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The author explains that this problem is actually adversarial, in the sense that the attacker gets to observe defenses and allocate warheads and decoys accordin
by jsw97 7mo ago
The author explains that this problem is actually adversarial, in the sense that the attacker gets to observe defenses and allocate warheads and decoys accordingly.
Thinking of our current circumstances, this suggests another cost of war: our offensive capabilities, as well as our defensive capabilities become more observable. Our adversaries are studying our strengths and weaknesses in Iran, and they will have a much improved game plan for countering us in future conflicts.
- vasco 7mo agoIf we really want to put a certain hat on we can also say those adversaries have an incentive to not prevent (or even incentivize) those wars for that same reason. Even if that's by helping along a guy that is easy to manipulate through a childlike ego become president.
- testaccount28 7mo agothere is a benefit as well, though, as it makes your threats credible.
- SegfaultSeagull 7mo agoOr perhaps they will learn they are outmatched, lack the resources and technological capabilities to compete, and deterrence will have been established.
- biker142541 7mo agoHistory would suggest otherwise; rarely is this ever the case.
- marcosdumay 7mo agoYou seem to be implying that there is a long history of countries starting wars against the USA?
- gzread 7mo agoMore like the USA starting wars against countries, and those countries not immediately surrendering, to which the USA is shocked.
- falcor84 7mo agoI think that there's a more general issue here with the US and the West in general having a mindset built up on playing Risk and Civ, which considers the foreign country as a whole as their opponent, whereas in practice, the adversaries are a multitude of individuals, for almost none of whom a surrender is the rational choice, especially (as sibling comments pointed out) when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate.
- testaccount28 7mo agoto be clear: your claim is that the us military is misinformed because key constituents have played too many board games? does hearing it back like that make it seem absurd to you as well?
- falcor84 7mo agoWell, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). And no, it doesn't make it seem absurd to me. My argument is that Western strategic thought (with games being a codification thereof, rather than the source of) generally considers countries as mostly atomic actors that can be defeated - the history of European warfare being filled with "gentlemanly" surrenders followed up by peace treaties, with guerrilla warfare being a very rare exception. On the other side, the reality in the East is that a state's collapse doesn't end the conflict, but just prolongs it. The army doesn't surrender, it goes home with its weapons and reconstitutes as insurgents. I can't actually think of a single proper surrender of an Eastern country ever, except for Japan in 1945.
- dragonwriter 7mo ago> Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). It is actually several physical board games, the oldest of which is older than (and unrelated to) the computer game [0], as well as being a series of computer games that are basically digital board games. [0] Well, except for the computer game based on it and its expansion, which, because of the other computer game, had the long-winded title "Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization".
- quietbritishjim 7mo agoHistory doesn't necessarily make it clear when a war might have started but didn't because of some specific factor. Mainly you see the wars that did happen. (It has a strong survivorship bias in the sense that a war "survived" history if it went ahead for real rather than being considered and decided against.)
- pjc50 7mo agoIran has always known that the US is a higher tech nation, but you should not just expect them to surrender on that basis.
- deburo 7mo agoThat's not what deterrence means. From google: the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences. It's meant to avoid conflict altogether, say with China and Taiwan.
- swat535 7mo agoIranian here, you're assuming sanity. That doesn't work when your opponents pray for death and see martyrdom as victory. This is genuinely how Shia extremists think. They have nothing to lose and will sacrifice everything and everyone for their cause. They don't care about Iran or Iranians or prosperity of the nation.
- elzbardico 7mo agoEvery country that has a opposition diaspora says the same stuff you're saying here. For what is worth, you could be from a family of Savak secret police members. And frankly that's not how it looks to me.
- rendang 7mo agoEvery country's diaspora claims their country is ruled by Shia Muslims?
- kochikame 7mo agoNo, he or she is saying that even Americans who have moved overseas could be heard to complain about the "fascist" authoritarians in power in the US now. They would sound functionally identical to an Iranian emigrant talking about Iran; only the details would differ
- varispeed 7mo agoYou miss the fact that many adversaries will not act rationally.
- baxtr 7mo agoEspecially when they're optimizing for afterlife.
