War with Iran, and other cheering ideas
Mar. 17th, 2008 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nancylebovhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7147.htm
Aside from everything else in the article, is that idea of the Russians having a ten-year lead in missile tech reasonable? It sounds as though those Sunburn missiles are available enough that the US should have one to study, and even though it's a high tech complicated item, is it that hard to copy them?
I don't have the foggiest idea of how much Israelis contributed to the current administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. I've assumed that it was something Bush and crew really wanted, and they didn't need external pressure.
A small geek question: Are those missiles actually called Sunburns, or is that a translation?
Link from here-- I don't know if he's being habitually depressing, or if he's on to something. If the latter, impeachment should have been a much higher priority.
Aside from everything else in the article, is that idea of the Russians having a ten-year lead in missile tech reasonable? It sounds as though those Sunburn missiles are available enough that the US should have one to study, and even though it's a high tech complicated item, is it that hard to copy them?
I don't have the foggiest idea of how much Israelis contributed to the current administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. I've assumed that it was something Bush and crew really wanted, and they didn't need external pressure.
A small geek question: Are those missiles actually called Sunburns, or is that a translation?
Link from here-- I don't know if he's being habitually depressing, or if he's on to something. If the latter, impeachment should have been a much higher priority.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 04:24 pm (UTC)(The NATO reporting name system uses the initial letter of the name to indicate the type of missile or aircraft: S is for surface-to-surface missiles, G for surface-to-air, A for air-to-air, F for fighter aircraft, B for bombers, and so forth.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 04:48 pm (UTC)The flip side of this coin is that -- although the USN will turn blue before they admit it -- their carriers are obsolescent. We've got in-flight refueling these days. With "soft power" properly used to provide foreign basing rights, there should be no need for the relatively short-range and under-armed aircraft that carriers can field: the USAF could do the job, and leave the navy guys to doing what they do best (escorting the marine corps and driving submarines -- which is basically what the Royal Navy does these days). This is one area where the Bush administration's idiocy is glaring: a different administration that actually played diplomatic ball wouldn't need to skin tens or twenties of billions of dollars into obsolescent floating missile targets -- they could just borrow other folks' runways. But for bureaucratic institutional reasons, it ain't going to happen until (a) the Pentagon budget collapses, or (b) the US gets its head handed to it on a plate in a military adventure against a halfway adequate opponent.
The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-17 05:09 pm (UTC)What an astonishing list of inaccurate statements.
First of all, the Standard 2 and Standard 3 SAM's (the sharp end of the AEGIS Cruisers) are quite capable of shooting down the Sunburns, though they are less capable against them than they are against many other missiles. It would take a concentrated, coordinated volley of Sunburns to penetrate a carrier group's defenses.
Secondly, the Phalanx and similar computer-controlled cannon are highly capable as backstops for long-range anti-missile systems. The main problems with such a defense, and the reason why you really want to intercept the missiles sooner, are that (1) if you miss, you probably won't have another chance, and (2) depending on when you hit, your ship may get sprayed by fragments of the destroyed missile, which will cause some damage (though not as much as if the missile hit intact).
Both lasers and railguns are approaching practicality as capital ship defensive systems. The USAF already has an operational airborne anti-missile laser (and the power issue is much less of a constraint for a ship-mounted system). Recent advances in railguns are bringing them within a decade or so of deployment.
The flip side of this coin is that -- although the USN will turn blue before they admit it -- their carriers are obsolescent.
No, really, they're not. The oceans are a bit too big for us to do without at-sea basing of aircraft, and no other types of ships can replace them in this role.
We've got in-flight refueling these days.
Indeed, and in-flight refueling means that missions have to be planned well in advance, and logistically supported in perfect coordination. This works well for a single, long-prepared strike: not so well for the tempo of operations required in an actual war. In war, one may need to suddenly change objectives or launch attacks on targets of opportunity, which is incompatible with extensive pre-planning.
With "soft power" properly used to provide foreign basing rights ...
What about theaters in which we don't have allies willing to support us at the moment that we need it?
... there should be no need for the relatively short-range and under-armed aircraft that carriers can field:
Save in the one category of heavy aircraft, their capabilities compare favorably with land-based air. Also, range is not as crucial, because the carriers are mobile -- they can move in and out from an operational area as required.
... the USAF could do the job, and leave the navy guys to doing what they do best (escorting the marine corps and driving submarines).
How is the Navy to "escort the Marine Corps" without control of the air? What if an enemy chooses to attack them from the air?
This is one area where the Bush administration's idiocy is glaring: a different administration that actually played diplomatic ball wouldn't need to skin tens or twenties of billions of dollars into obsolescent floating missile targets -- they could just borrow other folks' runways.
