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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1372 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 9, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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OK, now that Lindsay Graham, a sitting United States Senator “died suddenly after a brief illness” when a massive Russian missile strike occurred during his visit to Kyiv, are we now allowed to contemplate that this might not be the true story?

What would anybody gain by hiding this? If he was killed by the Russians that would be a tremendous leverage point in negotiations, probably infuriate Trump and bring him in line with the average governmental employee about Russia.

It would justify WHATEVER with a large portion of the American public.

You'd also have to work tremendously hard to hide the outcome from his family.

Some military deaths are sus - those usually involve the bodies being unavailable and no utility in revealing the truth.

This is not that.

It would justify WHATEVER with a large portion of the American public.

No it wouldn't. It would be same portion of the public who wants war everywhere anyway, except smaller. The constituency you would have to go to war with Russia let alone "WHATEVER" over Russia killing a very unpopular US senator in a warzone is single-digit territory. And once you assign the real costs of such a thing to the question in polling, support amounting to saying yes to a pollster would be single-digit as well. And the majority of that small group would be draft dodging boomers.

A lot of you here continue to think you live in an America which doesn't exist anymore. We've already blown the social and military capital on decades of idiotic wars and immigration. Anchor baby Jose Gonzales or insert other foreigner here isn't signing up for US military to fight Russia to avenge a POS senator getting killed in a war zone.

I think you underestimate America's ability to come together and be disgruntled, we are still willing to spend tremendous effort on these things (see the pilot rescue).

America didn't come together and be disgruntled in order to spend the effort to lose at least 5 manned aircraft in a bungled special ops raid inside Iran, that happened because the US President told the military to do it during a conflict which was already happening with the US military already there. The difference between baseline and continuing attacking Iran while attacking and going to war with Russia or "WHATEVER" is a categorical difference.

And the reason the US military did even that is because the US military is incapable of coming together to launch something like the Iraq invasion right now if the US was 9/11d right now, let alone because some POS elderly senator gets killed in a warzone on the other side of the world.

That America is gone and it's why this idiotic war for Israel is being done in such a bungled and unserious manner. The US is correctly terrified of any serious casualty event because they know that will end the already low public support for war. Are you doing your part? The enlistment age limit is 42 now. Have you signed up to be ready?

America didn't come together and be disgruntled in order to spend the effort to lose at least 5 manned aircraft in a bungled special ops raid inside Iran

Is this referring to the pilot rescue mission?

Yes, I think the mission for the alleged 2nd pilot rescue was really just a failed special ops mission to get some sort of PR win around collecting nuclear material near Isfahan.

I pretty much agree. The Iran war was utterly stupid for the US to launch in 2026, because there was no way to finish it in successful fashion, because the capital really wasn't there. I could sense this from Europe. I have no idea why so many Americans don't seem to have a sense of the level of capitals present in their own society.

It would justify WHATEVER with a large portion of the American public.

Why? If Russia killed him on US soil or blew some skyscrapers on US soil, that would be another thing, but in if it was in Ukraine, why would Americans care?

  1. Because a representative democracy cannot function if your opponents (who are themselves not democracies and don't have this weakness) can assassinate your representatives at will.
  2. Because Russia doesn't get to do that to America.

Graham visited a munitions factory in an active war zone. Even if the factory was blown up by the Russians while he was there, that still wouldn’t count as an assassination. Besides, we didn’t go to war the last time the Russians killed one of our congressmen.

Americans believe you don't fuck with America and Americans. So does everyone else. We are still heavily protected from drug cartels because of a tantrum the U.S. had in the 80s. It's a large part of our foreign policy.

Assassinating a sitting politician on purpose would be true casus belli. By accident would require a significant amount of reparations.

I mean look at how Iran acted when we did something similar.

Enforcing “you can’t touch Americans” can get very expensive. That’s basically the Iraq War. Which is why you might want to cover up “touched an American” so you largely preserve the taboo against touching Americans without needing to spend $10 trillion.

Trump is strangely soft on Putin and seems to want to avoid a (further) conflict with Russia at all costs, so Russia could probably get away with doing it "accidentally on purpose".

