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The title should change 'won't' to 'shouldn't'. This administration doesn't do things because of deep understanding, it does them because of gut reaction. The U

The title should change 'won't' to 'shouldn't'. This administration doesn't do things because of deep understanding, it does them because of gut reaction. The US Military could, at an unknown cost, just blast away. This article points out, rightfully, how scared we are to put our weapons in harms way because of how expensive they are. I made this argument many times to friends years ago. From a military strategic point of view we should be developing drone/cruise missile carriers (and upping our SSGN capabilities) and abandoning the carrier navy. They are only good for show at port visits and turn useful ships like DDGs into escorts instead of front line assets. That being said, from a diplomatic strategic point of view, I really like a useless navy full of ships that are good for port visits and not real wars. If you build ships good for real wars you tend to get into wars. If you build ships good for visiting other countries you tend not to go to war with those countries.

testing22321 7mo ago
Losing just one carrier would give Trump all the excuse he needs to drop a nuke, declare a monster emergency and cancel elections…
- wheelerwj 7mo ago
  He can’t cancel elections. Stop fear mongering about that. He can 100% drop a nuke though, so thats probably worth fear mongering about.
  - CodeMage 7mo ago
    Good thing he's so good at respecting rules that say he can't do things. And good thing that he's had to face the punishment for breaking some of those rules. Imagine reading what you wrote if he were repeatedly allowed to break rules without any consequences.
  - duxup 7mo ago
    What is the “can’t” aspect here? The law? He doesn’t care about that…
    - kelseyfrog 7mo ago
      Right, Trump's ability to cancel the elections depends on whether the people running elections comply. It sounds prudent to compile a survey on who those people are and their propensity to break the law to accommodate the president.
      - queenkjuul 7mo ago
        Luckily, for now, those people are at the state level, though republicans are trying to change that.
        reverius42 7mo ago
        And what happens if the state level election workers are up against federal level gunpoint?
        nobody9999 7mo ago
        >And what happens if the state level election workers are up against federal level gunpoint? It's not like ICE can just roll into a state capitol and stop elections. How many folks would be required for that at each polling place? Ten? Fifty? There are 3500+ counties in the US, usually with multiple polling places. You'd need tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of troops for that. And that's a lot of armed thugs. Likely the National Guard would need to be federalized, but I find it hard to believe that commanders would follow such illegal orders.
        vharuck 7mo ago
        To swing Pennsylvania, they'd probably just need to send ICE into Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Tell them to ignore anybody with a MAGA hat. Big and blue cities in purple states are the only necessary targets.
        reverius42 7mo ago
  - jshier 7mo ago
    He doesn't need to legally cancel the election. He simply needs to say it is and take action as if it was already. This allows him to combine interference before the election with the Republican insurrection tactics from 2020. Say he declares, through executive order, that the 2026 election is cancelled due to an emergency, and that the current Congress will stay in power until the emergency is over. This would allow, even if not actually legal, some combination of: - Republican-led states voluntarily ending their elections. - In the case where local election authorities refuse, allowing state governments to take action by arresting said local authorities. - Ending all Federal assistance for states to run and secure elections. - Posting ICE to all states who insist on having elections, to arbitrarily arrest people going to vote. By the time they can get in front of a judge the election is over. Even if they're released within a few hours they'd likely miss the vote. - Having ICE seize all "illegally cast" ballots, and the voting machines, preventing counts from completing or being