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US may not have capacity to take down full barrage of Iranian drones, officials warn (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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Top military officials told lawmakers in a closed door briefing on Tuesday that they may not be able to shoot down every Iranian drone being launched against US military installations and assets in retaliatory attacks, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The officials, led by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran has been deploying thousands of one-way attack drones and while they have capacity to take down the vast majority but not all of the barrage.

As a result, the officials said in a classified briefing for lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the US was focused on destroying the launch sites for the drones and conventional missiles as quickly as possible. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

In retaliation against US strikes, Iran has been launching its low-cost, one-way attack Shahed drones. By flying low and slow, the drones are seen to be better able to evade conventional air defenses than ballistic missiles.

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[–] 34 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Did any of the cretins in the Trump administration considere maybe preparing for this conflict?

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  • [–] 37 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    They dont care and dont have to. As long as they dont get killed personally, every attack on the US helps them stay in power and strengthen the fascist regime. The people might not like it, but its far too late for that to have any impact on the government. And also it keeps the talk about the people in power being pedophile rapists off the front pages.

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    • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (18 children)

    The fuck are they spending all that military budget on I wonder?

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago

    It's because this is a half ass attempt with very little preparation, planning, or goals. Seems more like Israel blackmailed Trump into doing this, I have no proof but it looks like Dump is very uncomfortable talking about Iran.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    We’re using million plus dollar misses to shoot down $20,000 drones. Every military in the world is looking for cheap ways to take out drones.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Reagan's $4B orbiting lasers could be taken out by Russians shooting up buckets of sand.

    Entire armies have been beaten by mosquitoes.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Vietnam should have taught them that a military heavily reliant on complicated technology is extremely vulnerable to guerrilla tactics, knowledge of the terrain and fairly simple sabotage.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    We’re 50+ years on from Vietnam we’re 30 years on from drones, we’re 3-5 years on from one way drones. The idea of war has changed pretty even in the last five years. The pace of military innovation is starting to reflect the speed of big tech.

    While this will be contradictory to the tech folks, I don’t love the future where drone warfare is cheap and easy simply because drone warfare is cheap and easy….war should never be cheap or easy it cheapens the cost, war should always cost blood to make it unpalatable

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    The giant missiles were running out of...

    They're often 10s of millions of dollars each.

    That's what conventional warfare is based around, making and defending against them.

    So defenses can't stop that same payload spread across 1,000 drones all launched at the same time. There's simply too much to be shot down.

    China is the only ones focusing on "mini swarms" and they're pretty much Iran's only big ally and already supplying them with arms.

    Even if Iran doesn't want to pay for it, I feel like China is gonna give it to them, just to see if it can really sink a US carrier.

    Personally I think it can, and Iran may already have it.

    That would be some shit that would permanently alter world diplomacy, our military strength is based around air craft carriers and foreign bases, and we're closer to losing both than we've ever been

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    It's always been an arms race since we saw what Exocet could do. Carriers have always been vulnerable to massive missile attacks (and submarines).

    I don't think China needs to test whatever they'll have prepared. This would 1) give the US the knowledge to adapt and 2) create a huge diplomatic issue in which I don't see many benefits, if any

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    1. Buddy, microdrones aren't a secret, and it's not a question if they'd sink a carrier. Doing it though would make everyone on the planet aware that American foreign power now solely relies on foreign bases. Important because most countries that host US bases, do so because if they didn't they'd have to face carriers.

    2. By that logic, why did Japan get nuked twice? The US just sunk a military vessel with a torpedo, something that last happened in WW2

    Not even getting into all the other shit like blowing up a leader as an opening move in a war you secretly launch.

    Like...

    How the fuck can anyone look at the last week and think Iran responding against a military attack would be a bridge too far?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    I'm talking about China supplying them with a new weapon specifically meant to have them sink that carrier...buddy

    And those countries host bases because otherwise they'd 'face' carriers?

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    I’m talking about China supplying them with a new weapon specifically meant to have them sink that carrier…buddy

    Why would they want a real life test of their new weapons strategy that is an open secret at no risk to their own while simultaneously giving their largest global competitor literally the largest black eye since nuclear bombs?

    Gee...

    I don't know Bob.

    And those countries host bases because otherwise they’d ‘face’ carriers?

    Most countries don't want a US base, especially in the Middle East.

    They have them because the alternative is US backed regime change for a government that will allow those bases. A regime change where air craft carriers will be where the war is launched from

    If the US is afraid to expose Aircraft carriers, then the threat of regime change for not allowing bases disappears. While the threat of being attacked for hosting a base changes.

    That's global politics, and will result in the closure of foreign bases.

    This is a giant win for countries like NK, China, Russia, anyone who was being kept in check be ause in less than a week the equivalent of the 7th largest air force in the world could show up in the form of a single carrier group.

    It's ok not to understand this stuff before anyone explains it to you, but you might want to be nicer if you want people to keep answering who know what the answers are.

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    • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

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    [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Make sure they’re pointed at congress and the Pedo Palace in Florida.

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    [–] 0 points 8 months ago

    Lol idiots

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    43 comments in c/world@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 56 points 8 months ago* (8 children)

    I don't know, Hegseth just came out and said they definitely do today. It was probably totally unrelated to this.

