alt Hacker News"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable.
Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "water shortage deception" at Midway in WW2 https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2024/december/bat...
Slightly concerned that there could be an unreported tit-for-tat. China "allegedly" arming/equipping Iran to perhaps the USA coverty planting unbalancing arms and equipment to Taiwan. The Ukraine (and Iran?) theater has shown how drone warfare has changed the game. A nation without a navy can now inexpensively counter a nation with one (ongoing 2-for-2 at the moment).
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It's been discussed for decades that the US would run out of precision munitions in any multi-week conflict. The presumption was that the US would either be in a nuclear war at that point, or a ground campaign would complete the task along with dumb munitions.
That the US decided to expend it's precision weapon stockpile on a conflict of choice with no ground or dumb bombing campaign to fallback on is a mystery for later generations. It is not unbelievable that Iran is capable of blocking a dumb bombing campaign indefinitely, or that the viable targets for such a campaign are politically untenable.
> For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable.
This is a concerning statement, as it implies it'd be impossible for the United States to lose an engagement regardless of any and all evidence.
This doesn't account for the substantial difference between military deception and political (self-)deception.
The Midway water shortage deception was a way to gain a tactical, followed by strategic advantage.
Running out of missiles is an "incovenient truth" for the zionist pro-war crowd. History is littered with innumerable examples of political leaders not adequately considering ground-truth military and logistical realities (Confederates fighting in Pennsylvania, Germans invading Russia, etc.).
Leave it to HN to over-intellectualize and twist something obvious because why not?
The cretins in charge of the country think the problem is that the soldiers don't have enough testosterone and have too much facial hair, and these people are capable of this next-level deception of the enemy? I don't think so.
Their idea of an army is the movie "300" - on oiled up, violent homoerotic phantasy. Soon, that's what's going to be actually left.
Most dominant does not mean most intelligent
> nation without a navy can now inexpensively counter a nation with one
I would argue that you are right with Ukraine vs Russia since the former has sunk so many of latter's assets. But that has not been the case with US vs Iran.
Given that all of the advisors who warned against starting something with Iran called this out as a risk (before hegseth cleaned house of anyone competent willing to speak up), why do you think this is so unbelievable?
> For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable.
Sadly, I find it very believable. To build them costs lots of time and money. To use them, not so much. Going low tech might risk more casualties in some cases - and so all the political problems that follow along from that.
We've also seen plenty of wishful thinking from the civilian leaders of the military. I'm sure that in their minds, each strike they launch is surely the one that will finally break Iran, better hit them with the good stuff, shock and awe.
They've also been purging all kinds of top military officers, presumably over culture war issues and insufficient sycophancy.
>For the most-dominant military power in the world
Russia kept saying its the second most powerful military in the world and now it's the second most powerful military in Ukraine. You can't just keep saying words and then think they're true because you keep repeating them.
There's no secret US weapons factories hidden away somewhere, the inadequacy of the US industrial base to maintain production for long term war have been known for decades and were in some sense even an intentional shift after the end of the Cold War.
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Once proper defenses for cheap and slow suicide drones is created (fast small unmanned interceptors with bullets instead of missiles) this temporary drone threat phase of war will be mostly over. The ability to build $1000 drones in everybody's garage was an obvious but unhandled threat, surely it will be though.
The funniest thing I've seen with the Ukraine war (if it's not AI) is an old prop plane with it's canopy removed and the dude in the rear seat shooting down a drone with his automatic rifle. We're going to get Top Gun: RC Mini Edition in the next armed conflict and it's going to seem like a video game.
It will then become just another threat, and one that is managed well enough to no longer be a david v. goliath kind of weapon.
> For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable.
Wow, yeah, you'd need to have morons at the top of the chain of command and subordinates afraid to speak out in order for something like that to happen. Nothing like the US government today at all.