You said exactly why Trump etc would hide it.

“It would justify whatever with a large portion of the American public”

If your goal is to NOT have a Presidency defined by war then you do not want the populace inflamed for war. Reverse if your George Bush and you already decided to war Iraq.

Trump seems to personally love American power and want to retain it, hiding the assassination of a high profile public figure goes against everything he's done with his presidency and his revealed personality.

At the same time he'd have two MAJOR prongs trying to force the information out there - the majority of the American political and military establishment (which supports pressure on Russia) and any adversaries who find out (because Trump hiding it and then it being revealed would be a massive embarrassment).

It doesn't make any sense.

You would also need to hide it from his family who would presumably have similar political inclinations.

Whether you could successfully muzzle it is a different question than whether you would want to muzzle.

Trump is 100% would want to cover it up because he 100% does not want to be a war time President. Atleast at the group group escalation point of war.

His revealed personality is not to escalate to high casualty/ground force war which he’s done in both Ukraine and Iran. His revealed preference would be to cover it up.

His revealed personality is not to escalate to high casualty/ground force war which he’s done in both Ukraine and Iran. His revealed preference would be to cover it up.

With respect to Iran, that question hasn't come up yet, I think he'd be willing if he isn't getting what he needs - but the posters like me who think things are going fine feel like the question of ground war isn't being asked yet.

With respect to Ukraine he seems to think this isn't really any of America's business and that our involvement is unnecessary, with a side helping of "Europe needs to solve their own fucking problems." American military support has become necessary because That Is What We Do but he doesn't seem to care about it, and in contrast with Iran because the hostage crisis was a formative thing for men of a certain generation.

I would bet money that part of Russia's political calculus is "how do we approach this without pissing Trump off enough to get him involved and interested."

An assassination would do that.

Note that Russia's threats toward the US have been very mild by their standards since Trump 2 came on board.

What are you disagreeing with?

I am saying Trump does not want to escalate either war so would have motive to cover up an assassination if it would greatly increase war risks.

I'm saying he would be pissed and want to go to war if the Russians did that?

Maybe. Maybe not. I’d prefer to cover it up if I were him because being a war POTUS would fundamentally change why we voted for him.

More comments

With respect to Ukraine he seems to think this isn't really any of America's business and that our involvement is unnecessary, with a side helping of "Europe needs to solve their own fucking problems." American military support has become necessary because That Is What We Do but he doesn't seem to care about it, and in contrast with Iran because the hostage crisis was a formative thing for men of a certain generation.

The hostage crisis was formative but not the Cold War?

I think a reading of Trump that's compatible with all of this is that he's a flat-track bully who wants easy wins. Or, more charitably, holds his allies to a higher standard based on the view that they're either more malleable or already possess a large enough collection of military and economic power as to solve regional problems if they would but apply it.

This is why he's so harsh towards allies, including in ways that are unprecedented, but willing to find some deal with people he understands he cannot only coerce. It's easier to coerce Ukraine to sign unto a deal than Russia. At least, that was the theory of the case when he ganged up on Zelensky.

Iran was in a liminal zone: an uppity Third World pissant that did things like kidnap US staff, but a dangerous one as pissants go. So no attack, until it looked incredibly weak.

I don't think Trump wants or expects to be in anything like the sort of generation-defining conflict a war with Iran or the reprisal for the assassination of a US Senator would demand. He wants Venezuela-wins (not a surprise the attack on Iran was after that)

Well yes your not suppose to contemplate and it’s for your own benefit. International Diplomacy kind of works like that sometimes. You, us, the government may not want to escalate things if he was actually killed by Russia/Iran.

So the warmonger in chief is dead. That complicates the picture a lot for Republicans in November and for the whole strategy of US in Ukraine.

Probably not, because unlike the military men I don't think senator's staffers know how to really keep their mouth shut. And unlike the alleged military dead in Ukraine, this is a story the liberal medial would love to blow to put Trump in a bad place.

I think it's more likely that an old man who flew a lot developed blood clots, but at this point I can't confidently rule out the alternative.