accurate. - Declaring states who hold an election to be in rebellion, deploying the National Guard or standing military forces. - Refusing to seat anyone elected from those states who refuse to go along with it. We could see something like Republican states are allowed to "elect" new representatives as long as they allow an ICE presence everywhere, along with the arbitrary arrest. Speaker Johnson then refuses to seat any newly elected officials from any other states. - Arrest of newly elected officials as illegitimate, and the seating of Republican candidates instead, similar to the fake elector scheme from 2020. We can insist that all of these things are illegal, or that people won't go along with it. We would likely see the start real, violent resistance, but that doesn't mean they won't try. Edit: Looks like he's starting already, by trying control all mail in ballots. He's going to issue an executive order ordering the USPS to filter ballot mail according to a master list compiled by the administration. Obviously this why they wanted voter rolls and have been seizing ballots. Even if the court immediately rules it illegal, why would anyone trust mail in voting? He's essentially cancelled the election for those who vote by mail. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/trump-mail-in-voting-executive-order.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/trump-mail-in-voting-executi...
    - Terr_ 7mo ago
      > He simply needs to I think a lot of people struggle to imagine the kinds of dirty-deeds ("ratf***ing") that are both possible and effective, especially when the perpetrators don't (feel) constrained by an implicit baseline of plausible consistency or morality. Being unable to brainstorm them up is, perhaps, a kind of backhanded compliment. Imagine trying to warn someone in 2010 that in a few years an outgoing President, stung at an election loss, could foment a violent mob that would break into the Capitol to hunt and chase legislators that were formalizing that loss, issue blanket pardons for everyone involved, and his party would still protect him from being impeached over it. For that matter, some people are still surprised to learn about the "Brooks Brothers Riot" [0] of 2000, where a crowd of Republican campaign staffers threatened workers into stopping a recount of certain ballots. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/24/us-elections-2020-violence-fears-brooks-brothers-riot https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/24/us-elections...
  - cgio 7mo ago
    I see a higher chance of him dropping a dirty nuke at home and pretending it’s Iran. Then he can nuke Iran and win the elections too by proving his point that the war was necessary if not delayed. I would be very worried if I were in any of the Democrat states, as one of them would be the chosen target in such a scenario.
- piker 7mo ago
  No, it wouldn't.
- gentleman11 7mo ago
  To the people criticizing the comment above, think of all the other illegal things trump is already doing. It's not a matter of "can't", it's a matter of if he will and who will stop him (nobody, so far)
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 7mo ago
    Regardless, Iran sinking an aircraft carrier does not excuse Trump to nuke Iran and cancel elections. Your point is that he does not care about having a justification.
    - shiroiuma 7mo ago
      There's no good excuse for countless bad and stupid things Trump has done, but he did them anyway and no one has bothered to stop him.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 7mo ago
        Yes, I agree. My point is primarily that it is incorrect to say that his actions have an excuse, especially the hypothetical action of launching the first offensive nuke since the two in August 1945. (Secondarily, stating that he has an excuse is the first step to excusing him.) Nuclear powers collectively agree, and have for decades: the only excuse for launching a nuke at your adversary is them doing it first. (As for elections, history has shown that there is no excuse for outright cancelling them; that is an autocratic ploy to become a despot.)
  - mothballed 7mo ago
    I'm surprised he hasn't considered dropping The Bomb. No one will stop him, and it could actually garner a win.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 7mo ago
