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test_ [none/use name]

@ test_ @hexbear.net

Posts
6
Comments
132
Joined
4 yr. ago

Sorry in advance if I don't reply, the ability and energy to communicate are both fickle

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from April 8th to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - Blockade²

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  • this is a quibble, but I think China does have a sizeable blue-water navy -- mainly lagging the US in number of carriers (China 3, US 11) -- but in any case, as you point out, China lacks the many overseas naval bases the US can use to refuel its ships around the world, which is a major disadvantage

    But what about economic leverage? If the US threatens to wage essentially a U-boat campaign against global shipping unless everyone buys American, I would think China, Russia, and Iran combined could still exert considerable economic leverage in the other direction, creating a "fucked either way" situation where it costs money to defy the US but also costs money to concede to the US, forcing a negotiation. Am I being naive? Or is the crucial point that, as you said, China does not want to fight the US to begin with?

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  • we're all tense. the stakes are high and we're in suspense with these talks. maybe juniper was not familiar with medhurst, was upset by the content of the video (which is potentially disheartening), and then, when they were already upset, reacted poorly when someone defended the video and chastised its detractors? it's not the most graceful conduct but these things happen. I think we have to cut each other some slack and not let arguments take on a life of their own. sorry to unfairly single you out, you don't deserve it, but you're the last one to have commented.

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  • Isn't a mine-layer boat just... any boat whatsoever?

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  • Tim And Eric Awesome Show Great Job type name

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  • Medhurst's argument seems to be, "Even a temporary US monopoly on energy could precipitate durable capital flight into the US, reindustrializing the US and deindustrializing Asia and Europe. Then the US seals the deal with naval piracy, unless Iran, China, and Russia can defeat the US navy and/or make that piracy too costly to maintain."

    Is that accurate? I struggle to imagine the US reindustrializing. Maybe the plan is to situate that industrial growth in south and central America and then extract the profits back to the US? The other thing is, militarily -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- aren't navies easy to disable with missiles and submarines, assuming you can locate the ships? It would be a major escalation, sure, but no more an escalation than this plan to hold global shipping at gunpoint to strangle the economies of rival nuclear superpowers. The US can't just put their navy under their nuclear umbrella -- or some other retaliation umbrella -- and do whatever they want. China, Iran, and Russia have their own means of destruction. At the end of the day, MAD alone is not a basis for primacy, and it kinda seems like MAD is what this plan boils down to.

    *I'm not disagreeing with Medhurst, I bet this is the plan.

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  • I imagine nazi groups within Ukraine can likely continue to operate as US-backed guerilla terrorists for a long time

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  • That is an amazingly detailed video. Iran has really made no secret of their setup. Makes it even more stunning that we are here now.

    we got:

    • blast traps and blast doors
    • separation of liquid fuel components, solid fuel kept in long-term storage
    • buried under mountains with hundreds of meters of solid rock above them
    • kilometers of tunnels in a given complex
    • enormous excavation drills that can bore new entrances through the rock
    • tunnels near the edge of the mountain but invisible from outside, from which new exits can be quickly dug
    • tunnels large enough for TELs (transporter erector launchers) to drive through, so they can pop out of holes wherever they are dug, launch their missiles, then immediately drive back into the complex and away from the hole

    *This video from Apr 2 discusses missile manufacturing at 10:48

    https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Wft9-NMcJ-U

    TLDR uploader says Iran can rapidly produce their simpler, liquid-fuel missiles from within the missile cities, but not the "advanced, rapid-response, solid-propellant systems, such as the Kheybar-Shekan and Fattah series" so they are likely conserving the latter.

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  • That's true. Iran can dole out orders of magnitude more attrition than the Taliban ever could. But Iran's ability to keep doing that for a year or more depends on the resilience of their missile cities and their ability to resupply them, dig out the entrances after they are bombed, and other challenges like that. People far more knowledgeable than I seem pretty confident that Iran can indeed do that, and I believe it. I'm just wondering how they know that.

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  • That's true, but the Taliban weren't trying to maintain a substantial missile infrastructure, they were guerrillas picking off ground troops.

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  • The consensus, outside Fox News, seems to be that Iran's military infrastructure can weather non-MAD-level bombardment (not wiping out the entire industrial infrastructure of the nation) for a long time, maybe years. Generally speaking, what publicly available information is that consensus based on? What is conclusively known about Iran's military infrastructure, and (I guess I'm not asking for an overview, which would be a pain in the ass to write) from what kinds of sources?

    I get the general idea, they have sprawling underground missile cities, and I have seen some footage of them. But where are people getting specific information about them? Is there like a treasure trove of specs somewhere online?

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  • Cool iconography. Does the character in the middle normally look like that, or has it been braided for symbolism?

    *looks like oliveoil answered my question while I was typing it

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  • so where is Israel on the continuum of

    • "we are confident that continuing the war will serve our material interests" vs
    • "we are not confident, but we prefer destruction to defeat"

    kinda continuing my last thread https://hexbear.net/comment/7080365

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from April 1st to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - Keeping It Rial In Hormuz

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  • The only logical explanation I can think of -- and maybe we're past logical explanations -- for why the US and Israel accepted and then immediately broke a ceasefire, is that they are testing Iran's resolve, presumably hoping that, during a reprieve, enough of the Iranian people will balk at resuming a war they've just been freed from, that the Iranian government will be pressured to make concessions.

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  • That seems plausible to me. It's a tricky balance between establishing deterrence and not turning the world against you. The Iranian people also need to see that their government's actions are necessary, and not "stubbornness that is getting us killed." With the US and Israel unable to quickly replace their expensive, laborious, rare earths-dependent attrition, you could say that the only one "rearming" during this ceasefire is Iran -- rearming their political capital to control the Strait.

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  • DMD stands for decentralized mosaic defense, right?

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  • Thanks for this, fascinating article

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  • If they debilitate Iran's power grid, what might Iran's retaliation look like?

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  • This is already an LLM war. If the reports are true, an LLM endorsed this war and helped pick the targets