Shrike
6hr ago
Yeah I think this is a total, complete W for the US of A and probably demoralizing for the IRGC.
But I do find it kinda funny that we still had a C-130 snafu due to Iranian dirt.
Shrike
7hr ago
It seems more parsimonious to assume the negotiations are going poorly. That also strikes me as more in-character for Trump (seems himself as a big negotiator, probably doesn't really care about the lost C-130s.)
But we did get a couple of birds stuck over there and had to blow them up, which I imagine being frustrated by in theory (particularly for the people who were really hoping we could avoid anything that remotely resembled Eagle Claw this time lol).
Shrike
8hr ago
the moment evidence exists which proves they're entering Iranian territory
No, this already existed, both the cluster bomb evidence that I provided to you and pictures published by an Iranian news outlet showing a JDAM hitting the B1 bridge should pretty much have put an end to any doubt that the US was operating over Iran against targets well inland even before the F-15 got tagged.
This isn't what air superiority looks like. It's not even close.
Yes, it is. Remember the definition of air superiority?
Russian helicopters are regularly prowling Ukrainian territory and are photographed constantly. That's what something akin to air superiority looks like, not what the US is currently doing.
US helicopters (and transport aircraft) were in fact photographed prowling Iranian territory over the course of a couple of days to pull this op off, thus demonstrating by your own criteria localized US air superiority deep inside of Iranian airspace.
Of course, that's not the actual definition of air superiority used by actual war planners. (However it does suggest that I may have underestimated how leaky the supposed Iranian internet blackout was, heh.) Here's the actual definition:
"That degree of dominance in the air battle of one force over another which permits the conduct of operations by the former and its related land, sea and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by the opposing force"
The United States definitely had this over a portion of Iran (remember, in US doctrine air superiority can be created temporarily, it's not necessarily a persistent thing for any given geographic region/mission because both sides can shift or regenerate assets). If the United States had not had air superiority, they would not have been able to conduct air operations deep inside of Iranian soil successfully.
And in fact they did this operation with such an insane degree of success that it appears they lost more aircraft to the fiendish Iranian desert (at least three, two C-130s and at least one Little Bird) than they did to Iranian surface-to-air fire (two, the MQ-9 and an A-10, although it sounds to me like a Saudi drone may also have been shot down in the AO, several US aircraft were damaged by ground fire, and it seems plausible that at least one more Little Bird was also left behind and destroyed by US forces inside Iran, so I'd happily revise my statement to "Iranian ground fire was no more dangerous to this operation than planning mistakes by US SOCCOM intel officers desperately trying to get Eagle Claw right this time (Challenge level: impossible.)"
(Note: I think there was another A-10 that got shot down around the same time as the Strike Eagle - I'm not counting either of those aircraft as casualties in "Operation Top Gun 2 For Real," which is why the mud ties with Iran for this specific op.)
But at this point counting all total, yes, the Iranian air defenses have destroyed more coalition aircraft than either the Iranian soil or our Kuwaiti allies. They are still well behind were Iraq was at this point in Desert Storm, which was considered a successful air campaign. They are also, from what I can tell, well behind the Ukrainian air defenses at an equivalent point in this time of the war.
If you want to argue that the US has not achieved "risk free operations over Iran" I would agree with you. If you are arguing that we do not have permanent air superiority over all of Iran, you might be right. But if you're citing a successful mission as evidence that the US does not have the ability to carry out missions without prohibitive interference from the Iranians, then...I don't think that makes sense.
We can also look at conflicts where the air war went well for the US and see that losses continued to occur, even when the US was able to conduct a bombing campaign essentially at will. I already mentioned Iraq as a comparative, but note that the US lost aircraft over Kosovo (traditionally seen as a successful use of air power, although I think that might be overblown), and even over Japan after dropping the first atomic bomb, for instance). And if it's true that the Mudhen was tagged by a MANPADS, then consider any definition of air superiority that is "remove all risk of getting hit by a MANPADS" is ~an impossible bar, it's practically impossible to completely sanitize an operating theater of the risk of shoulder-fired missiles.
in all honesty, do you seriously think a B-52 is in Iranian airspace even now let alone 5 days ago?