      This is a terrible idea. Assuming nothing bad happens (other than the mass death, of course), there would be shocked pikachu faces from half of Americans and then some, not to mention those in other nations. If something bad happens (edit: other than the initial mass death, of course), the faces would instead range anywhere from panicked to vaporized.
pram 7mo ago
I think our navy is mostly designed for prestige too, but it seems like you could use the current carriers to transport like a million disposable drones?
- shiroiuma 7mo ago
  Drones have limited range. Perhaps a submarine would be better: sneak close to your target, raise a pipe from the sub to the surface, then launch a bunch of drones from it.
  - jmward01 7mo ago
    Look at SSGNs. Not drone carriers, but TLAM is pretty close to drone warfare from the US's point of view.
    - don_esteban 7mo ago
      Ehm, there is the tiny issue of cost and overall inventory size ...
  - throwawayffffas 7mo ago
    Limited range? Shaheds have over 2000 kilometers more than tomahawks. And btw, if you can get a submarince close to your target, torpedoes and missiles are going to be much more effective than drones. Space is limited on platforms, a submarine might have space for 60 drones or 30 missiles, given the immense cost of the submarine, going with the missiles is the right call. The trucks launching shaheds that iran is using can fit like 5 such drones, a similar truck could probably fit 2 to 4 cruise missiles the only reason they are using drones is the rapid production and cost associated with drones instead of the cruise missiles.
  - AngryData 7mo ago
    Driving your submarines into a narrow area with limited depth is driving right into a bottleneck trap. It may be hard to locate a submarine out in the deep open sea, not so much if they are limited in escape routes. Some $50 microphones in the water will be able to pick up submarine activity and if the sub is in range of sending out drones it is in range of being detected by drones equipped with simple magnetic sensors. And that is assuming they can't put an active bit of sonar on two or three drones and drop them in the sea and triangulate it to within a few hundred feet to start with. That still doesn't make them easy to take out, but the cost of potentially losing a submarine is so massive that it doesn't make sense to risk them to start with.
themafia 7mo ago
> at an unknown cost We know the cost. We've conducted that type of warfare before. It's incredibly destructive and barbaric and requires huge amounts of human sacrifice to positively take control of territory after you've finished battering it with high explosives from every available angle. It looks really bad on TV. > cruise missile carriers You don't get very large payloads this way. It's fine if you want to pierce the armor of another ship or if you want to launch an "assassination missile" at a single unit but not awesome if you want to replace the capabilities of carriers and battleships and the literal BFGs they carry. > If you build ships good for real wars you tend to get into wars. It was meant to be a deterrent against other nation states and one particular form of naval warfare. In the modern world of terrorist cells and asymmetric warfare this may be a moot point.
throwawayffffas 7mo ago
The position of the article seems to me to be it 'won't' because it can't. And that is an accurate assessment. It would take much more than the forces in the region, to secure the "strait". To actually secure the strait, you have to secure the entire Persian Gulf. It doesn't matter if tankers can pass through the strait only to be blown up just of Qatar. At it's widest the Gulf is about 360 kilometers, well within the range of most drones, aerial, surface and underwater. So they would have to protect every ship in the gulf, intercept all the drones all the time, or secure the entire coastline. It's simply a task air-power and naval power can't perform. Not without major casualties and without attacks going through. The US navies ships are good for real wars, but for casualties to be accepted, there has to be a real purpose. Escorting a bunch of privately owned oil tankers to bring down the price of gas does not really cut it.
- appreciatorBus 7mo ago