"Playing diplomatic ball" would mean, in most cases, complete inaction against the enemy. We would have plenty of other folks' runways to borrow -- provided that we didn't actually use them to any effect!
(b) the US gets its head handed to it on a plate in a military adventure against a halfway adequate opponent.
The solution, then, would be better air defense systems. Not abandonment of the carrier.
Re: The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-17 06:13 pm (UTC)And, oh yes, if you believe you're surrounded by enemies you will find them.
Re: The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-18 12:04 am (UTC)Sorry, what does any of this have to do with the relative merits of aircraft carriers versus land bases, or big warships versus small ones? And, actually, the British Empire exhausted itself fighting two wars against Germany.
And, oh yes, if you believe you're surrounded by enemies you will find them.
Iranian enmity to America is fairly well-established, and has very little to do with anything we've done lately.
Re: The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-18 02:21 am (UTC)"Lately"? You mean, aside from overthrow their democratic government, and training their secret police? That situation ended less than thirty years ago. What's the statute of limitations on the right to be pissed off about that kind of thing? Hitler died more than sixty years ago -- do Jews still have the right to be pissed off at the Nazis? Are the Cuban exiles still allowed to carry a grudge for something Castro did in 1959? Are right-wing Americans still allowed to grumble about FDR?
But if you want something more recent than that, how about funding terrorist attacks against Iran last year?
Re: The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-18 02:49 am (UTC)Why is this an act of war, while Iran's funding of terrorist attacks against Iraq, which they've been doing since at least 2004 or 2005, is somehow just business as usual?
Re: The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-18 03:08 am (UTC)But hey, let's say it's an act of war. Fine. If Iraq wants to declare war on Iran (again), let them. We shouldn't be involved. If we're smart, we won't be involved.
Re: The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-18 08:33 am (UTC)Well, it is. Funding guerillas in another country is an act of war.
But hey, let's say it's an act of war. Fine. If Iraq wants to declare war on Iran (again), let them. We shouldn't be involved. If we're smart, we won't be involved.
If we're smart, we won't be involved in a war which Iran starts against Iraq, in which our own troops were also targeted?
This is an ... interesting ... definition of "intelligence." One which sounds rather similar to the normal definition of cowardice, actually.
Re: The Need For Carriers
Date: 2008-03-19 12:03 am (UTC)Then the US has a lot to answer for. Iran in 1953, Guatemala in '54, Cuba in '61, Chile in the early '70s, Afghanistan in the late '70s, Nicaragua in the '80s, and well as funding both Iran and Iraq in their war, Panama in 1990, Afghanistan again and Iraq now. All those were acts of war? Huh. Maybe we are as bad as people say.
Anyway, Jordan, your inability to recognize simple sense when you read it is your problem, not mine.
Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-17 05:09 pm (UTC)If America or Britain had listend to the advice of the jeune ecole then, we would have condemned our naval forces to irrelevance in the World Wars. It's a good thing that we didn't.
The argument was made again in the 1950's, with the development of nuclear weapons. Would we have been more capable in the Cold War, in Korea or Vietnam, if we had not possessed carriers to support our operations?
Generally speaking, there is always a "capital ship" which needs the support of smaller ships to operate, and which shallow thinkers then decide is "obsolescent" for that reason. And always, the shallowness of this thinking lies in a failure to consider the advantages of the concentration of power for offensive purposes -- advantages not readily obtainable through the sheer massing of lots of smaller units.
Re: Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-17 06:15 pm (UTC)And the failure of the armchair warrior is in paying no attention to the broader macroeconomic picture, which is that since about 1815 the capital-intensive pattern of modern warfare has been to render the maintenance of an offensive capability increasingly expensive, so that warfare for traditional reasons (resource control, land) is negatively cost-effective.
Hint: you're betraying a mind set that was quite common in the UK, circa 1908. You really ought to reconsider your baseline assumptions.
... Hey, you would happen to be Jordan Bassior by any chance, would you?
Re: Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-17 07:02 pm (UTC)Re: Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-17 07:17 pm (UTC)I'll just have to remember so I don't get stuck to the tar baby again.
Re: Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-18 02:43 am (UTC)Re: Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-18 11:39 am (UTC)Re: Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-18 11:47 am (UTC)That's the price of arguing ad hominem, unless the majority of your audience both shares your specific prejudice and is irrational enough to agree with the logical validity of such an argument.
