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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

The danger isn't primarily from other ships that the Egyptian Navy could chase off but from land-based cruise missiles launched by the Houthis. The US Navy's most advanced weapons systems can intercept most of the missiles but not all of them, and at some considerable degree of risk to the US vessels.

The only military option to stop the attacks are drone / bomber incursions into Yemen which of course Egypt has no interest in doing since it could turn into a full hot war pretty easily.

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The US interceptor missiles are something like 3 million dollars each. The Houthis drones are closer to 20 thousand. Eventually they will win on economic grounds.

To be really pedantic, a $20,000 drone out of Yemen is 0.1% of Yemen GDP.

A US interceptor of 0.000013% of US GDP.

So, yes, I know, LOTS of details (like Iran) here, but the overall point being even if our $3M missile is more than their $20K drone in absolute dollars, we can afford it more than they can.

Dollars aren't directly convertible to warmaking power. The factories and skilled labor that make weapons are a scarce resource that don't scale with mere market capitalization.

That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000 tomahawks) is an important example of this.

> That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000 tomahawks) is an important example of this.

The US has built a lot more cruise missiles than just its Tomahawks [0], and the US has a less cruise missile dependent doctrine because it is heavily invested in acheiving air superiority and delivering smart glide bombs, and shorter-range missiles that are much cheaper.

[0] ~7500 Harpoons, some large number I can't readily pin down of SLAM (AGM-84E) and SLAM-ER (AGM-84H/K) developed from the Harpoon, ~2000 AGM-86, ~1600 AGM-129, 2000+ AGM-158, plus some more developed ans retired in the first half of the Cold War

The 7500 RU launched cruise missiles haven't achieved a tenth as much as the Tomahawks the US hit Iraq with. After that, Iraq didn't have a working integrated air defence any more.

The RU missiles have killed plenty of civilians though.

Do keep in mind that Iraq had ancient SAMs (only about 75 of them) and practically zero ISR support. US coalition forces hit them hard from the get-go. Ukraine had/has several hundred modern(ish) SAMs with the ISR support of NATO. There's a reason the Russians don't fly too far into Ukraine.

The Ukrainian air defense was not even close to modern. It consisted largely of older S-300s, some Tor, Buk and Tunguska systems that were leftovers from the fall of the USSR. They had some even older systems (S-75, S-125, S-200). So this is largely 30+ years old, and not very well maintained.

S-300 is not really comparable in terms of capability to S-75 and S-125. There is a quantum leap between decentralized networked mobile IADS with a combination of radar types and missile types and Iraq's S-125 systems.

S-300 is still a very capable system today and 1990s' S-300 systems are only really a generation behind modern systems. They're about as recent as the systems on Ticonderogas and Arleigh Burkes that are very much still in service today.

Yeah, I wasn't really trying to compare S-300 to the older systems. Just that they were some of the systems Ukraine had or have brought back into service after the invasion.

S-300 (and S-400 which is really enhanced S-300) in their most modern configurations are incredibly lethal systems against 4th Gen aircraft that aren't accompanied by extensive SEAD/DEAD resources and jamming. But Ukraine has 1st generation S-300P, from the 80s. These might have been upgraded to S-300PT-1, giving them cold launch with the newer 5V55KD missiles.

Apparently the S-300s were maintained enough to spook the Russian AF. Also, there’s a variety of Western systems now.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've completely depleted their inventory of S-300 missiles (5V55KD). The Texeira leaks seemed to indicate they would run out by Summer/Fall of 2023, though with the supply of IRIS/Patriot/NASAMs etc, they might have reserved some of them.

Can’t believe the Ukrainian AF is still flying after 2 years - Wow

6 hours from Russia and they still can’t take them out

I think you might be conflating airforce with air defense. There’s not a lot of Ukrainian AF flights these days and when there is, it’s more often than not, one way (unfortunately) - and with loaned gear. It’s why they’re asking for F-16s and more AD.

It's hard to say that without having inside information. That Ukraine has managed to keep any of their aircraft flying in the face of far superior numbers is astounding. They are still managing to launch SCALP from SU-24m frequently (as frequently as the limited supply of these missiles allow). Considering they're probably outnumbered 5 to 1, that's either indicative of operational excellence on their part, or Russian inadequacy.

True, but it's possibly fair to argue that its easier to scale up cheap drone production, than production of interceptors.

At a certain point, US foreign policy tends to move from interceptors to flattening launch sites and key personnel.

With actual attacks on US warships. we’re actually past the point that usually occurs.

The point of these systems is that there's no launch site and it takes very little time to learn how to use them. The really key personnel are in Iran and very much difficult to assassinate (and easily replaced, too).