  > there has to be a real purpose. Escorting a bunch of privately owned oil tankers to bring down the price of gas does not really cut it. While I agree with you in principle, if I have learned anything about politics it is that under whatever political system you care to invent, the people will definitely demand war and a navy to escort private oil tankers if it means they get to drive for $0.01 less per gallon.
  - jmward01 7mo ago
    The issue though is that this won't get us maritime supremacy. To get civilian tankers through the strait you need that. Iran will still take the occasional shot at these ships and who in their right mind would put their ship into a situation where there is even a 1 in 2000 chance you will be struck? At the end we will have boots on the ground, with real casualties, potentially a ship or two actually damaged and Iran unleashed and attacking everyone's critical oil infrastructure and water infrastructure. They will even probably find a way to hit a ship or two in the red sea just to spread the panic. My original point was that we could 'just blow things up' and get in there, not that we would succeed in achieving a great military objective.
jepj57 7mo ago
In this instance, a flight of B-52's could wipe the concrete shielded missiles off the face of the Earth. Start off with F18s to secure the skies, then B52s to pound the missiles, then the Navy could stroll back in. It's just that no one has had the gumption to do it until now.
- yfw 7mo ago
  Ok general, the armchair is that way
  - jepj57 7mo ago
    Awesome content. Added a lot to the discussion
    - solid_fuel 7mo ago
      Your analysis of the war seems to hinge on a lack of "gumption", which is coincidentally the exact same thing I've heard conservative old boomers say about Vietnam. So I would say you're about equal in terms of adding to the discussion. It is, unfortunately, divorced from reality. The critical thing about hidden missiles that you seem to be missing is: you can't bomb them if you don't know where they are. We've already seen a 4 week bombing campaign that has included everything from a children's school to a chemotherapy company to bunkers under Tehran, so I don't think there's a lack of "bloodlust" or "gumption" from any of the so-called leaders at the DoD. Rather, it seems that they simply - don't know where the missiles and drones are. Which as I pointed out earlier, makes it rather hard to bomb them.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  We’ve tried the “just air power” approach a number of times. It never works by itself.
- jimjimjim 7mo ago
  But sir, how do we stop an old guy on the bow of a rusty fishing boat firing a $50 rpg at the oil tanker?
mcswell 7mo ago
"They are only good for show at port visits..." This perfectly describes Trump's idea of battleships, in fact I think he's said more or less that himself. And he wants to help design them, because he's "aesthetic."
gmerc 7mo ago
have you considered that if you can’t keep your guns away from “gut driven” administrations, maybe you shouldn’t make them at all?
aaron695 7mo ago
[dead]
oceanplexian 7mo ago
> This administration doesn't do things because of deep understanding, it does them because of gut reaction. Do you think that the overwhelming tactical success in Venezuela, or the basically flawless decapitation strikes in the opening weeks of the Iran conflict were gut reactions? Because of that’s the case I’d be terrified to know what the Pentagon is capable of if they really put their mind to it.
- solid_fuel 7mo ago
  > the basically flawless decapitation strikes in the opening weeks of the Iran conflict Ah, the flawless decapitation strikes that have shown Iran we truly mean business. Remind me, how quickly did they surrender after those strikes? Oh, they didn't? Maybe they weren't "flawless", hmm?
jordanb 7mo ago
"Cruise missile carriers" are what the Burke class destroyers are. It's also what Russia built their navy around. How'd that work out? The US carriers have been involved in every naval action since WWII. They're hardly unused. But attacking a country of 90 million people and a high level of military sophistication AND who's been expecting the attack and planning for it for many years was always going to be a tall order.
lumost 7mo ago
Straights have been impossible to force since Churchill tried to force the Bosphorus in 1915. Placing ships in a narrow target area that can be pre-sighted is a losing proposition, a single artillery gun could mission-kill a destroyer in hormuz - mines/torpedos/drones could sink a ship in a place where rescue may not be possible.