Re: Shallow Military Thinking
Date: 2008-03-18 12:09 am (UTC)The relevance of this to building big versus small warships is ... ? Because, even if I took your assumption as true (this is arguable, because it depends on whether you measure the expense in absolute terms, or relative to which factors of production), it still wouldn't mean that building lots of small warships was better than building a few large ones -- that would depend on the mission statement of the fleet and the likely ratio of attritional exchange in battle against the likely foes compared to other fleet designs.
Hint: you're betraying a mind set that was quite common in the UK, circa 1908. You really ought to reconsider your baseline assumptions.
This was the mindset that enabled Britain to win World War One, since her naval dominance -- achieved through superior numbers of battleships and escorts -- allowed her to strangle the German economy through blockade.
Hey, you would happen to be Jordan Bassior by any chance, would you?
I have the honor. And you?
no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 04:49 pm (UTC)We've known about the Sunburns (and its predecessors) for decades. In fact, we developed the Aegis-Standard combination, the tactics of fighter interception of cruise missiles, and the Phalanx automated air defense cannon, largely to shoot down such missiles.
Having lived through more than one crisis and war, I've seen this all before. When we approach a conflict, the media suddenly "discovers" a "new" enemy weapon (I've known about the Soviet heavy anti-ship since I was playing Harpoon 25 years ago), ignores the existence of any friendly countermeasures, and then runs scare stories about how this one weapon renders all our capabilities impotent. Or, alternatively, discovers a flaw in one of our weapons, which we've known about for years and already corrected, which will supposedly doom all our operations to failure.
Charitably, I assume the reason for this is that the media is generally rather ignorant of military affairs, and hence is easily surprised by what is common knowledge to those who follow military technology.
I don't have the foggiest idea of how much Israelis contributed to the current administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. I've assumed that it was something Bush and crew really wanted, and they didn't need external pressure.
Given that Saddam had violated every provision of the truce, I'm quite glad that Bush deposed that regime. His father, or Clinton should have fought that war -- it's too bad that they left that problem for Dubya to deal with.
Link from here-- I don't know if he's being habitually depressing, or if he's on to something. If the latter, impeachment should have been a much higher priority.
Why should we have tried to impeach Bush because he wanted to go to war with Iran, which has been committing warlike acts against America fairly regularly since 1979, and which is now on the verge of acquiring atomic weapons? Are you really that calm at the prospect a nuclear-armed Iran? Really?
Do you want a Democratic President in 2008? Do you want that President to have to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran? Really?
no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 07:19 pm (UTC)And "warlike acts"? The US has been committing "warlike acts" against Iran since 1953.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 12:39 am (UTC)I consider war with Iran practically unavoidable: the question is "Do I want war with Iran now, before Iran has a sizable arsenal of nuclear ICBM's, or later, after they are so equipped.
Do you want our troops in Iraq to be exposed to even more violence? Do you want Shiite oil workers in Saudi Arabia to sabotage the Saudi oil fields in protest? Do you want pro-American and reform-minded Iranians to be imprisoned and killed? Do you want even more terror attacks against Israel? Really?
And how will these problems be avoided by waiting for the Iranians to launch a nuclear attack?
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 02:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 02:42 am (UTC)And what if the Iranians start one -- say, by sheltering guerillas who are attacking American troops in Iraq, or attacking Allied forces at sea in the Gulf, or even (but I know they'd never do this) violating diplomatic immunity to make prisoner dozens of American citizens?
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 03:14 am (UTC)As far as your first item, I've got a simple yet elegant plan to make certain that no nation in the world will be able to attack American troops in Iraq. I'm sure you can figure out what it is.
As for the third, what, are you still pissed off about the embassy? I thought you were advocating only talking about things that were done lately.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 08:35 am (UTC)Wimping out?
As far as your first item, I've got a simple yet elegant plan to make certain that no nation in the world will be able to attack American troops in Iraq. I'm sure you can figure out what it is.
Pull out of Iraq? And what happens, then, if Iran invades Iraq, an American ally which we have committed ourselves to defend?
You're also ignoring the frequent Iranian threats to use nuclear weapons against Israel, once they've developed them.
Just how far do you believe that America must withdraw from involvement with the rest of the world, to avoid going to war with Iran when Iranian aggressions involve Iran in war with other countries?
no subject
Date: 2008-03-19 12:43 am (UTC)That's the real problem the neocons have. If we pull our troops out, civil war erupts again in Iraq, Iran helps the nominal government, and eventually Iraq becomes Iran West, and we look like idiots.
On the other hand, if we don't pull out, civil war will eventually break out anyway. We've only been keeping things at a simmer by funding and arming both sides of the upcoming war. At some point, either we get tired of the charade, or one side decides it's strong enough, and then things boil over, only with our troops in the middle. Fun fun fun!