Died suddenly after brief illness is such weird phrasing and reporting.

Wouldn’t “old senator found unresponsive after cardiac arrest, dead” make a lot more sense if it was as you suspect?

Sudden deaths of famous people almost never have their cause of death immediately reported these days, no matter how mundane or obvious the acute reason. I'd guess there's this perception among journalists that if you make the obvious conclusion but somehow end up wrong, then you're instantly transformed into a TMZ-level rag. This is compounded by the fact that family of the deceased often refuse to give media any direct information for several days.

Remember there was live footage of Kirk being shot through the neck and having blood gush out while he slumped over, and yet the media refused to declare him dead for like a day.

What's the proposed mechanism? Are we suggesting he died in the missile strike? The reporting says a cardiac event at home - maybe the FSB slipped something into his viagra?

No, he just got blown up and they didn’t declare him dead until his remains got home stateside. They do this all the time, there was a marine general who died the day after getting back from Kiev to 29 Palms the exact same way. Graham was touring an advanced strike-drone factory that got unexpectedly hit by 8 Iskander missiles.

Graham was touring an advanced strike-drone factory that got unexpectedly hit by 8 Iskander missiles.

Source?

"How the Terrorist Group Boko Haram Uses Frontier AI"

https://casp.ac/reports/ai-enabled-terrorism

I found the article a bit surreal where it talks about how ISIS sends people around to conduct AI training... How strange to think that so many white-collar office guys find it all tedious and dull but your average jihadist is like 'it's very helpful!' and they're warming to the technology. Also I wonder if these AIs really know that much, shouldn't the terrorists know how to make bombs and conduct attacks, that's their whole gig? On the other hand, one doesn't consider Boko Haram to be the sharpest minds in the Islamist world so even existing AI models are quite helpful.

It is based on interviews though and may be complete nonsense, the terrorists just lying to this researcher:

Because the sensitivity of the topic and the difficulty of accessing this population meant the accuracy of individual accounts could not always be independently verified, throughout this study I state broadly corroborated patterns as fact and attribute narrower claims explicitly to interviewees.

Some excerpts:

Struggling to operate some of the loot, ISWAP’s leader al-Barnawi stated in a letter to the Islamic State back in 2017: “I am reminded of a funny story when about a year ago, we seized Dragunov rifles as war spoils and we had to make them work so we could use them. We checked many handbooks and specialized videos on this technical issue, but we eventually dropped it in despair after all our attempts failed.” 88 This account contrasts with how these situations are handled and resolved today, where “we take all of the equipment back to the camp and the AI unit tells us how to use and shoot with it.” 89 According to a former JAS technical specialist: “When we managed to seize a sophisticated weapon, the leaders took it to a room where they typed in the number of the weapon. It [AI] then tells you what model it is, how it will be loaded, used, and serviced.” 90 In one recounted instance, when ISWAP fighters were handed out new guns and they did not know how to correctly use them, they approached their qaid, who passed on the message to a specialist, who in turn replied, “just ask Grok,” which they then did.

They argued about what to do with the bomb. Some fighters wanted to dig it out, others not. They touched it and it exploded. 40 people died. Now they have new rules. Everyone has to stay far away and only one person digs.

We saw in a movie how motorcycles can jump over bridges. We used AI to learn how to do this. We gave it information, like what motorcycles we use and the distance we need to jump and so on and it gave us steps on what we have to do. We practiced a lot and kept asking questions. We dug holes and filled them with broken glass and fire to practice. 18 of us died in the process. Eight of us managed to do it. The next time we attacked, we could jump.