What I would say is that I think it is more probable than not that B-52s have performed operations with gravity bombs against Iranian targets during this operation.
and I highly doubt many, if any, of the majority of the people here arguing otherwise will ever admit they were just wrong about it and clean their information space so they're no so easily duped... again... in yet another war
I don't disagree with this...
Shrike
2d ago
I went and eyeballed it a while back, and the Chinese are definitely producing more annually, but theirs are smaller. The new Virginias being constructed now are over 10,000 tons displacement, whereas the conventional 039, of which they've build a bit more than 1/year for 20 years, is about 3,600 tons, and even the nuclear 093 (built at less than half the rate) is only twice that, whereas the historical production rate of Virginias is about 1.5 since 2008, although until Block V they were only 7,900 tons.
Even the 095 that your article flags is only going to be about the same size as a Block V.
I don't think that displacement is everything with ships (for instance it can be better to have three conventional submarines instead of one nuclear submarine, because you could rotate the diesels for a persistent presence and not the nuclear submarine!) and certainly being bigger doesn't give you more HP, or something. But it does give you more payload, which is pretty relevant, particularly when you're slinging payloads of cruise missiles and going through lots of torpedoes. In a major war, that means that your ships can stay on station longer and do more damage.
Shrike
2d ago
Should @sarker, @Shakes and I all be scored together?
Shrike
2d ago
In the American tradition (going back to the "Revolution") governments are found on both sides of the rebellion, and any rebellion that meaningfully threatened the status quo of the regime (I don't use the term in a pejorative sense, mind you) would almost certainly involve a split government and likely a split armed forces.
However, overthrowing the government is not the only way to use violence to influence policy (Declaration-poasting or no). While a ground-up rebellion in the United States would not overthrow the government, it might gain concessions. Just look at how appealing the idea that we should get rid of drug laws to stop incidental violence is to the general public and extrapolate from there to Troubles-like situations.
Shrike
2d ago
This says something important about the state of the US MIC.
I agree that this is the case.
OK... So how is US ABM production supposed to outscale Chinese missile production?
How are TNT shortages supposed to negatively impact the PAC-3, THAAD, or SM-3? They don't have warheads at all. TNT is important for shells, the US military has trouble making shells.
We should not be surprised if US ABM production could conceivably outscale Chinese IRBM production, specifically, because an IRBM is at least as complex, if not moreso, while being much larger. Just look at the TELs: the US can fit eight THAADs into a footprint smaller than a single DF-26.
China doesn't have these problems.
Do you agree that China has its own set of problems, which have led to similar problems with delayed arms contracts and slower weapons deliveries?
If the US can intensify their efforts, why can't China?
Perhaps they will!
THAAD right now has been tested and found wanting against Iranian missile and drone attacks
I don't particularly believe this. For starters, I would be surprised to learn that THAAD has ever been launched against an Iranian drone. THAAD is a dedicated ABM missile. And secondly, I think THAAD has been relatively effective against Iranian ballistic missiles, particularly the less sophisticated ones.
It would be bizarre for a mid-size country, under severe sanctions, with 1/10th the engineers and 1/100th the money of China to outperform China quantitatively or qualitatively.
By this sort of logic, China has better chipmaking than Taiwan, right?
But of course nobody should be surprised that Iran can make more short range ballistic missiles than China can make intermediate-range ballistic missiles with hypersonic glide vehicles with capability to strike moving vessels. Particularly given that China has pursued a very balanced approach to their arms procurement. They are building large amounts of modern aircraft, ships, submarines and building out a nuclear arsenal with ICBMs. Iran fairly famously has negligible capability to build any of those things.
