see how this works on Iran. So far it hasn't worked on Ukraine.
And what are the chances this conflict is over within nine months?
A war with China over Taiwan? If they launch an invasion and the war is still going on after nine months, it means the invasion failed. I would say it depends on a lot of factors, as a flat-out invasion is not the only outcome, nor does its failure terminate the war, but consider that if it lasts over a longer term the Chinese inability to sustain their domestic consumption of oil will start to increasingly hurt them, and all of the stuff you've said about inflicting hurt on Taiwan will start to work against China writ large.
Shrike
15d ago
The war's not over, there's still going to be plenty of time for Iran to damage an American warship or shoot down American aircraft at this rate.
Shrike
15d ago
Trump apparently didn't consider that Iran might close the straits of Hormuz, only now is there bleating about insuring vessels, only now are defence company executives being summoned to boost production.
I am very certain that the US military considered the possibility that Iran, known for threatening to close the straits of Hormuz for decades, might close the straights of Hormuz. I think the stuff about insurance was in response to rising insurance premiums - there's really no point in saying anything publicly about that ahead of time.
Trump has also been on the production thing for some time now.
Maybe nobody in the US decision-making cabal knows that Taiwan imports the vast majority of its food, energy and fertilizer by sea.
Unlikely, CSIS has done public simulations of Taiwan blockades, and some of the players are or were in said cabal.
THAAD getting wrecked by Iran's missile and drone arsenal is also pretty alarming.
It's very unclear to me the extent to which this damage is real. A lot of reported hits on THAAD locations doesn't necessarily mean much given that it's a semi-mobile system. We'll see how it shakes out.
What is the plan to defeat China in attritional, industrial warfare?
If it turns out that "the missile will always get through" – which is obviously true given enough missile mass – then that's bad for the power that needs successful missile defense to win a war in Taiwan. And that power is not the United States. China cannot win a war over Taiwan if their ships get sunk by missile salvos. If the US and Chinese Navies sink each other in a Taiwan fight, the status quo is maintained and the US wins.
Shrike
15d ago
Yes, I think you're right that shore-launched conventional ballistic missiles are much more common. I believe the South Koreans have tactical non-nuclear SLBMs but you're right about the lower "false positive" set.
I'm skeptical that even a more warlike Japan would get their own nukes.
Maybe! Japan can likely produce them quite quickly, and they seem to view Taiwan as a red line of sorts. If Taiwan did fall I think they might seriously reconsider their stance on nuclear weapons.
if the US actually were to follow through and let Saudi Arabia get nukes
I think the rumored understanding is that Saudi Arabia already has nukes, they are just stored in Pakistan.
In both of the above cases, though, I think the nuclear breakout is unlikely unless the US demonstrates the inability or unwillingness to be an adequate replacement. So the US shellacking Iran right now probably has made the Saudis feel more comfortable leaving their nuclear weapons parked elsewhere. Similarly, it seems to me that Japan is unlikely to reach for nuclear weapons as long as Taiwan remains outside of CCP control.
Shrike
15d ago
The authors go so far as to state "Due to the inability for the HVP to engage supersonic targets, an HVP-only configuration for anti-missile defense is not recommended" and therefore limit HVP engagement only to the subsonic targets in the simulation.
The study says, on the very first page, "the HVP is capable of supersonic speeds and mid-air course correction to intercept incoming ballistic missiles as well as engaging other targets as an offensive weapon" and BAE's fact sheet, linked to here, says that ballistic missile defense is in the mission set.
The study states that they only modeled using the HVP to engage subsonic targets "[b]ased on sponsor and stakeholder feedback" and as you point out the study did not model ballistic missile targets at all, focusing on more conventional anti-ship missiles. It's possible this means
- That the ability to engage supersonic targets is not yet mature and the Navy does not expect that in the near future, but it is an area for potential future growth (this track's CRS' suggestion that the HVP "might not" be able to engage ballistic missiles)
- That the 5-inch gun is not assessed to have the velocity to engage supersonic targets, but other weapons (such as a railgun) would have that ability
- That BAE is a big fat liar
- That the HVP has a marginal ability to engage ballistic missiles but it is not anticipated to be employed in this fashion except as a last-ditch measure
- BAE and/or the Navy assess that there is a certain subset of ballistic missiles that will arrive at subsonic speeds.
- That ballistic missiles are easier to shoot down (despite their top speed) than the missiles in this simulation because they aren't sea-skimming weapons with terminal maneuvering phases and instead travel in a nice parabolic arc at altitudes that make it easy to detect them for hundreds of miles
Either way, I think you are correct that the capability for the HVP to destroy ballistic missiles is not yet present, and may never be present. But on the flip side, I don't think it's impossible that it is eventually operationalized, or for a similar capability to be developed.