I went to the qaid to type a question about different ways to manufacture bombs. He said he could only get the answer if he knew exactly what the problem was. I told him about how the wires were connected in a way that seemed to prevent the bomb from going off. ChatGPT gave some explanations but they were not very clear. He contacted some people about how to put the question, and then it gave us useful information on how exactly to connect the wires, and it worked. I don’t know what he typed that made it work. They call people in the network for this kind of help every day

There's also some interesting intra-terrorist discourse on 'poison' which is banned under Islam and can even get people killed if they want to use it, vs 'powders' which are apparently OK for senior commanders to use. Poison really means 'fouling a water source' which is obviously very bad in a desert context, so they analogize things to poison vs just normal chemical weapons which are more acceptable? But everything is discussed in these crazy immature, unsophisticated ways so it's bizarre, it's that they're grasping for concepts like collateral damage or selectivity but don't quite have the diction for them. I think a major region why terrorism isn't such a big issue is that most of the terrorists are basically retarded, they're drawing from a population of retards. Ultimately AI won't be able to help them as much as it can for a non-retarded population though.

Skip the academic babble and move straight onto the interviews I think, that's the fun part of the article.

I’m not surprised. ISIS was one of the first parties to ever use quad-copter drone strikes. When a group is underground and unofficial they have to think outside the box in a way that major military powers don’t. And terrorist organizations are like any other military, two thirds of the members are in the logistical wing and have never held a gun. So I’m also not supposed that there are smart, patient eggheads around to figure out how to use it. That’s what they are doing all day anyway.

I think a major region why terrorism isn't such a big issue is that most of the terrorists are basically retarded, they're drawing from a population of retards.

Aren’t Islamic terrorists generally an exception to that trend though? Bin Ladin and the other Al Qaeda leaders were pretty much all college graduates, and ISIS recruits tended to be more highly educated as well. That’s arguably why they were more successful than other terrorist groups.

Yes. They're often highly educated. And often healthcare professionals. Empathy can be a poison.

A lot of the most ardent, genocidal Nazis were very highly educated too.

True, they're smart to a certain extent, capable and determined and creative. The rank and file are pretty dumb though. In the paper they talk about how Boko Haram has to get technical support from 'the white guys', not quite sure whether they mean Arabs or Western converts.

If you really want to create a global caliphate though, what you need are large capable armies, airpower, missiles, H-bombs rather than cheap tricks with truck bombs and drones. Terrorists are forced into these unconventional strategies because they're the underdog, they lack the proper financing, industry, organization and materiel. And all of that is really a product of high intelligence.

It looks like things between the US and Iran might be seriously heating up again, with the US saying that they have responded to Iranian ceasefire violations with major airstrikes. Perhaps more significantly, the Treasury pulled the waiver that allowed Iran to sell oil.

I had been told, on here, that the terms of the MOU indicated that the US was desperate to come to the table with Iran. It seems to me that these recent actions by the US indicate otherwise – that the US is comfortable escalating again. However, by the same token, it seems that Iran (or at least the hard-liners) are also comfortable escalating again.

However, the timing does strike me as interesting: it looks, to me, like the US waited until July 4th and America's 250th were comfortable over before upping the strikes on Iran a notch.

But I am curious as to what the rest of the Motte thinks. Does this change your thinking on the conduct of the war so far? Anyone want to predict what happens next? Are we looking at a widening of the war, or will this all fizzle into more extremely protracted negotiations?

The key facet now seems to no longer be regime change or demilitarizing Iran or nukes but about whether Iran can impose a toll or not on the straits. That's what Iran is trying to do. They shot at some freighters using an unapproved route, US struck Iran in retaliation. It has nothing to do with the 4th of July.

It's a bit like the second phase of the Iran-Iraq war where the Iranians pushed Iraq out and sought to install a new revolutionary regime in Baghdad. They overreached there, the US and Soviets made sure Iran couldn't win. We'll see if this is an overreach too...

To clarify a bit, the reason I think the 4th could be relevant is that there may be a desire on the part of the administration to keep oil prices down while Americans are traveling for vacation and to keep war news to a minimum during the 250th celebrations.

Nigel Farage, the UK MP and leader of the right wing Reform party has trigged a by-election in his local constituency - the faded seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea. This is an attempt to seize back the initiative after a series of revelations about his personal finances. Farage is accused of taking cash gifts from dodgy crypto businessmen in exchange for promises to influence government policy.

Farage won by a sizeable plurality in the last general election. His supporters skew older and poorly educated, he’s unlikely to have lost much of their support over the scandal.