- breppp 7mo agoThe fact that many Iranian officials optimize stealing millions from the state, means they aren't optimizing for the afterlife
- baxtr 7mo agoFair point. It seems to be a weird mix of people who optimize for afterlife and a mafia that lives their best life now.
- keybored 7mo agoThis thread is talking about how the adversaries will attack America based on the current events that Iran is counter-attacking Israel and American bases since Israel and America invaded them illegally. Lots of smugness about the supposed irrationality of the adversaries considering that backdrop.
- elzbardico 7mo agoA big part of the US involvment in the current war is driven by Christian Zionists, that literally believe that there needs to be a fucking end-of-the-times war in the region so Christ comes back.
- iso1631 7mo agoYes, if it was acting rationally the US Would not have spent billions trying to blow up an 80 year old man while massively increasing the price of oil and fertiliser globally leading to economic instability But the US has not acted rationally. It hasn't since January 2021.
- dlisboa 7mo agoVery few countries lack the technological capabilities to produce these kinds of drones. What most countries don't have is, for lack of a better term, the resolve Iran has shown. Venezuela could have built drones and resisted just the same, but it's internally divided enough that it was possible to strike a deal with an inside faction and have a coup from within.
- nerfbatplz 7mo agoThe Iranians just hit an F35 with a proverbial box of scraps they put together in a cave. The Chinese military must have experienced collective euphoria when they saw that.
- 9cb14c1ec0 7mo agoTo be clear, that F35 was being incredibly careless, flying low in broad daylight. All the stealth features of an aircraft are useless if you can look at it with your own eyes. In any conflict with China, F35s would not be flown that way.
- nerfbatplz 7mo agoTo be clear, Trump announced that the US had destroyed Iran's air defenses, missiles and missile launch capabilities. Trump also said that the US enjoyed air supremacy over Iran and were flying when and where they wished. Maybe one of these days we'll see a B-52 take off with JDAMs and not JASSMs but probably not, kind of scary to try and drop gravity bombs on a country that your stealth fighters can't fly over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohttYlvFvU
- breppp 7mo agoB-52s takeoff with stand-in weapons when attacking Iran, as their air defense is largely destroyed https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-raf-fairford-with-jdams/ https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-r...
- iso1631 7mo agoYou're holding it wrong? How many cheap-ass drones could you buy for the cost of one F35. 100k? A million?
- breppp 7mo agoNone of these reached Israel from Iran this war, so maybe their superior quantity is not enough
- don_esteban 7mo agoThere is a huge difference between 'deterrence' in the sense of deterring a country from taking aggressive action it might have otherwise considered, and 'deterrence' in the sense you are using here (surrender without fight, we are so much stronger than you).
- elzbardico 7mo agoIran can establish deterrence with asymetric means and let's not forget, that contrary to what most americans think, Iran is not a backward hell hole like Somalia or Afeganistan. For a third world country we could say they have a competent R&D infrastructure, with a good number of STEM graduates every year (with roughly half of them being woman, which shows they are casting a wide net for talents). They also have a lot of leverage points in their geography, in the fact that the US is at a historical low point in its military capabilities. US and Israel strategy seems to be to completely destruct Iran's economy, but the problem is that this is a game where they can also shoot back.
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo agoThat seems like an acceptable trade off to get some real world experience with what works and what doesn't with regards to massed drones and swarming. There is a lot we can learn in this conflict with relatively low stakes
- lejalv 7mo agoStakes for whom? >100 kids got murdered the first day of this "low stakes" war
- keybored 7mo ago“Iranian kids may die... but that’s a prize I’m willing to pay.”
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo ago"I much prefer nuclear conflict"
- keybored 7mo agoPropose a nuclear free zone in the Middle East, propose a global nuclear free zone, propose to cooperate with other nuclear powers to disarm. But that’s apparently not the real concern at all.