testing22321 7mo ago

Losing just one carrier would give Trump all the excuse he needs to drop a nuke, declare a monster emergency and cancel elections…

wheelerwj 7mo ago
He can’t cancel elections. Stop fear mongering about that. He can 100% drop a nuke though, so thats probably worth fear mongering about.
- CodeMage 7mo ago
  Good thing he's so good at respecting rules that say he can't do things. And good thing that he's had to face the punishment for breaking some of those rules. Imagine reading what you wrote if he were repeatedly allowed to break rules without any consequences.
- duxup 7mo ago
  What is the “can’t” aspect here? The law? He doesn’t care about that…
  - kelseyfrog 7mo ago
    Right, Trump's ability to cancel the elections depends on whether the people running elections comply. It sounds prudent to compile a survey on who those people are and their propensity to break the law to accommodate the president.
    - queenkjuul 7mo ago
      Luckily, for now, those people are at the state level, though republicans are trying to change that.
      - reverius42 7mo ago
        And what happens if the state level election workers are up against federal level gunpoint?
        nobody9999 7mo ago
        >And what happens if the state level election workers are up against federal level gunpoint? It's not like ICE can just roll into a state capitol and stop elections. How many folks would be required for that at each polling place? Ten? Fifty? There are 3500+ counties in the US, usually with multiple polling places. You'd need tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of troops for that. And that's a lot of armed thugs. Likely the National Guard would need to be federalized, but I find it hard to believe that commanders would follow such illegal orders.
        vharuck 7mo ago
        To swing Pennsylvania, they'd probably just need to send ICE into Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Tell them to ignore anybody with a MAGA hat. Big and blue cities in purple states are the only necessary targets.
        reverius42 7mo ago
- jshier 7mo ago
  He doesn't need to legally cancel the election. He simply needs to say it is and take action as if it was already. This allows him to combine interference before the election with the Republican insurrection tactics from 2020. Say he declares, through executive order, that the 2026 election is cancelled due to an emergency, and that the current Congress will stay in power until the emergency is over. This would allow, even if not actually legal, some combination of: - Republican-led states voluntarily ending their elections. - In the case where local election authorities refuse, allowing state governments to take action by arresting said local authorities. - Ending all Federal assistance for states to run and secure elections. - Posting ICE to all states who insist on having elections, to arbitrarily arrest people going to vote. By the time they can get in front of a judge the election is over. Even if they're released within a few hours they'd likely miss the vote. - Having ICE seize all "illegally cast" ballots, and the voting machines, preventing counts from completing or being accurate. - Declaring states who hold an election to be in rebellion, deploying the National Guard or standing military forces. - Refusing to seat anyone elected from those states who refuse to go along with it. We could see something like Republican states are allowed to "elect" new representatives as long as they allow an ICE presence everywhere, along with the arbitrary arrest. Speaker Johnson then refuses to seat any newly elected officials from any other states. - Arrest of newly elected officials as illegitimate, and the seating of Republican candidates instead, similar to the fake elector scheme from 2020. We can insist that all of these things are illegal, or that people won't go along with it. We would likely see the start real, violent resistance, but that doesn't mean they won't try. Edit: Looks like he's starting already, by trying control all mail in ballots. He's going to issue an executive order ordering the USPS to filter ballot mail according to a master list compiled by the administration. Obviously this why they wanted voter rolls and have been seizing ballots. Even if the court immediately rules it illegal, why would anyone trust mail in voting? He's essentially cancelled the election for those who vote by mail. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/trump-mail-in-voting-executive-order.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/trump-mail-in-voting-executi...
  - Terr_ 7mo ago
    > He simply needs to I think a lot of people struggle to imagine the kinds of dirty-deeds ("ratf***ing") that are both possible and effective, especially when the perpetrators don't (feel) constrained by an implicit baseline of plausible consistency or morality. Being unable to brainstorm them up is, perhaps, a kind of backhanded compliment. Imagine trying to warn someone in 2010 that in a few years an outgoing President, stung at an election loss, could foment a violent mob that would break into the Capitol to hunt and chase legislators that were formalizing that loss, issue blanket pardons for everyone involved, and his party would still protect him from being impeached over it. For that matter, some people are still surprised to learn about the "Brooks Brothers Riot" [0] of 2000, where a crowd of Republican campaign staffers threatened workers into stopping a recount of certain ballots. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/24/us-elections-2020-violence-fears-brooks-brothers-riot https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/24/us-elections...
- cgio 7mo ago
  I see a higher chance of him dropping a dirty nuke at home and pretending it’s Iran. Then he can nuke Iran and win the elections too by proving his point that the war was necessary if not delayed. I would be very worried if I were in any of the Democrat states, as one of them would be the chosen target in such a scenario.
piker 7mo ago
No, it wouldn't.
gentleman11 7mo ago
To the people criticizing the comment above, think of all the other illegal things trump is already doing. It's not a matter of "can't", it's a matter of if he will and who will stop him (nobody, so far)
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 7mo ago
  Regardless, Iran sinking an aircraft carrier does not excuse Trump to nuke Iran and cancel elections. Your point is that he does not care about having a justification.
  - shiroiuma 7mo ago
    There's no good excuse for countless bad and stupid things Trump has done, but he did them anyway and no one has bothered to stop him.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 7mo ago
      Yes, I agree. My point is primarily that it is incorrect to say that his actions have an excuse, especially the hypothetical action of launching the first offensive nuke since the two in August 1945. (Secondarily, stating that he has an excuse is the first step to excusing him.) Nuclear powers collectively agree, and have for decades: the only excuse for launching a nuke at your adversary is them doing it first. (As for elections, history has shown that there is no excuse for outright cancelling them; that is an autocratic ploy to become a despot.)
- mothballed 7mo ago
  I'm surprised he hasn't considered dropping The Bomb. No one will stop him, and it could actually garner a win.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 7mo ago
    This is a terrible idea. Assuming nothing bad happens (other than the mass death, of course), there would be shocked pikachu faces from half of Americans and then some, not to mention those in other nations. If something bad happens (edit: other than the initial mass death, of course), the faces would instead range anywhere from panicked to vaporized.