In a coordinated move, all the other major political parties have indicated that they will boycott the election, they have nothing to gain by legitimising his publicity stunt. Farage will be entering the by-election as the sole mainstream candidate.

Fascinatingly there is still a small but real risk he might lose with a coordinated protest vote - to the UK’s premier joke candidate Count Binface.

Fraser Nelson has posted an entertaining writeup on his substack, but the political fallout of Farage being defeated would have far reaching effects. UKIP (his previous project) withered and died without his name recognition; a similar fate may befall Reform should he be defeated.

Farage is accused of taking cash gifts from dodgy crypto businessmen in exchange for promises to influence government policy.

Although some of Farage's opponents are muttering about quid pro quo, that isn't really what the argument is about. "The UK should build on our existing strength in financial services by becoming a crypto hub" is obviously correct unless you think that the cryptofinance industry is inherently malignant, so to someone who doesn't already hate Farage it looks like "crypto money finds crypto-friendly politician" rather than "politician becomes crypto-friendly in exchange for crypto money". The argument is (in theory) about transparency and (in practice) about aggravated spivvery.

Newly-elected British MPs are required to declare certain types of payment received in the 12 months before they were elected. Farage didn't. And when caught, rather than trying to spin it as "outsider gets caught on a technicality and is punished overly harshly for a paperwork violation" he tried to double down. First he tried to claim that the gifts were personal and didn't need to be declared*, then he went for the "enforcing generally applicable laws against a Man of the People just proves how much the establishment hates you" approach, and eventually to calling for a criminal investigation into whoever leaked to the media. (Remember that this is information that was supposed to be on the public record anyway).

Farage will be censured when the investigation is complete, because he uncontroversially broke the rules. And given the large amount of money involved (£5 million when the scandal started, now £6-7 million across multiple undeclared donors), he will be suspended from Parliament for long enough to trigger a recall petition. The current by-election automatically suspends the investigation, but it will restart when Farage is re-elected, and there will almost certainly be a second by-election after Farage is censured and recalled.

Even before this became Farage vs Binface, the politics of this don't make sense to me. Calling this by-election means that an what would otherwise have been an inside-baseball funding scandal is going to be the current thing for several months. I can see that the "It's not the £5 million in dodgy overseas** crypto money, it's the persecution" line working in Clacton where 70% of the voters are right-populist, but it isn't going to land with swing voters in the seats Farage needs to win if he wants to be Prime Minister in 2029. It could (low probability, but potential high impact) also sink him if Rupert Lowe finds a good local candidate - something that is more likely now that delaying the process gives Lowe more time to do so. (Restore can land the "I'm work for you, Farage works for foreign billionaires" attack even if the establishment parties can't.) And even if the other parties had run in the by-election and being trounced, "Farage can still win in Clacton" doesn't shift the narrative.

The best theory I am seeing is a Bulverist one, which makes me doubt my own judgement. But "Farage is high on his own supply with the persecution narrative" seems very plausible, because politicians getting high on their own supply happens all the time. Farage says that he is at such high risk of left-wing political violence that he needs a bigger security detail than Prince William***, and that the taxpayer ought to provide it. That he actually thinks this is entirely plausible and the leap to thinking the voters will agree with him is not a large one. If you accept that narrative (and Farage's online supporters do) then "I only needed to take money from foreign crooks and criminals because the police denied me the level of protection I clearly deserve" makes sense.

* This doesn't pass the laugh test. The explanatory notes to the rules say that the exemption for personal gifts is about things like Christmas and birthday presents from family and close friends. This was a £5 million gift where both Farage and the donor have said the money is linked to his political activity.

** The donations aren't legally foreign donations because the people writing the cheques are British citizens living abroad. But the ultimate source of funds is foreign and everyone knows this.

*** The only British public figures who get £5 million in taxpayer-funded security are the King and the Prime Minister.

The only British public figures who get £5 million in taxpayer-funded security are the King and the Prime Minister.

I recall Bezos was only having his security detail funded by Amazon to the tune of $1 million USD.