I also wonder if inter-service rivalries play a role here. Remember, it's not necessarily in the interest of China to dramatically underplay their capabilities - that ruins their ability to deter their enemies. But I've heard it suggested that the real target of the Chinese anti-ship ABM program was their own carriers - and obviously, that failed. PLAN beating PLARF in the bureaucratic game might be one reason why PLARF procurement is more modest, and that would imply nothing about China's production capability.
judging by anti-ship missile history it's always been harder to defend than attack.
What do we mean by this? Anti-ship missile history (at least to the degree that I am familiar with it) suggests that most anti-ship missiles do not hit their intended targets. It might still be correct to say that it's harder to defend than attack, but I think we need to be clear, when we think about this and say this, what we mean by it. The problem with missile defense is that there's very little room for error. Which goes to your point about the uphill battle that it is.
Now, I do think this is much truer of ships - if China gets a few strays in on Guam, it won't cripple the airbase. It's harder to hit a carrier than Guam, but a single hit will probably put a carrier down for the count.
which requires somehow securing long shipping lanes of food, fertilizer and LNG to a small island off the coast of China.
I'm not sure this is as true as you might think. Taiwan made the very foolish decision to pin so much of their energy intake on oil/LNG. Despite this, they still likely have enough domestic energy to maintain comms and power for an extended crisis. The same I think is likely true of food, although it is not clear to me that China would actually strike food shipments.
From a military perspective, the problem of stopping incoming shipments is also not exactly trivial, either.
And finally, a perfectly respectable win condition for the United States is that it puts enough political and economic pressure on China to get it to abandon its aspirations. Which suggests that China has to defend their supply chains, too.
The US has been attempting ballistic missile defence since the 1950s and at no point has it been cost-efficient against a strong power. It isn't cost-efficient today against Iran and I can't see why it would be against China.
We were talking about production quantities, not cost-effectiveness! And while there are inherent reasons why BMD is harder than building ballistic missiles, most of those do not apply once you start trying to hit ships with ballistic missiles. I don't know to what degree China is pursuing this capability - we know they have tested it: are they trying to ensure that every single one of their IRBMs has this capability? that's less clear. But it's not a technically trivial capability.
Shrike
3d ago
A country that produces vastly more steel, chemicals, cars, electronics and drones than the US can logically also produce far more ballistic missiles than the US can produce missile interceptors.
Well sure. I could produce more ballistic "missiles" than the US can produce missile interceptors. A ballistic missile is just a rocket that goes up and comes down again. But I think the Chinese have higher standards for their ballistic missiles than that.
considering that missile defence is inherently more complicated than missile offence.
This depends on what you are trying to hit. The kill chain for an interceptor is much simpler than the kill chain for an anti-ship ballistic missile of the kind that China has invested in.
Ballistic missiles aren't easily countable, they're concealed in depots deep underground.
There are a number of ways to keep an eye on these sorts of things if you really want to. For instance, you can likely estimate the number of missiles and launchers from the volume of the excavation, which you can observe from orbit. You can count the launchers deployed in snap drills, or estimate the number of launchers from the size of Chinese units, which you can determine with some degree of precision by sneaking a look at their housing allocations or catering or cell phone mapping or boot procurement or the number of porta-potties they use.
Whether or not the US actually bothers to do these things, I have no idea.
Major wars often take longer than expected, stockpiles are expended and what matters is the scaling of production.
This is true, although I would argue that naval-centric wars tend to be more decisive. But I could be wrong.
They aren't remotely near China in terms of production.
- Claim that the US is not remotely near China in terms of production.
- When presented with evidence that questions this claim, disbelieve it on the grounds that China is capable of producing more tenuously analogous but in fact entirely different items.
- QED the USA is not remotely near China in terms of production.
Do you know what is directly analogous to a ballistic missile? Space launch vehicles. And space launches are relatively hard to hide, so we can use that as a relatively objective measure of US/China prowess. As it turns out, the US had about twice as many space launches as China. Since we're now estimating stockpiles by analogous goods instead of intelligence estimates, and since orbital rocket launches are much more analogous to ballistic missiles than steel, chemicals, cars, electronics and drones, we can agree that the US has a considerable edge in manufacturing ballistic missiles over China. Right?