pram 7mo ago

I think our navy is mostly designed for prestige too, but it seems like you could use the current carriers to transport like a million disposable drones?

shiroiuma 7mo ago
Drones have limited range. Perhaps a submarine would be better: sneak close to your target, raise a pipe from the sub to the surface, then launch a bunch of drones from it.
- jmward01 7mo ago
  Look at SSGNs. Not drone carriers, but TLAM is pretty close to drone warfare from the US's point of view.
  - don_esteban 7mo ago
    Ehm, there is the tiny issue of cost and overall inventory size ...
- throwawayffffas 7mo ago
  Limited range? Shaheds have over 2000 kilometers more than tomahawks. And btw, if you can get a submarince close to your target, torpedoes and missiles are going to be much more effective than drones. Space is limited on platforms, a submarine might have space for 60 drones or 30 missiles, given the immense cost of the submarine, going with the missiles is the right call. The trucks launching shaheds that iran is using can fit like 5 such drones, a similar truck could probably fit 2 to 4 cruise missiles the only reason they are using drones is the rapid production and cost associated with drones instead of the cruise missiles.
- AngryData 7mo ago
  Driving your submarines into a narrow area with limited depth is driving right into a bottleneck trap. It may be hard to locate a submarine out in the deep open sea, not so much if they are limited in escape routes. Some $50 microphones in the water will be able to pick up submarine activity and if the sub is in range of sending out drones it is in range of being detected by drones equipped with simple magnetic sensors. And that is assuming they can't put an active bit of sonar on two or three drones and drop them in the sea and triangulate it to within a few hundred feet to start with. That still doesn't make them easy to take out, but the cost of potentially losing a submarine is so massive that it doesn't make sense to risk them to start with.

themafia 7mo ago

> at an unknown cost We know the cost. We've conducted that type of warfare before. It's incredibly destructive and barbaric and requires huge amounts of human sacrifice to positively take control of territory after you've finished battering it with high explosives from every available angle. It looks really bad on TV. > cruise missile carriers You don't get very large payloads this way. It's fine if you want to pierce the armor of another ship or if you want to launch an "assassination missile" at a single unit but not awesome if you want to replace the capabilities of carriers and battleships and the literal BFGs they carry. > If you build ships good for real wars you tend to get into wars. It was meant to be a deterrent against other nation states and one particular form of naval warfare. In the modern world of terrorist cells and asymmetric warfare this may be a moot point.

throwawayffffas 7mo ago

The position of the article seems to me to be it 'won't' because it can't. And that is an accurate assessment. It would take much more than the forces in the region, to secure the "strait". To actually secure the strait, you have to secure the entire Persian Gulf. It doesn't matter if tankers can pass through the strait only to be blown up just of Qatar. At it's widest the Gulf is about 360 kilometers, well within the range of most drones, aerial, surface and underwater. So they would have to protect every ship in the gulf, intercept all the drones all the time, or secure the entire coastline. It's simply a task air-power and naval power can't perform. Not without major casualties and without attacks going through. The US navies ships are good for real wars, but for casualties to be accepted, there has to be a real purpose. Escorting a bunch of privately owned oil tankers to bring down the price of gas does not really cut it.