Probably more efficient doing it privately versus however public security details work plus the Bezoswatch doesn't have anywhere near the power to inconvenience the public

Prince William's and Princess Katherine's security cost £1.4 million a year back in back in 2010 (the breakdown of Royal security isn't public, but that number leaked), which would be £2.2 million adjusting for inflation. Other full-time working royals who are not the Sovereign probably get something similar. The cost of providing security details to nine living ex-PMs is £13 million pa in direct costs and £24 million pa including a contribution to police overhead. So a cabinet minister/ex-PM/mid-level royal tier security operation costs about £2 million a year. The leader of the official opposition (currently Kemi Badenoch) gets this level of taxpayer-funded protection as a matter of course. Other opposition politicians only get taxpayer-funded security details if there is intelligence of a specific, individualised threat - and "People like to throw milkshakes at me when I go out in public" doesn't qualify.

From the analysis I heard, Farage pulled this stunt because he is probably going to be censured by Parliament, and that censure would trigger an automatic by-election. His goal was to trigger a by-election of his own, win it, and thus moot the censure. Now, though, he has a slim chance of actually losing this election to a joke candidate, and even if he wins it, his opponents in parliament can credibly claim that it wasn't a "real" election anyway since he ran "unopposed", and thus proceed with the censure and a second by-election that they can actually contest in a serious manner. The miscalculation on Farage's part seems quite severe.

Restore, the insurgent party running to Farage's right, seem disinclined to come to his aid, percieving him to be an obstacle between themselves and mainstream legitimacy on the Right.

US Cmdr. Gabriel Edwards , the commander of the helicopter squadron of the USS George W. Bush, died earlier this week in the Persian Gulf, the US Navy announced Wednesday. According to official reports, Edward’s needed up missing at see when his helicopter collided with a unicorn. The collision caused Edwards to teleport fifty miles to the left, where he was lost at sea in contested Iranian waters. His death was not the result of any hostile military action. Any concurrent ceasefire violations that happened the same night as his disappearance are completely coincidental

He is survived by two children. I appreciated the United States Navy’s great candor and honesty during this difficult time for them.

In the interests of speaking plainly, I believe the Navy is lying about the circumstances about this man’s death, potentially in a way that violates federal law and the Constitution. Frankly I think the only reason they didn’t ship him back to Norfolk and claim he died of a heart attack is because they don’t have his body.

potentially in a way that violates federal law and the Constitution

I can't claim I know "federal law", it's vast and incomprehensible. But the Constitution is reasonably small, even with the amendments, and pretty straightforward. How exactly did the military violate it when describing this incident, in your opinion? If you want to expand on the federal law part, feel free to also.

I’ll take that bet.

I say this as someone with a very low opinion of the current chain of command; a ceasefire is politically valuable at the moment, and our President (and SecDef) are exactly the kind of people who might apply pressure to keep it quiet.

The odds just favor a legitimate crash.

It's always plausible for the military to be lying, but helicopters are genuinely dangerous even in noncombat scenarios, and four days of search would be a pretty expensive cover story. There were also three survivors, which... isn't incompatible with hostile military action and isn't anywhere near the size of the general coordination you'd need to keep the story secret, but sounds closer to 'mechanical problem' than 'rocket fire' from a gutcheck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Israeli_helicopter_disaster - 73 people died. No enemy action whatsoever.

There were also three survivors, which... isn't incompatible with hostile military action and isn't anywhere near the size of the general coordination you'd need to keep the story secret, but sounds closer to 'mechanical problem' than 'rocket fire' from a gutcheck.

Particularly since the standard emergency bailout procedure for two-pilot/multi-crew helicopters over water is for one pilot to attempt to maintain control so that the rest of the crew can jump as a group, and then get the helicopter away from them before a bunch of highly kinetic metal blades hit the water. The later is the far more dangerous part of even a 'controlled' crash, and it's basically a deliberate trade of the last pilot to save the rest, who can help eachother swim / stay aloft and activate any rescue equipment. In a kinetic shootdown over water, it typically tends to be everyone, since a shot that takes down the aircraft is probably violent disassembly in air, or just one or two survivors.