No, the actual truth is that China outproduces the US in production in a great many areas (such a ballistic missiles and surface ships) and that there are several areas (such as submarines and orbital launch capability) where the US is ahead of China (both in quality and in scale.) Keep in mind that US has been attempting ballistic missile defense for more than three decades; the first Chinese conventional IRBM, the DF-26, became operational about a decade ago. It's not surprising that the US might have an edge in producing ABMs relative to Chinese IRBMs, particularly if the Chinese are (intelligently, in my mind) iterating their weapons design before committing to mass production. An antiship ballistic missile with a maneuvering warhead and glide vehicle is a very exquisite weapon!
It's completely plausible for the Korean peninsula to see large ground battles requiring huge quantities of TNT. The South Koreans may be serious and proficient but there is only a certain amount that South Korea can do against a gigantic country like China.
Lucky South Korea is a major manufacturer of TNT. I would be surprised if China decided to escalate horizontally against South Korea instead of attempting to deter them, but what do I know.
Shrike
3d ago
It's interesting too because the DoD traditionally hypes up threat capabilities.
However I am not sure if the culture in the post-GWOT DoD is the same as during the Cold War.
Shrike
3d ago
it might be worthwhile to put asterisks next to those numbers.
I definitely agree with this.
but I also don't think an estimate that puts the PLARF's stockpile below the IRGC
Well keep in mind I wasn't counting Chinese SRBMs, of which they have quite a lot, or ICBMs, (since those will, at least partially, be used for nuclear deterrence). I imagine most of the 135 ballistic missiles launched for training were SRBMs. I also think it's worth noting that Iran has, from what I understand, really pursued ballistic missiles - they haven't been able to produce a capable, modern navy or air force. Whereas China has been walking while chewing gum - ballistic missiles are just one item in their toolkit.
Shrike
3d ago
I'll just go back to a source I used in an earlier discussion that cited IDF estimates at 2,500 ballistic missiles (so considerably higher than 1850 ballistic missiles), with other estimates being as high as 6,000. But I should note that the numbers I cited don't include SRBMs.
JINSA estimates about 1840 ballistic missiles launched by Iran since Epic Fury kicked off, which I think suggests that 2,500 is low, but that's because I suspect IDF and USAF tagged a quite a few launchers with missiles. It seems quite compatible with 6,000 to me.
Obviously it's quite possible actual PLA numbers are much higher, but at a certain point you have to go by public estimates, otherwise the entire discussion devolves into a "well but maybe the real numbers are much higher" for both sides. If you have a better source for any of these numbers I will happily take a look at it.
Shrike
4d ago
How much do purges hurt the PLA?
If the generals being purged are incompetent, the purges will help the PLA, at least over the medium-long term. If the generals being purged are competent, presumably it will hurt them. It is unclear to me which of the purged generals fall into which category. In the short term, because it does not appear that Xi has yet filled all of the purged positions, it will likely hurt simply because it is hard to execute in a major war without a clear chain of command. (China already has enough of a problem with the "clear chain of command" because they have a dual-track military authority.)
One area where I expect the US purges to be different than the Chinese ones is that I expect the Americans will have another ACOS quickly. The Chinese Central Military Commission still has not been re-staffed after Xi's purges – although perhaps Xi discovered that too many cooks were in the kitchen. There can be a certain virtue to keeping staffing lean.
Annual production of 400 THAAD interceptors in 7 years? The Chinese will burn through that in a week, probably on day 1.
THAAD, Patriot PAC-3 MSE (supposed to increase to 2000/year), SM-3 (set to increase to 100/year) SM-6 (set to increase to 500/year) and probably the AIM-174 are all anti-ballistic missile interceptors. The Taiwanese also have domestic production of the TK-3 ABM, and (if it becomes relevant) South Korea has their own domestic analogues to the Patriot and THAAD.
