10 ms·

Dropping bombs and evading live anti-aircraft fire is of limited applicability? Are you sure you're not confusing combined arms exercises that the US has, and c

by ericmay 2mo ago

Dropping bombs and evading live anti-aircraft fire is of limited applicability? Are you sure you're not confusing combined arms exercises that the US has, and continues to engage in (Venezuela comes to mind recently) with your personal opinion on the validity of the war in Iran?

mplewis 2mo ago
brother, how do you think this is going for us
- ericmay 2mo ago
  I think that's a separate question from the validity of real-life combat experience that American (and other) forces are gaining that Chinese forces lack, with respect to the OP.
  - estearum 2mo ago
    The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict. Nothing to do with "validity." Your lived experience (or whoever's you're defending) is valid.
    - ericmay 2mo ago
      That is factually incorrect then if that's the claim. The US has that experience.
      - estearum 2mo ago
        No active American servicemember has fought a near-peer adversary lmao You should do some reading from the people who fought in GWOT and are now volunteering in Ukraine. Obviously combat experience is better than no combat experience, but we absolutely should not assume much beyond that.
        ericmay 2mo ago
        > No active American servicemember has fought a near-peer adversary lmao You don't need to fight China to get experience fighting. The skills and experience translate. Plus America is getting direct experience with Chinese and Russian made systems. Even the simple act of organizing and deploying the military is incredibly valuable as I've already explained to you in another post.
        estearum 2mo ago
        US Marine talking about Ukraine: “I just think that foreign fighters came here and got a war… a type of warfare that they didn’t expect,” he said. “Especially American foreign fighters. It’s not Afghanistan. It’s not Iraq. You’re taking the side of Vietnam versus the U.S. over here. You are the underdog, and with no air superiority or anything. And so they just assume they were being used as cannon fodder. But that’s just the way this war is. It’s a nightmare.” Yes, obviously having experience deploying the military, or driving cars, or fixing tanks, or evacuating casualties, is all far better than no experience doing those things. Do you think someone is disagreeing with you on this point?
        ericmay 2mo ago
        Circling back to where this began... > The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict. This is a factually incorrect statement. I'm not sure why you're confused about what you are agreeing or disagreeing with at this point.
        estearum 2mo ago
        Clearly that tickled a nerve for some reason. Here's a question: When someone says that you have no experience being a professional baseball player, do you say "errrhhmm ackshually, I brush my teeth every morning just like an MLB player does. I put on my pants every morning. I have even held a baseball bat!" Obviously a phrase like of "limited relevant experience" is constrained to a semantically meaningful set of things
estearum 2mo ago
Uhh yes. I am sure. A smash and grab in Venezuela is not Iran and Iran is not China. The closest analog we have to war with China is Ukraine/Russia. All evidence from NATO exercises and investigations is that Ukr/Rus conflict has virtually no relevance to OEF, OIF, or The Caracas Kidnapping. Iran is a little taste of what's going in Ukr/Rus, but obviously China would be able to wield the same type of war at orders of magnitude greater intensity. My comment was quite specific on my claim. You have provided zero evidence against it, and instead are just doing this weird presumptive ad hominem thing? If you were paying attention to what's actually going on in modern battlefields, you'd know that in fact you're right: "dropping bombs and evading AA fire" is actually of limited applicability! Great examples! There are no bombs being dropped. Virtually no humans are being shot at with anti-aircraft fire. That's what I'm pointing out.
- ericmay 2mo ago
  Ok so let me explain something to you as I think you might be a little new to the military or military theory, combat, &c. Militaries need to train in order to test systems, test weapons, gain experience, and be able to generally perform better and accomplish any given objective. In the modern era, militaries need to engage in what is called Combined Arms exercises. These exercises, as the name alludes to, coordinate activities across different branches of the military. So it might be the army coordinating with the navy to attack a target or capture some piece of land or objective. Maybe the army is on the ground directing fire from naval ships off the coast, or it could be the Air Force providing drone coverage as special forces achieve some mission. Coordinating these activities during peace time is a key function of successful militaries. It is incredibly important to align these activities to be effective. Because of this, not only do you have militaries that work on combined arms and other trainings internally, but in the case of NATO, or perhaps the US with alliances in the Pacific we also engage in combined arms exercises with other militaries to further enhance and integrate those capabilities so that when it comes time to fight, forces have been trained how to respond and can do so more effectively. A great example of this is KATUSA - Korean Augmentation to the United States Army where Korean soldiers are actually assigned to and reporting to American military command and train alongside the United States. The reason Venezuela is important, for example, is because it was an exercise demonstrating combined arms coordination and execution. It shows what the US military is actually capable when air, sea, and land forces engage to accomplish some objective. So why is this important re: Iran (and Ukraine certainly). Because it's combined arms activities except that it's the real thing. Real equipment failures might happen, real lessons are learned, you are actually getting shot at. Lives are at stake. The military is actually battle tested, even if the opponent is hopelessly outmatched. So when you write something like this: > All evidence from NATO exercises and investigations is that Ukr/Rus conflict has virtually no relevance to OEF, OIF, or The Caracas Criminal Apprehension. Those exercises, the lessons learned from the wars such as OEF, OIF, and even how Ukraine is today using and testing American military equipment in battle, matter a whole lot. And that's one of Xi Jingping's primary concerns with his military. They have done 0 of this. They've never really been shot at. They haven't tested their equipment in any sort of real battle. For the software-minded, it's like they've always been in development and haven't even touched a preview environment, let alone production. And worrying enough the US has demonstrated the capability to bypass and/or destroy Chinese and Russian military equipment including air defense and radar arrays - this is worrisome for those countries. If it comes time for a real war, well the only evidence you have so far is your state of the art equipment or close enough to it was absolutely fucking useless when it came to operations involving the US. Whooops. They may start a war and find out they made a lot of bad assumptions and didn't train well enough and then what? I'd encourage you to think about this a little more than you are here.