Also, this part of BigGuy's conspiracy-

The collision caused Edwards to teleport fifty miles to the left, where he was lost at sea in contested Iranian waters.

-is just stereotypically American geographical confusion trying to wrap up in sarcasm.

The Arabian Sea- the place where the aircraft was claimed lost- is not the Arabian Gulf, the culture-rivalry rename of the same waters as the Persian Gulf ala the Korea-Japan East Sea versus Sea of Japan. The Arabian Sea is a completely different body of water in the opposite direction from contested Iranian waters.

Iran's territorial water claims that are causing tensions are regarding the Strait of Hormuz. The Persian Gulf is the waters west of the Strait of Hormuz. The Gulf of Oman is the waters east of the strait of hormuz leading to the Arabian Sea. But the arabian sea itself is the part of the indian ocean between the arabian peninsula and India. There is no Iranian claim on the broader geography of the Arabian Sea, not least because Pakistan dominates the north face and Oman dominates the west. Iran only has the tiniest of proximity in the furthest north west, which is not part of the Strait of Hormuz dispute.

Notably, the general location of the carrier groups since the start of the war has been generally understood to be... not there. During the war and the blockade one of the main frustrations for Iran's efforts to attack the carriers was that it could find them, and that was because duringn both points the carriers fell back into the Arabian Sea far enough to stay out of Iranian detection and weapon range. (There was the war-time conspiracy that the laundry fire on the Gerald Ford was actually a lie to disguise a critical damage from anti-ship cruise missile, but that largely petered out when the Ford returned to a high traffic port without observable evidence of a cruise missile.) During the blockade portion of the post-conflict, helicopter landings of ships trying to run past the blockade happened in the Arabian sea, well away from Iranian waters and ability to interfere.

So the military version of the story is that a helicopter from a carrier known to have been operating in the Arabian sea away from Iranian waters and weapon ranges went down for non-iranian-weapon reasons, with casualties consistent with a controlled mechanical failure helicopter crash.

The BigGuy version presupposes that the carrier group was far further north than there is any conflict-contemporary record of them being, in order for '50 miles left' to be anywhere near Iranian waters as opposed to, say, uncontested Oman. It also is probably confusing a body of water already to the west of the Strait of Hormuz that no carrier has been observed in since the war started- even in which case 50 miles left would be further from the strait- to a body of water thousands of square miles large to the south east, in which fifty miles 'left' would still be... well south.

Something something war is how some Americans learn geography.

I need someone to list all the Looney Toons accidents that happened in Iraq I & II, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, etc. Because I'm starting to turn Schizo from the fact that the USA is claiming all these losses of men and material from ridiculous mishaps ("A clothes dryer caught fire and destroyed a carrier" "we landed the planes in a mud puddle on a rescue mission that just happened to be right next to the nuclear supplies we were planning to Mission Impossible" "Plane crashed in the middle of nowhere"). I'm even looking at the two recent civilian skydiving accidents a little crossways, and they happened in Missouri and France.

246 fires on aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibs over 70 years, after WWII.

"A clothes dryer caught fire and destroyed a carrier"

"Destroyed" is... a tremendously strong word. It's not like FORD went full BONHOMME RICHARD.

There's also that time the US sank one of its own subs while the thing was moored at a pier. Oh, and that time an aircraft carrier sliced the top off the cruiser USS BELKNAP. Can't recall if the cruiser was carrying nuclear cruise missiles at the time or not, but I do remember that the officer determined to be at fault had just won an award for his ship-handling skills.

And from a related branch, there was that landing craft that up and sank during training off the coast of California, killing 9 marines. Or the F-35 and refueling tanker casualty that had a botched SAR operation in very friendly waters. And I don't need to tell you of the (oft-maligned, and possibly out of context) Osprey safety record concerns...

"Destroyed" is... a tremendously strong word. It's not like FORD went full BONHOMME RICHARD.

Reports have varied, but we're looking at a return to service in 2027 on the optimistic government timeline. While "destroyed" is perhaps aggressive, "damaged sufficiently to be removed from operation" is infelicitous, and anyway we're being weirdo skeptics so we're rounding up and assuming the damage is worse than we were told.