On a quick Google, DoD estimated last year that China has around 1,300 MRBMs and 300 launchers and only about 550 IRBMs and 300 IRBM launchers, adding 50 of each since 2024. China's more numerous SRBMs won't range Guam and most of Japan, and the MRBMs will only range Japan. So the US pre-ramp-up produces more ballistic missile interceptors with THAAD systems alone (nearly 100/year) than China produces ballistic missiles that could range Guam (if DoD estimates are even ballpark accurate). Maybe the question we should be asking is "How is China supposed to outrace the US in scaling munitions production?" And indeed, the Chinese are reportedly asking this themselves.
And ballistic missiles will be spread pretty thin in a war – for instance, there are probably around 80 airports in Japan along with airstrips relevant for tactical aviation that aircraft could in theory disperse to in an emergency. Even if the US and Japan had zero interceptors, China could easily spend 400 missiles just to crater each runway for...as little as 4 hours.
There is currently no TNT production in the US.
I don't think TNT is used for most of the high-end weapons systems – I think that would RDX (of which we have a domestic supply). I believe the Army wants TNT for arty shells, which will not be the most relevant in a Pacific conflict.
How is the US supposed to outrace China in scaling munitions production? The Chinese industrial base has cheaper components, cheaper energy, an ocean of engineers and machine tools frothing about.
As I've discussed in here before, for a Taiwan contingency the US needs to stop an amphibious invasion and/or a blockade, which is very different from fighting a set-piece battle on the open sea, or something.
Shrike
4d ago
I think that the Chinese would prefer not to fight over Taiwan at all. They would prefer to inevitably assimilate it.
But to your point, I think we're getting into the "deterrence through strength" versus "deterrence through resolve." Perhaps it's just my bean-counter personality - I think that it's better to have the munitions and forego other entanglements to show China that we mean business (if we're going to go down that road.)
But perhaps I am too calculating, and the US throwing its weight around and possibly even getting in a bit further than intended is exactly what would make China reconsider.
Shrike
4d ago
An Iranian news service has published a clear photograph (Twitter link, possibly slower Iranian link) of a US gravity bomb hitting the B1 bridge in Karaj.
Twitter ID's the bomb as a GBU-31. It's definitely looks to be some sort of JDAM, and it does not appear to have a wing kit (such as in a JDAM-ER) which means it was dropped at a very short range, likely inside of 15 miles, and in broad daylight. Karaj is just outside Tehran, which means that either US forces flew several hundred miles over Iranian territory to drop gravity bombs, or, intriguingly, the US approached over the Caspian Sea, indicating an overflight route over, probably, Azerbaijan.
Either way, I am going to take a lil victory lap after my assessment a couple days ago that the US was, in fact, using gravity bombs inside of Iranian territory. This was very close to Tehran, suggesting that the US has a high degree of access even to areas one would expect to be highly defended.
Still here? Good, because I actually wanted to talk about China. Well, China and Iran. Or Iran, China, and the US.
Earlier this year, I read Strategy of Denial by Elbridge Colby. Colby makes a very concise argument for why the US should focus on countering China. Basically, Colby argues that Asia is the most significant part of the world, with the largest chunk of the global economy, and that it was essentially the area where the United States could be critically harmed by having someone else hegemonize the region. Colby dismisses the idea that the US' paramount security concerns are in Europe or the Middle East, and argues that it is important to prevent China from dominating Asia to avoid damaging US interests and the quality of life of American citizens. I highly recommend it, just as a read, specifically because Colby's writing style is extremely straightforward - I expected a much denser book.
Colby is now Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Needless to say, some things have changed since Strategy of Denial was written in 2021. The security situation in Europe has arguably deteriorated significantly, and the war to defend those American interests in the Middle East that Colby said were not all that important is going strong. But the reason I want to revisit the book isn't to dunk on the fact that we're very clearly expending a lot of munitions that would be very relevant to a fight with China fighting Iran. It's because of the specific threat that Colby identifies from China. Colby's argument, hearkening back to the domino theory from the Cold War, is that Taiwan is specifically where the US and its regional Pacific partners should draw the line. If China starts taking territory it will be better positioned to add subsequent countries into its regional hegemony, either by force or coercive diplomacy. Colby identifies China starting from where it has the best relative strength (against Taiwan) and moving from there against other nations in the region, a tactic 4X players everywhere understand intuitively.