Shrike
16d ago
(IRBM terminal velocity is somewhere in the range of Mach 16)
I don't think this is true, certainly not as a general statement - for instance, the Oreshnik is known for a top speed "above Mach 10" and generally speaking the top speed is not in the terminal phase, but rather in the midcourse where the atmosphere is thinner. CBO suggests that hypersonic missiles may be traveling below Mach 5 in the terminal phase. This source gives a terminal velocity under Mach 3 for ballistic missiles generally. These lower speeds are particularly likely if the missiles are maneuvering at all. If the missiles are not maneuvering, the higher speed is offset somewhat by the vulnerability to pretty much anything that can react fast enough and shoot at them.
HVP is just meant to be included as a component part of a whole package, which is very expensive.
Right, on a ship it is part of a layered defense against large salvos. If they had run the simulation against a salvo size of one, the savings would look different: they estimate each HPV costing $100,000, with an ESSM (the low-end missile) costing over $600,000. So if your options are a five-round burst from your 5-inch or a single ESSM, you're looking at a 20% saving to deal with a single leaker.
The cost savings detailed here vary depending on salvo size, size of round and probability of hit, but they're not large
That's because in the scenario, the HVP was being used as part of a layered defense against extremely large salvo sizes. Ballistic missiles are rarely if ever fired 25 at a time against single-point surface targets. This is much more relevant for ships, but if you are, say, Ukraine, your tactical question isn't to how to stop 25 ballistic missiles from striking an artillery battery, it's how to stop a single ballistic missile from striking it (or how to stop a salvo from hitting a number of different targets). If "guided flak guns" can do the trick, it makes ballistic missiles less cost effective.
And if you can put that on a mobile system, the effects can be pretty large. Supposing hypothetically that you're a country with partial satellite targeting data, looking to hit 100 semi-mobile targets before they move. Your enemy has four batteries (40x) interceptors. You need to fire 140 missiles to hit 100 target fairly reliably (a few targets might escape by luck). But now supposing hypothetically that your enemy has replaced all of those batteries with forty road-mobile point-defense systems that can intercept a single ballistic missile at a time reliably. Now you need to fire 200 missiles to reliably hit ~all 100 targets, because you are not certain where the point-defense systems are and need to double-tap all targets. Basically you put the two-interceptors-per-incoming shoe back on the other foot.
This isn't exactly a realistic scenario, just an illustration, but I think you see my point.
Now, I don't think there's an easy solution to ballistic missiles. I'm just not convinced that they will be as relatively effective as they are now forever, or that missile defense is a losing proposition. I agree that if you cram enough missiles into a salvo against a single target, "the missile will always get through," but if you're forcing your enemy to shoot salvos of ballistic missiles against tactical targets, you're much more likely to be on the correct size of the cost curve.
Shrike
16d ago
Yeah, I think there's something to be said for the argument that increased nuclear weapons reduces war by increasing risk...but also there's something to be said for the argument that reducing war by increasing risk is still increasing risk.
There's something to be said for the (sadly now defunct) Cold War arms treaties limiting stuff like intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles
I feel compelled to point out that such treaties left SLBMs in place. You can fire a sub-launched ICBM on a depressed trajectory, and you could probably put those ~anywhere you could put land-based missiles. That's not to say the treaty did nothing - Trident II is going to be more expensive than a Tomahawk on a truck, or something - but for better or for worse the US and possibly the USSR could still have put people in a 5-minute decision dilemma.
As to whether the relative risk of an emboldened China contributing to generalized nuclear tension is greater than the risk of a conventional fight over Taiwan escalating to nuclear exchange(s), that I'm not quite sure.
I definitely wonder if a China that's strong and aggressive enough to take Taiwan might become the same China that says "you know what? I don't think you've got the guts for it, and we have missile defense" in some spat with a nuclear Vietnam or Japan a decade down the road.
Shrike
16d ago
It's also likely to kick off a regional nuclear arms race, although you might view this as being good. I am at least modestly open to our relatively stable allies getting access to nuclear weapons (at this point North Korea has them anyway, so it's hardly like it's setting a bad regional precedent.)
This does however reduce US power compared to the rest of the world, and thus is arguably against US interests.
Shrike
16d ago
100%, although it seems to have gotten much less difficult recently. The US Navy used to always train carrier landings in trainers. Now, thanks to advances in avionics that can enable a more precise control mode behind the deck, they've removed the carrier landing requirement from their next trainer.
Lots of interesting things here, including the likely permanent passing of a difficult rite of passage.
Shrike
16d ago
Hateful geriatrics in poverty often live the longest.
I invite you to show me a study confirming this surprising claim!
Unlikely, since the majority of the examples I'm thinking about are only tangential acquaintances, from workplaces, from previous generations, etc.
Often people's social bubbles extend to the workplace and are at least partially geographic in nature.
Shrike
16d ago
Until cheap drones and long range missiles, the only thing that could effectively counter carriers were other carriers or land based air forces.