Keep in mind that, for all your talk of "Iranian aggression", we're the aggressors here. In the 29 years since the Iranian Islamic Revolution, Iran's been involved in one overt war (to defend themselves against an invader), and maybe two covert wars (funding of terrorist attacks against Israel, support for guerillas in Iraq). over that same span of time, the US has been involved in -- let's see, Grenada, Gulf War, Panama, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq -- that's six overt wars (none of them involving defense of US territory, only one of which was even plausibly retribution for an attack on the US) plus maybe a couple of dozen lesser military incidents (like the Gulf of Sidra incidents, or deployment of US troops to Lebanon), plus funding of covert wars in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. We've got no business accusing the Iranians of being aggressive.
But as your "wimping out" comment demonstrates, you don't actually care any of this. This, to you, is a game where you get to enjoy the manly bloodshed dished out by US and allied troops, and any chance that such bloodshed will be avoided is a disappointment to you. Any ill done by an Iranian is an excuse for dropping bombs; any ill done by Americans is excused by some past ill of the Iranians, on into infinity.
At no point to you consider consequences. Just as it never occurred to the Bushies that Iraqis might not welcome us with flowers and hugs and settle down into a nice, peaceful federal democracy, it also never occurs to you to consider what the likely outcomes would be of outright war with Iran.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 09:28 am (UTC)I would like to see the perps punished. Given that one of the perps is currently the President of Iran, this naturally makes me more supportive of war.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-23 06:10 am (UTC)To be blunt: yes, I want a Democratic President to take office in January, and regardless of what Iran has or does -- or doesn't -- I would feel safer with a Democrat in office than with anybody resembling the current crop of Republicans.
So for many of us, that type of rhetorical trick you stuck in there falls flat.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-23 06:22 am (UTC)To be blunt: yes, I want a Democratic President to take office in January, and regardless of what Iran has or does -- or doesn't -- I would feel safer with a Democrat in office than with anybody resembling the current crop of Republicans.
So for many of us, that type of rhetorical trick you stuck in there falls flat.
It wasn't a "rhetorical trick." The Democrats have more or less committed themselves to no pre-emptive strike on Iran, regardless of the state of the Iranian nuclear program. So, a Democratic President winning the election in 2008 means that the Iranians will probably get nuclear weapons on his watch -- and be able to strike at their initiative. All while they are committing acts of war against America, hence creating situations which could easily escalate into war even if they didn't intend it to at that particular moment.
I think that's pretty dangerous, and I think that letting the Iranians get the first licks, in this context, is extremely irresponsible.
(if you ask, I regard the probability of a nuclear-armed Iran not using its nuclear weapons aggressively to be rather low).
no subject
Date: 2008-03-24 09:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 04:51 pm (UTC)No. Look at the economics of the two countries and how they perform in other areas of missile tech (precision guided weapons, for ex.).
Not that a weapon needs to be that advanced to be effective. This looks like it could hurt the Navy badly if it works. Quoting your link:
The Sunburn missile has never seen use in combat, to my knowledge, which probably explains why its fearsome capabilities are not more widely recognized.
Translation: "It works well in tests, but there's no clue how'll work against an enemy applying maneuver and electronic warfare to confuse the thing." Given the capability of the US submarine fleet to impose a blockade I suspect neither Iran nor China have any interest in rolling those dice (Iran exports crude and imports gasoline, so it is dependent on imports).
As for the USA making a major attack on Iran, I've been reading hawkish blogs going "this is it, we're finally going to do it!" for several years listing just the kind of signs in that LJ post. Dubya's plate is full, he doesn't want to screw up McCain's election chances, so he's going to sit tight unless Iran tries something dramatic.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 02:45 am (UTC)Note that most persons arguing that the enemy has amazing capabilities against us tend to assume that all the enemy's weapons will perform precisely as designed in combat, while none of ours will.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 05:15 pm (UTC)ttyl
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 02:47 am (UTC)This is why I'm not too worried about the Iranian "Sunburns." To penetrate, they would need to be fired en masse and with considerable coordination. Knocking out the Iranian headquarters and communications nodes, however, would deprive the Iranians of the ability to do that. Fired in small and uncoordinated volleys, they would easily be shot down by our naval defenses.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 02:59 am (UTC)ttyl
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 07:22 pm (UTC)Damn, that's ironic. The plot to overthrow Iran's democratic government back in the '50s (which led, ultimately, to what they have today) was originally proposed under the Truman administration, but Truman refused to allow it, and it had to wait for Eisenhower.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 02:46 am (UTC)