Is it just me, or does that seem familiar?
How about snatching Maduro (possibly the weakest American adversary), toppling the government of Cuba, and then moving to take out Iran? (a much stronger and more capable foe). Wait, that's not quite what happened - Cuba is still alive and kicking (for now). But if you squint, it almost looks like the Trump administration read Strategy of Denial and then...decided to ignore all of its recommendations for the US in lieu of pursuing its recommendations for China.
I don't know - I just thought it was an intriguing thought, but it's not clear to me that is what is going on. What is clear to me is that the US is probably now at the nadir of its strength relative to China in the Pacific. Over the next five years, US munitions production levels are slated to ramp up to extremely high numbers, but this will take time. If China wants to invade Taiwan (and I think that they would prefer not to, to be fair) the best time is probably while the US is stuck in the Middle East bombing stuff, the second-best time is as soon as you can afterwards.
How about it, China? How's it going?
Well...maybe not so great. The PLA has been gutted pretty badly by purges, which are also hitting high-level weapons engineers. I'm pretty skeptical of the theory that this is because recent US successes demonstrated that Chinese weapons were vaporware - it seems too neat, too America-centric.
But I do wonder if the US had some reason to believe that China was not going to move in 2027. Some reason to think they could mop up a few holdouts before beginning the real pivot to the Pacific?
Or maybe Hesgeth really was taken aback by Iran chimping out in retaliation for the decapitation strike, and maybe Xi is keeping all of his "purged" generals in a backroom somewhere waiting to spring them out as soon as he pushes the big button.
Shrike
5d ago
Me normally: "US intervention in Iraq was a mistake, US hegemony has gone too far, we need to pull back, maybe focus on deterring China,"
Me after one (1) drink (of Spite): "...there's still time. We could put the 82nd in London. The people would greet us as liberators! Armored columns could reach Vancouver and Montreal in less than 12 hours. We'd need to arm the moderate Welsh, of course, and the Catalan separatists..."
bail out of NATO
Man. This might be for the best – I directionally support leaving NATO, or at least scaling back our commitments there – but ideally we would give them plenty of notice and time to make their own security adjustments.
Maybe we did and nobody was listening. Or maybe we still will.
ETA to your point – thinking about it, I almost wonder if maybe this is the only way to make it stick, instead of the US just re-joining in 3 years or whatever.
Shrike
5d ago
Months after he made noises about attacking Europe to steal Greenland.
Didn't he specifically rule out attacking Europe to steal Greenland?
Shrike
5d ago
I will also just add that while I myself have made the point that a strong (and especially unified) Europe is not in American interests – and I think the US has acted in ways cognizant of this – to be fair to the US, it has consistently asked its NATO allies to step up to the plate and spend more on defense. SecDef Gates was EXTREMELY pointed about this! So it's not like the US is suddenly rug pulling Europe, they've been ignoring increasingly pointed US complaints about the state of their armed forces going back to the Clinton administration.
I think (from the US POV) there's a sweet spot where Europe is strong enough to deter Russia and not strong enough to meaningfully threaten the United States, but it seems like we've somehow instead found ourselves in a weird spot where Europe might not be strong enough to meaningfully threaten Russia and is desperately casting about for ways to deter the United States.
Shrike
5d ago
I would also just add that I think the idea that the US just now started acting with "realpolitik" is...very ahistorical. Europe accepted us after WW2 because the Russians were ~infinitely worse, not because the US didn't indulge in realpolitik.
For all the griping about Iraq (which...I get it! I also gripe about Iraq!) and American Empire, the specific failures of Iraq were bad in (large) part because it wasn't tempered by realpolitik, not because it was an imperial/hegemonic action. I think a realpolitik view (and also most American presidents throughout all of history) would have just bombed the heck out of various unlucky places known or suspected to be involved in terrorism and bribed, beg, borrowed, stolen and murdered until we got UBL and then called it a day. That might have been bad in different ways but it probably would not have been a 20-year ground occupation.