If we were at real war, it'd be operating. But since they can very well do without it, nobody wants to take a risk, so everybody is covering their asses and crossing the t's and dotting the i's. That's very different from being "destroyed" or even substantially "damaged".

How much of that is due to the fire, and how much is standard/deferred maintenance cycles, though? I have a feeling they'd be in port close until 2027 even without the fire.

The US Navy in WWII lost quite a few ships and aircraft to typhoon storms in the Pacific. Typhoon Cobra sunk three destroyers and killed 790 sailors, but there were a few other storms too.

There’s the German U-boat that had a catastrophic toilet failure…

Okay, but early submarines really cannot be used as representative of modern(ish) naval accident rates. Those things were... well, death traps is a bit too strong of a word, but issues abounded.

Interesting that the landing craft crash happened just five days after Russian forces broke through at Mariupol....

I'm honestly unsure of what you're trying to imply here.

That the importance of a person’s martyrdom is often only visible in the light of history, and isn’t controlled by the number of tasteless bon mottes belched out by soulless haters. On April 5, 1968, it looked pretty definite that the Civil Rights movement had been killed with Dr. King. In hindsight, that is obviously not the case. We won’t know the verdict on Charlie Kirk until at least 2050.

I think you responded to the wrong comment? Charlie Kirk sure wasn't on that landing craft (although it would be an even funnier conspiracy theory...)

God damn it sorry, I had a post replying to the post in the main culture war thread discussing his Kirk’s death. I got your reply notification and thought you were asking for clarification on that.

To answer your question, There were persistent rumors that a large contingent of NATO advisors got trapped in Mariupol because the city was encircled faster than anticipated. So it’s interesting that you have a mass casualty producing event just at the right time you would need an excuse for casualties from that.

There are also rumors that Biden’s trade of Britney Griner for Viktor Bout was to secretly get back high-ranking American POWs from that battle, hence why it looked like such a hilariously unfair swap on paper.

That there is big unofficial US personnel presence on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and if you squint there is pattern where USA training accidents in conus happens soon after massive Russian missile attacks in Ukraine.

Judging by how well Ukraine's best pilot their F16s, the idea that there are people that help with stuff like Patriot at critical points is not unthinkable.

That'd have to be a lot of people in on the coverup... the other 12 landing craft and support ships/personnel involved in the exercise, the half the crew that did survive...

Technically possible, as you said, if you squint.

The US navy has something of a record of stupid crashes. The inquiry into the Fitzgerald crash in 2017 came to the conclusion that one of the contributing causes was crew fatigue due to a sustained high operational tempo. The idea that basic safety compliance collapses during combat ops making a technically non-combat crash an order of magnitude more likely seems obviously correct.

That said, if the Iranians had shot the chopper down, the Trump administration would probably lie about it. To those familiar with combat helo flying, how likely is a near miss which does enough damage to render the chopper inoperable (e.g. by taking out the tail rotor) leading to a ditching without blowing it to smithereens in mid-air?

The 1967 USS Forrestal fire is a good place to start if you want to get the idea of the sort of things that can just sort of happen by accident (21 aircraft destroyed, 40 damaged, 134 deaths).

John McCain – better known as a US Senator – was present at the fire. What's not as well known about him is that his aircraft crashed twice (due to engine trouble on both occasions, I believe) and he clipped power lines a third time, on top of being shot down.

Generally speaking my understanding is that military aviation and indeed "the military" more broadly has gotten safer as time has gone on. This might have the effect of elevating accidents when they do occur.

Don’t forget Argentina!

In all seriousness, listing incidents is just begging for a Texas sharpshooter to come and draw you a bullseye. All the usual SSC pieces about selection bias apply. Batshit insane stuff does happen occasionally. If you turn up the number of opportunities by, say, maintaining the world’s largest navy and two largest air forces, then sending them across the planet to run combat missions, you will generate more batshit insane incidents. Drawing a line through all these incidents will tell you more about the person drawing the line than about the base rate!

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