by ericmay 2mo ago

mplewis 2mo ago

brother, how do you think this is going for us

ericmay 2mo ago
I think that's a separate question from the validity of real-life combat experience that American (and other) forces are gaining that Chinese forces lack, with respect to the OP.
- estearum 2mo ago
  The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict. Nothing to do with "validity." Your lived experience (or whoever's you're defending) is valid.
  - ericmay 2mo ago
    That is factually incorrect then if that's the claim. The US has that experience.
    - estearum 2mo ago
      No active American servicemember has fought a near-peer adversary lmao You should do some reading from the people who fought in GWOT and are now volunteering in Ukraine. Obviously combat experience is better than no combat experience, but we absolutely should not assume much beyond that.
      - ericmay 2mo ago
        > No active American servicemember has fought a near-peer adversary lmao You don't need to fight China to get experience fighting. The skills and experience translate. Plus America is getting direct experience with Chinese and Russian made systems. Even the simple act of organizing and deploying the military is incredibly valuable as I've already explained to you in another post.
        estearum 2mo ago
        US Marine talking about Ukraine: “I just think that foreign fighters came here and got a war… a type of warfare that they didn’t expect,” he said. “Especially American foreign fighters. It’s not Afghanistan. It’s not Iraq. You’re taking the side of Vietnam versus the U.S. over here. You are the underdog, and with no air superiority or anything. And so they just assume they were being used as cannon fodder. But that’s just the way this war is. It’s a nightmare.” Yes, obviously having experience deploying the military, or driving cars, or fixing tanks, or evacuating casualties, is all far better than no experience doing those things. Do you think someone is disagreeing with you on this point?
        ericmay 2mo ago
        Circling back to where this began... > The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict. This is a factually incorrect statement. I'm not sure why you're confused about what you are agreeing or disagreeing with at this point.
        estearum 2mo ago
        Clearly that tickled a nerve for some reason. Here's a question: When someone says that you have no experience being a professional baseball player, do you say "errrhhmm ackshually, I brush my teeth every morning just like an MLB player does. I put on my pants every morning. I have even held a baseball bat!" Obviously a phrase like of "limited relevant experience" is constrained to a semantically meaningful set of things

estearum 2mo ago

Uhh yes. I am sure. A smash and grab in Venezuela is not Iran and Iran is not China. The closest analog we have to war with China is Ukraine/Russia. All evidence from NATO exercises and investigations is that Ukr/Rus conflict has virtually no relevance to OEF, OIF, or The Caracas Kidnapping. Iran is a little taste of what's going in Ukr/Rus, but obviously China would be able to wield the same type of war at orders of magnitude greater intensity. My comment was quite specific on my claim. You have provided zero evidence against it, and instead are just doing this weird presumptive ad hominem thing? If you were paying attention to what's actually going on in modern battlefields, you'd know that in fact you're right: "dropping bombs and evading AA fire" is actually of limited applicability! Great examples! There are no bombs being dropped. Virtually no humans are being shot at with anti-aircraft fire. That's what I'm pointing out.

ericmay 2mo ago
Ok so let me explain something to you as I think you might be a little new to the military or military theory, combat, &c. Militaries need to train in order to test systems, test weapons, gain experience, and be able to generally perform better and accomplish any given objective. In the modern era, militaries need to engage in what is called Combined Arms exercises. These exercises, as the name alludes to, coordinate activities across different branches of the military. So it might be the army coordinating with the navy to attack a target or capture some piece of land or objective. Maybe the army is on the ground directing fire from naval ships off the coast, or it could be the Air Force providing drone coverage as special forces achieve some mission. Coordinating these activities during peace time is a key function of successful militaries. It is incredibly important to align these activities to be effective. Because of this, not only do you have militaries that work on combined arms and other trainings internally, but in the case of NATO, or perhaps the US with alliances in the Pacific we also engage in combined arms exercises with other militaries to further enhance and integrate those capabilities so that when it comes time to fight, forces have been trained how to respond and can do so more effectively. A great example of this is KATUSA - Korean Augmentation to the United States Army where Korean soldiers are actually assigned to and reporting to American military command and train alongside the United States. The reason Venezuela is important, for example, is because it was an exercise demonstrating combined arms coordination and execution. It shows what the US military is actually capable when air, sea, and land forces engage to accomplish some objective. So why is this important re: Iran (and Ukraine certainly). Because it's combined arms activities except that it's the real thing. Real equipment failures might happen, real lessons are learned, you are actually getting shot at. Lives are at stake. The military is actually battle tested, even if the opponent is hopelessly outmatched. So when you write something like this: > All evidence from NATO exercises and investigations is that Ukr/Rus conflict has virtually no relevance to OEF, OIF, or The Caracas Criminal Apprehension. Those exercises, the lessons learned from the wars such as OEF, OIF, and even how Ukraine is today using and testing American military equipment in battle, matter a whole lot. And that's one of Xi Jingping's primary concerns with his military. They have done 0 of this. They've never really been shot at. They haven't tested their equipment in any sort of real battle. For the software-minded, it's like they've always been in development and haven't even touched a preview environment, let alone production. And worrying enough the US has demonstrated the capability to bypass and/or destroy Chinese and Russian military equipment including air defense and radar arrays - this is worrisome for those countries. If it comes time for a real war, well the only evidence you have so far is your state of the art equipment or close enough to it was absolutely fucking useless when it came to operations involving the US. Whooops. They may start a war and find out they made a lot of bad assumptions and didn't train well enough and then what? I'd encourage you to think about this a little more than you are here.