Shrike
5d ago
I think a Compact of Free Association could thread the needle nicely, giving Greenland independence while also potentially getting them more US funding than they are getting from Denmark.
Shrike
5d ago
The funny thing is, that had the US played their cards differently, it is very possible they could have just convinced the Greenlanders they had a better deal, and let them vote to secede as you suggest.
See, part of what is missed in this entire discussion is that the US offering to purchase Greenland from Denmark is much more considerate of Denmark. I probably would have made a direct offer to the Greenlanders.
Ah well. You might be right, but on the other hand, I really doubt we've heard the last of things on this front.
Shrike
5d ago
The teacher assessment was a survey on their grades, so not quite subjective. Re the second study:
Yes, but they also asked the teachers to evaluate their grit and self-control, if memory serves.
Really, Roma populations should be excluded from most studies.
Interesting.
Even if these are still small impacts, they are notable considering the short duration and relatively low intensity of our intervention and that evaluations of human capital interventions often yield fade-out effects over longer time periods
Right - if these minor efforts had good effects, it seems likely that a more prolonged effort earlier in life would have stronger impact.
That kind of sucks!
Again, you aren't addressing the point that studies that screen out environmental effects will screen out the effort OP wants to do.
If you told a youth that their hardest work will only move the needle by 1.7% annual earnings, he would probably conclude in himself that it’s not worth it to be faithful to the “gospel of hard work”.
If I told a youth this he would probably laugh at me for suggesting that getting lectured in class from time to time had that much of an impact on his life choices.
And if all that this can do is bring a 70k yearly salary up to 72k, it’s just not worth it.
I would happily accept a lecture telling me to work hard in exchange for an extra $100,000 over the course of a 50 year career! I would accept a lecture from you in exchange for $2000 right now! A monthly lecture, even!
Maybe there’s another study that finds a greater effect and I haven’t seen it?
Again, unless any of these studies you've dug up are looking at home life, we can assume that school intervention studies will control for home environment which means they tell us nothing about OP's plan.
Shrike
5d ago
Denmark decided to give Greenland the right to secede, and by all accounts they want to leave, which puts current NATO security arrangements regarding Greenland in doubt.
I'm sympathetic to Europeans being upset about how this has been handled (and especially to Greenland independence) but every complaint about US behavior seems to completely gloss over these facts.
This is all incorrect, or at least very sloppy. It was a single operation but it was not a single mission in the sense that it was not a single CSAR mission; there were at least three (one to recover the pilot, one to recover the WSO, one to recover the team that went to recover the WSO) and each one of those single missions involved multiple airframes.
Similarly, 1 manned aircraft was "downed" by Iranian air defenses during this operation. Three or four were abandoned on the ground and destroyed in US airstrikes.
Finally, I provided you with other evidence that US aircraft were over Iranian airspace in other options, dropping mines and JDAMs. I don't know that that is enough to establish that US aircraft are over Iranian soil "constantly" any more than pictures of Russian birds are but it does suggest that they are over parts of Iranian soil consistently.
I mean – you wanted video footage, you got video footage? Either way, I think it demonstrates localized air superiority (if we grant that air superiority includes superiority over ground assets and not just the enemy air force; see my digression above!) that they were able to do it and succeed in their mission, yes.
I think it would be better to use the real definition of air superiority, but you've been avoiding that. I'd be happy to find another working definition we can agree on. Or for you to present a historical analogue (including in Ukraine) where air superiority has been achieved in a war with another comparable power that shows the present operations of the US in an unflattering light (you've mentioned the Russian war in Ukraine but the Russians lost aircraft constantly in the first month of the war and even Hostomel, which I honestly think was very impressive and almost worked, still resulted in more Russian manned aircraft losses to air defenses than this rescue operation).
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