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo agoThe USA
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo agoHow many protesters were killed leading up to it?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- myrmidon 7mo agoThis is absolutely true, but there is a strong counterpoint: You also learn the limits of your own systems and how to operate them most effectively yourself (and better than adversaries can, too). Just to pick a recent example: Russian air defense in the early stages of the Ukraine war was dismal (more specifically: defense against big, slow drones like Bayraktar), despite having sufficient AA capability "on paper"-- the war allowed them to visibly improve. I'd expect much more value from validating and improving your equipment and its handling than the actual "cost" of revealing its capabilities to adversaries in almost every conflict.
- neutronicus 7mo ago"Data moats" are a problem for military tech, too, I guess.
- btown 7mo agoOne very interesting instance of the "military data moat" is Ukraine's annotated database of drone footage, perhaps the first of its scale from live engagements [0]: > They can now draw on an enormous pool of real warfare information. Last year alone, Ukrainian drones recorded around 820,000 verified strikes against Russian targets... Meanwhile, the country’s Avengers AI platform detects upwards of 12,000 enemy targets every week. Developers can now access these sources and the data that they gather to train their systems on the movements of a real Russian turtle tank or a camouflaged Lancet launcher. > “Ukraine currently possesses a unique body of battlefield data unmatched anywhere in the world,” recently appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement. “This includes millions of annotated frames collected during tens of thousands of combat drone missions.” With the latency and offline constraints of battlefield technology, smaller models, trained with better data, may prove to have a significant edge. But it's still early days on how data like this might prove advantageous in other environments. [0] https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-battlefield-data-into-a-world-first-ai-training-hub/ https://resiliencemedia.co/how-ukraine-is-transforming-its-b... (unconfirmed source, this is not an endorsement)
- dlisboa 7mo agoThere is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example. Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites. If Iran was routinely targeting desalination plants and refineries it wouldn't matter if it was 99%: one hit is all it takes. Similarly Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure. Air defenses need to be 100% to prevent physical, economic and moral damage. That is an impossibility.
- p00dles 7mo agowho is our/us?
- renewiltord 7mo agoVeterancy is more valuable. Observers can tell only a certain amount about what you can do, but you know your limits much more deeply and you can adapt. In fact, it's much better we get our nose bloodied repeatedly now¹ so that we learn how fallible we are and make sure our processes involve aircraft carriers not being put out of commission during wars because of dryer lint fires. ¹ in a military sense; in a geopolitical sense obviously it's clear that Iran has been a misadventure
- baxtr 7mo agoWhile this is true it's also impossible to avoid. So you could also argue that this war will help the US to gain experience it didn't have before which might be favorable in future conflicts with parties that didn't have this experience.
- DivingForGold 7mo agoDid I miss this ? Missing from the discussion is that Iran's cluster munitions in each single missle have absolutely overwhelmed Israels defense and would likely do the same to US military as well. Also to consider, Iran's $20,000 drones versus our $1 million dollar interceptors.
- wavefunction 7mo agoYou could counter multipayload missiles by hitting the missile earlier in its trajectory before the payloads deploy, that was the plan for MIRV nukes but it requires usually forward interceptors or perhaps energy weapons we don't yet have.
- mrguyorama 7mo agoHitting Ballistic missiles "Midcourse" as you suggest requires interceptors that look more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3 It is.... Entirely infeasible to deploy these against tactical ballistics like Iran is using.
- srean 7mo agoIsrael seems to be using Arrow 3s for this exact effect. If we are to believe the news, the Arrow 3s hit bomblet arme missiles attacking Dimona ( after the one that got through)
- don_esteban 7mo agoHm, Iran destroyed several of the radars used for seeing their missiles in the early stages of their trajectory.
- maratc 7mo agoCluster munitions are great against infantry in open field; less so against population centres equipped with advance warning systems. As it stands, they fail to even cause the damage worth offsetting by firing interceptors. The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence. Given a choice of conventional 500-800 kg warhead or cluster munitions warhead, I think that the nations in the current conflict would prefer being on the receiving end of cluster munitions (as a less bad option) every time.