    Would the Trump administration lie?

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Would the Trump administration lie?

    Don't be silly. Just because the lying liar that does nothing but lie and hire liars to lie for him as well, does so every day and all day, doesn't mean they would lie!

    I for one would be shocked, shocked I say, if they were lying!

    Well... Not that shocked... It's almost guaranteed to be a lie.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    They also said, unprompted, they they have unlimited ammo. AKA they are going to run out soon.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    The interceptor missiles they use -- I forget the name because I don't have a war boner -- are expensive and have limited production capacity versus drones which are low five figures a unit and can be manufactured quickly.

    I read some article basically saying wasting all of the missiles leaves a lot of the other places we protect open to attack and that our more serious enemies (China with Taiwan for instance) may be taking notes about how many we're using.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago*

    Would the Trump administration lie?

    We will release the Epstein files

    I have the Epstein files on my desk

    All of the files have already been released

    There are no files, never were

    There are files but they exonerate everyone on our side and implicate all of our opponents. No you can't see them, just trust us bro.

    Why are you still talking about the Epstein files?

    The files are a democrat hoax.... But they still exonerate Trump somehow

    Okay here's the files, but Trump isn't in there once.

    Okay we removed the 10,000 mentions of trump that we missed.

    Stop talking about this, Dow is over 50k!

    World War III is no time to discuss the Epstein files

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    • [–] 39 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Maybe we shouldn't have started a war with them then?

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  • [–] 19 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Exactly! The aggressors can't be the victim too.

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  • [–] 34 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Excuse me, but the administration told me that we preemptively attacked them before they attacked us. It’s a defensive offensive attack that we were building up to for months. Of course, if the Iranians had preempted our defensive attack, that would have been offensive and evil. Just the kind of evil attack that we are defending against by attacking.

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    • [–] 31 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    If they had any sense they would’ve been cooperating with Ukraine for the last year instead of being dicks. Arm them and have a full exchange of knowledge like their ability to knock down hundreds of drones on a DAILY basis. Drones made by Iran.

    Instead Trump still has his vendetta against them (Zelenskyy specifically) for not inventing Hunter Biden evidence. And Trump holds a grudge like no other.

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  • [–] 17 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Surely you are not trying to suggest that the US went into this with absolutely no plan whatsoever?

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    • [–] 15 points 8 months ago

    Iranian launch sites are mostly mobile. They fire those UAVs from the back of a truck and they're gone.

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    [–] 14 points 8 months ago

    The chairman of the joint chiefs literally told our two tv hosts that are running this war that it was an exceedingly bad idea.

    And it seems we've come to the point where the bully fucked with the wrong kid.

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    [–] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    We CAN"T Protect our Soldiers so we WILL keep this War GOING!

    -Pro Military Republicans!

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    • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Gee, I wonder if there's some way they could've survived without needing to shoot down full drone barrages then. I wonder what that could be.

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    • [–] 6 points 8 months ago*

    America mid 2027: Wifi was used to track and locate the unique body signatures of thousands of draft dodgers in what authorities are calling an "unprecedented epidemic of anti-americanism". Canada and Mexico have agreed to cooperate with American authorities in rounding up these runaways tightening their border security.

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    [–] 15 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    It's crazy to me that the US doesn't have "fuck you" hoards of weapons and tech, ready to go at any time.

    Hollywood did a number on me.

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    I mean, we do, but we did give some of it to Ukraine (not a criticism) and also more importantly, we want to keep having that hoard. I guess who knows wtf our foreign policy is now, but in general if you have a big, one-time-use stick, it's smarter to threaten to use the stick than it is to actually use it and just hope that there's nothing else that needs whacking afterwards. See also: whenever Russia threatens to nuke things

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago* (4 children)

    The problem is if you're being attacked by a swarm of angry bees your giant stick used for attacking humans isn't much use. The US likes to criticise other countries for under spending on their military but they themselves haven't used their military funding to maximum efficiency either.

    Trump is talking about building a new kind of battleship despite them being completely useless in any contemporary war.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    A battleship would likely be a missile battleship, not a traditional naval one

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Oh yeah I've seen the AI generated imagery. It's going to have missiles and lasers and lots and lots of guns. And it's going to sit out there in the ocean being completely useless, and then at night $2,000 worth of drones are going to come in under stealth of dark and they're going to land, then they're going to explode and sink it.

    The cost disparity is enormous.

    The US navy knows this which is why they haven't been building lots of ships lately. But Trump doesn't care about any of that he wants to ship with his name on it.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    It’s asymmetric. The weapons you need to take out a swarm of drones are orders of magnitude more expensive (and complicated) than the drones.

    So, any horde of such weapons cannot be replenished as quickly as the drones can.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago

    The US hasn't really invested in anti-drone weapons, despite the obvious risk they pose as demonstrated in Ukraine.

    So instead they're trying to blow up a $200 drone with a multi-million dollar missile, and they don't even have a 100% hit rate. Things like RF jammers, real big nets, and big foam darts would be just as effective if not more so as they could take up multiple target simultaneously, and considerably cheaper and reusable. But nope.

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    • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    It’s going to be really great when some of these Iranian cruise missiles start poking through and striking the gigantic explosive oil pipelines criss-crossing the desert…

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