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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18407 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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I suspect they weren't prepared for the most obvious of Iranian responses - blocking the Strait. If it were easy to rectify the block, the US would have just done it weeks ago. They don't have enough troops or hardware in the area; an aircraft carrier was put out of commission ((Russian intel-aided) missiles/drones) and had to leave the theater; the replacement aircraft carrier left Norfolk three days ago and will take another 10+ days to arrive near Iran. The US is lacking popular support at home for the deployments that would be big enough to break Iran militarily, Trump's only diplomatic gift is to offend allies, and at the same time they can't just leave either, because leaving right now is tantamount to surrendering the petrodollar without a real fight and losing hegemonic credibility.

The administration was getting a bunch of bad HUMINT from the Tehran university bubble about how the regime was on the brink of collapse. It was assumed that the whole thing would come down like a house of cards the second the Ayatollah died.

The old 'decapitation' gambit. Air/bombing wars rarely result in the whole rotten house collapsing IRL.

an aircraft carrier was put out of commission ((Russian intel-aided) missiles/drones) and had to leave the theater

... you're saying a drone hit the laundry room? Or that it was a cover-up and the fire was from a drone hit elsewhere, and the US Navy suddenly has astounding Opsec and message discipline? Or is there another carrier that left for repairs recently?

Trump seemed to ramble something about the Ford getting hit by missiles and drones from 17 different directions during a speech recently, but the whole thing didn't make much sense.

Not getting hit, specifically, he was bragging about the effectiveness of our missile intercept.

I don't necessarily trust that story, no.

FWIW I am a navy carrier vet, and I think it's extremely plausible that it was a laundry fire.

I also think that it never would have spread so much without significant failure by the crew to contain, and that's indicative of the general level of readiness in the Navy, but that's a whole 'nother bag of worms.

Hmm okay.

There was all sorts of stories/FUD coming out. Credible reports of Russians sharing intel with Iranians. A story of a US carrier getting targeted by missiles and drones. Then the supposed fire, at the same time, and also reports from libs about the fire being a sabotage from within, due to low morale.

You have to consider a) how many times Iran & the Houthis claimed (or social media claimed) to have hit/sunk aircraft carriers, and b) a lot of sailors are dumbass young men and flushing mop heads and mousetraps down the toilet is incompetence rather than sabotage (another claim I've seen bouncing around). Hell, the laboratory I work at had trouble convincing grown engineers and scientists to "please only flush toilet paper, don't put anything else in the toilet, you guys wonder why it clogs so often?"

To calibrate, what would you require to believe that story?

I'm agnostic on what happened, but knowing the base rate of laundry fires taking out carriers in the US military would be useful information.

It's not specifically laundry, but Fire at Sea: A 70-year Review of Fire-Related Mass Casualty Events on U.S. Aircraft Carriers may be of interest in this regard!

Since World War II, no attack on a large U.S. Navy capital ship has occurred during combat operations

we reviewed mass casualty events from major fires aboard large U.S. Navy aircraft carriers[1] from 1950 through 2020

Of 246 fires identified, 27 met inclusion criteria resulting in 1,634 casualties with a combined crew mortality of 23% of those injured.

The majority of major fire mishaps involved aircraft carriers[1], and none were the result of an enemy attack

[1] the reason behind this potential contradiction is inconsistent usage/definition of large-hull amphibious assault ships as "aircraft carriers" or not in the abstract vs text.

That is extremely compelling, if not what I would call reassuring. Thanks.

If I recall correctly, carriers typically dock for maintenance every six months, this one's been adventuring for a year now.

That does shift my opinion toward the laundry explanation, thanks. That's a lot of lint.

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