- jmyeet 7mo agoIn strategic circles, this was a common thought in the 12 day war: Iran was essentially mapping and testing defenses. As evidence of this, the US was forced to hastily move THAAD ground station radar from South Korea because Iran destroyed a bunch of them in the Gulf [1][2]. Bear in mind there aren't many of these and they cost half a billion dollars each. Further evidence of this is how quickly it happened. Iran most likely had detailed contingencies and battle plans for this kind of event. As an aside, this is what militaries do. They plan for things. So whenever you see some conspiracy about how government X reacted to situation Y quickly and thus had foreknowledge, you can ignore it. Military planners are paid to make up fictional situations and figure out how to respond. That's what they do. Weapons are the ultimate export. You use them and blow them up and the customer has to come back and buy more. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/redeployment-us-missiles-thaad-south-korea-middle-east-seoul-iran https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/redeployment-u... [2]: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us-missile-defense-iran-war-intl-invs https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us-mis...
- jandrewrogers 7mo ago> Iran destroyed a bunch of them If by "a bunch" you mean one.
- ssvss 6mo agoLiterally a bunch, https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us-missile-defense-iran-war-intl-invs https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us... https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/the-awacs-scare https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/the-awacs-scare
- hollyhotdog 7mo ago[dead]
- EthanHeilman 7mo agoIt doesn't have to be, defender reveals everything and attacker chooses best strategy. 1. The defender could use both electronic and physical decoys, use air and sea mobile platforms that are always in motion and are difficult to track. 2. The defender can fire at decoys, to convince the attacker the decoys work when they don't. 3. The defender could mix in cheap decoy interceptor missiles that miss so the attacker concludes defenders need 10 missiles to intercept when the real number if 3 and the attacker thinks the defenders are running low on interceptors, when in fact the defenders have held most of their interceptors in reserve. 4. Defender can pretend that expensive systems have been destroyed so that attacker adapts their strategy. For instance, if your defense hinges on a small number of extremely expensive fixed X-band radars and the attacker targets them. Allow some of them to be appear to be destroyed when in fact, you have disassembled them and moved them somewhere else to use later in the war. I see no evidence anyone is doing any of this today, I'm not making any sort of claims about deception operations in the current conflict.
- dotancohen 7mo agoMany historical wars have been won by deception. Sun Tzu taught us: When you are weak, appear strong. When you are strong, appear weak.
- simonsarris 7mo agoOn the other hand, the best way to improve your capabilities is to use them frequently. The Russian army assumed a state of readiness for the Ukraine invasion that turned out to be, well, less. Their special forces floundered, their logistics were (are still!?) unpalletized - using bespoke metal containers and wooden crates! Whereas the US military learned an awful lot from its (mis)adventures over the last decades.
- elzbardico 7mo agoI think Russia's strategy fault was more that they didn't expect the amount of support Ukraine could coalesce in such a short time.
- standardUser 7mo agoTake China for an example. No one knows China's true military capabilities, because they're rapidly evolving and because they virtually never use them. If there's an element of surprise to be had, they have it. But that cut's both ways, because China itself doesn't have experience exercising those capabilities. The learning curve could be noticeable. Meanwhile, no one doubts the ability of the US military to execute.
- elzbardico 7mo agoBasically the only country left in the world with expeditionary capabilities is the US. It is hard to compare this with China. Different goals and philosophies.
- standardUser 7mo agoChina is building force projection rapidly. But it's a huge gap.
- srean 7mo agoChina uses wars like these to test their equipment for example the s300 knockoffs. These were not effective in Iran nor in Pakistan. I am sure the Chinese have made a note of that and debugging the failure.
- grafmax 7mo ago"Our" adversaries, huh? There are more people in our country than pedophile billionaires, but it's this group starting the wars, murdering civilians, and producing generations of "adversaries".
- GeorgeWBasic 7mo ago"Our adversaries" are in the US government, or is this not crystal clear by now?
- ReptileMan 7mo agoOn the other hand the Air force is getting the workout of their lifetime. Which could come in handy. The low bodycount among US military so far makes the whole clusterfuck just and expensive training program.
- wodenokoto 7mo agoThat’s why Russia cut cables in the Baltic Ocean and flew a drone around Copenhagen airport. That’s why StarCraft players sends “scouts” into enemy bases in the early game.
- RobertoG 7mo agoThis is a problem with a know solution, already applied by many in the world: don't start wars. Specifically: don't start wars thousand of miles away of your borders.