Forgetting submarines here, which of course is how the submarines like it.
In an age of ballistic missiles and cheap drones, carriers continue to have a huge advantage because unlike airfields they can move around, and very very quickly. The disadvantages carriers have compared with an airfield is that it's probably easier to repair the airfield, particularly from relatively minor damage, and you can't really fly large aircraft like strategic bombers, transports, or airborne refueling aircraft off of them.
Shrike
16d ago
I posit that married life is misery for men
But this would be strange, since misery tends to led to stress, which in turn leaves to poor health outcomes.
You could argue, I suppose, that wives are good at getting their husbands to go to the doctor (in fact, that is almost certainly a nonzero percentage of this effect) but my point is that we have reasons external to self-reporting to believe that married men are healthier.
I surely haven't seen any marriage in real life where I know any details about it and think: gosh, if only I could swap places with him!
Possibly this is your preferences, but you might also be in a bubble.
Shrike
16d ago
First off, I think it helps to understand the data Crowstep is relying on. I'm pretty sure whatever poll or set of polls he is thinking of is not asking the question "are you happier married?" Rather, it is asking the question "are you happy/how happy are you?" It is aggregate numbers that show that married men are happy, but of course it's on a curve, so some married men do report being unhappy, they are just less likely to than unmarried men.
Secondly, I can imagine that a vampire might be able to read the mind of a thrall to figure out how it responded on polling questions. The idea that wives have similar abilities is funny and I don't discount that some men (or women) might lie on survey data to please their significant other, but I don't see a strong reason to think it would be so systemic as to change the overall balance.
Finally, there's also some research data showing that married men live longer. Since happiness also seems to be linked to health, it would be odd if marriage made men profoundly unhappy but also prolonged their lives. Unless we're thinking that women are close-to-literally vampires which prolong the lives of their thralls, which is very funny but I don't find it convincing.
(Apologies to @Crowstep if I am stepping on his reply, and I am open to correction if he was thinking of a different set of polling entirely.)
Shrike
16d ago
There's been discussion about putting Patriot missiles in the Navy VLS cells. Probably won't replace the higher-end Standards for niche rolls but might help spread the cost out for general air defense.
Shrike
16d ago
It's also the reason why defence is ultimately a losing game and why attrition is so effective.
I am not sure this will be the case over the medium term. Small laser-guided rockets have already bent the cost curve backwards in certain situations for certain target sets; I think very large lasers might become effective against ballistic missiles as a point-defense weapon over the next decade or so.
The US Navy is also porting the hypervelocity projectile (originally intended for a railgun) over to its five-inch gun. The HVP is assessed to be capable of dealing with ballistic missiles (it's guided) and it is likely, if produced at scale, to be much cheaper than a ballistic missile.
These are, at least in the medium term, mostly point-defense weapons, meaning that if they mature ballistic missiles will likely continue to be effective as terror weapons but their ability to hit specific targets may decrease tremendously if those targets are protected by counter-missile systems.
Now, there are counter-countermeasures - the Oreshnik is probably well-positioned to make it past point-defenses, but there's also certain downsides to using submunitions, and forcing the enemy to rely on missiles that are maneuvering, hardened, or using submunitions will tend to drive the cost per missile up and/or efficiency per missile down compared to a unitary warhead.
Shrike
16d ago
the unsaid part is that they're usually using 2 or more interceptors per missile in order to achieve that rate.
My recollection was the US was getting comfortable using 1 missile for certain types of targets, but I don't know that success has trickled down to the Gulf, or if the target set is such that they feel able to do this.
Shrike
19d ago
Unless the US has developed a genie that grants wishes, there is no perfect intelligence which enables you to comprehensively target all missile locations a country has
This might not be as far-fetched as you think; SENTIENT can probably locate Chinese road-based ICBMs from orbit. China's other deterrence methods are pretty vulnerable to a first strike: their SSBNs are noisy, although they might be safe in their bastions, the many collisions between US/UK submarines and Russian SSBNs during the Cold War suggest otherwise, bombers are typically easy to see and strike unless they are kept at ready alert, which as far as I know is not the case for the Chinese nuclear air arm, and their silo-based launchers are liquid-fueled and seem unlikely to survive long enough to be launched in the event of a first strike.
On the defense side, @BahRamYou also hasn't mentioned the AIM-174, which can probably be used as a terminal ballistic missile interceptor, and by virtue of being carried via aircraft, is likely more flexible than THAAD.
Still likely much too dicey to risk!
It's probably worth noting that South Carolina pretty much yoloed themselves into it face first. Some of the other states (I don't recall the breakdown off the top of my head) did not secede until after it was very clear that Lincoln was actually going to march an army to take them back.
I think there's decent evidence they overfit a pattern of British conduct and attributed it to malice. Something like a sincere but perhaps not fully rational belief.
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