appreciatorBus 7mo ago
> there has to be a real purpose. Escorting a bunch of privately owned oil tankers to bring down the price of gas does not really cut it. While I agree with you in principle, if I have learned anything about politics it is that under whatever political system you care to invent, the people will definitely demand war and a navy to escort private oil tankers if it means they get to drive for $0.01 less per gallon.
- jmward01 7mo ago
  The issue though is that this won't get us maritime supremacy. To get civilian tankers through the strait you need that. Iran will still take the occasional shot at these ships and who in their right mind would put their ship into a situation where there is even a 1 in 2000 chance you will be struck? At the end we will have boots on the ground, with real casualties, potentially a ship or two actually damaged and Iran unleashed and attacking everyone's critical oil infrastructure and water infrastructure. They will even probably find a way to hit a ship or two in the red sea just to spread the panic. My original point was that we could 'just blow things up' and get in there, not that we would succeed in achieving a great military objective.

jepj57 7mo ago

In this instance, a flight of B-52's could wipe the concrete shielded missiles off the face of the Earth. Start off with F18s to secure the skies, then B52s to pound the missiles, then the Navy could stroll back in. It's just that no one has had the gumption to do it until now.

yfw 7mo ago
Ok general, the armchair is that way
- jepj57 7mo ago
  Awesome content. Added a lot to the discussion
  - solid_fuel 7mo ago
    Your analysis of the war seems to hinge on a lack of "gumption", which is coincidentally the exact same thing I've heard conservative old boomers say about Vietnam. So I would say you're about equal in terms of adding to the discussion. It is, unfortunately, divorced from reality. The critical thing about hidden missiles that you seem to be missing is: you can't bomb them if you don't know where they are. We've already seen a 4 week bombing campaign that has included everything from a children's school to a chemotherapy company to bunkers under Tehran, so I don't think there's a lack of "bloodlust" or "gumption" from any of the so-called leaders at the DoD. Rather, it seems that they simply - don't know where the missiles and drones are. Which as I pointed out earlier, makes it rather hard to bomb them.
ceejayoz 7mo ago
We’ve tried the “just air power” approach a number of times. It never works by itself.
jimjimjim 7mo ago
But sir, how do we stop an old guy on the bow of a rusty fishing boat firing a $50 rpg at the oil tanker?

mcswell 7mo ago

"They are only good for show at port visits..." This perfectly describes Trump's idea of battleships, in fact I think he's said more or less that himself. And he wants to help design them, because he's "aesthetic."

gmerc 7mo ago

have you considered that if you can’t keep your guns away from “gut driven” administrations, maybe you shouldn’t make them at all?

aaron695 7mo ago

[dead]

oceanplexian 7mo ago

> This administration doesn't do things because of deep understanding, it does them because of gut reaction. Do you think that the overwhelming tactical success in Venezuela, or the basically flawless decapitation strikes in the opening weeks of the Iran conflict were gut reactions? Because of that’s the case I’d be terrified to know what the Pentagon is capable of if they really put their mind to it.

solid_fuel 7mo ago
> the basically flawless decapitation strikes in the opening weeks of the Iran conflict Ah, the flawless decapitation strikes that have shown Iran we truly mean business. Remind me, how quickly did they surrender after those strikes? Oh, they didn't? Maybe they weren't "flawless", hmm?

jordanb 7mo ago

"Cruise missile carriers" are what the Burke class destroyers are. It's also what Russia built their navy around. How'd that work out? The US carriers have been involved in every naval action since WWII. They're hardly unused. But attacking a country of 90 million people and a high level of military sophistication AND who's been expecting the attack and planning for it for many years was always going to be a tall order.

lumost 7mo ago

Straights have been impossible to force since Churchill tried to force the Bosphorus in 1915. Placing ships in a narrow target area that can be pre-sighted is a losing proposition, a single artillery gun could mission-kill a destroyer in hormuz - mines/torpedos/drones could sink a ship in a place where rescue may not be possible.