The drones are relatively light, cheap, and can be launched with nothing but springs and wood. There's no value in the launch locations and in fact you can launch them from anywhere.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.

The point is to have a deterrence gradient, so you always have (1) deescalate (lower), (2) match (proportionate), and (3) escalate (higher) responses, for any level of attack.

If there's a level at which you don't have all three options, there exist political situations that can leave you vulnerable.

E.g. if the US has no proportionate response to a Russian tactical nuclear strike on Ukrainian soil, it may hazard towards not escalating.

Similarly, why the talking points of US response strikes for the past few decades have generally been 'this was a proportionate response.'

But after the last warning to the Houthis, I expect the next ASBM or large drone that hits a civilian ship prompts a large US/UK (and maybe France and Germany) strike.

Does Germany actually have any significant strike capability in the region? The German military seems to have atrophied into more of a government jobs program than something which is actually combat effective. They've started rebuilding in response to Russian aggression but that process will take years.

By their fruits you'll know them. If Russia was able to destroy the enemy like USA did with half the number of missiles - they absolutely would. But they can't (mostly because USA has system where it takes minutes from recognizing targets to destroying them, and in Russia it takes hours - so they can only hit stationary targets reliably), so they have to go into quantity instead.

Also USA use bombs much more often (because they could - because they obliterated the air defence in the first hours which Russia still can't do).

The US conducts war with a scalpel. Russia does it with a rusty hatchet. Those cruise missiles from Russia are (relatively speaking) very cheap and inaccurate.

Russian cruise missiles (true ones, not Shahed drones) are not cheap. Kalibrs cost around $6 million USD, KH-101s around $13 million. And both are quite accurate. The issue the Russians are facing isn't inaccurate cruise missiles, but a lack of accurate targeting data (combined with wanting to use them in terror attacks as opposed to degrading Ukraine's military capabilities.)

In all recent US wars civilian casualties vastly outnumber military ones. In the Ukrainian war civilian casualties constitute less than 10% of overall casualties. Outstanding precision for a rusty hatchet.

Most recent US wars have spent most of their time in an asymmetric counterinsurgency phase, the Russo-Ukrainian war is (in style of warfare) basically a symmetric force-on-force international war.

These have very different dynamics, inherently.

We also don't know the full extent of civilian casualties.

Mosul, Fallujah, etc were quite bloody. You can't actually take cities cleanly, you can only win the propaganda war in your own sphere of influence.

This reads like propaganda. The US military does a fine job of destroying entire countries

It's actually worse. I read this as Russia accidentally hits civilians because they have no choice where as we do it with intention.

Russia hitting civilians isn’t really accidental. They’re quite happy to terrorize the population, and are quite comfortable deliberately committing atrocities (see Bucha, et al). Flattening whole cities is longstanding practice of theirs, too; it’s largely how they won Chechnya 2.

At best, their weapons aren’t terribly precise and they don’t particularly care about that.

Using cruise missiles to terrorise civilian population will be incredibly stupid move. Hits into houses are usually accidental. If you want to terrorise civilian population, it's so much cost effective to use cheaper unguided rockets from MLRS systems or artillery shells. You have this news in your echo chamber, haven't you?

Artillery and MLRS is being used for that purpose in places where Ukrainian cities are within range. But that does not apply to most of the country.

Given that Russia has openly talked about targeting civilian infrastructure to "freeze them out" (and then tried to pull that off last winter), I think you should be rather careful with your assertions about others' echo chambers...

Yes, Russia army attacked electric infrastructure, that's common knowledge. No, there is no use of precision weapons to willingly attack apartment houses, that's definitely a lie.

There is a lot of cases of Ukrainian army to use indiscriminate and "dumb" weapons to attack civilian districts of Donetsk (and now, Belgorod) just to terrorize population.

The use is terrorism, of course. Breaking the will of the population is very much a war strategy, and it has been tried before (notably in WW2). If you believe that it is effective, there's no reason why precision weapons can't be used for that purpose if that's the only thing you have that can reach and hit.

And, sure, the Ukrainian attack on Belgorod is similarly problematic. But if you're willing to go there, how many attacks have Russia carried in the same time period?

It's not that more precise weapons are being used to target civilians, it's just that if they miss the target, the Russians aren't really heartbroken about it. There's plenty of examples of "precision" weapons hitting apartment buildings, train stations, hospitals, schools, etc. I don't think those are targeted specifically, just that any carelessness isn't considered a bug.

But the "echo chamber" framing you use for what's at best a nitpick/misinterpretation of what I said, that says so much more about you and your own biases than anything about me.

> if they miss the target, the Russians aren't really heartbroken about it.

Something like 90% of deaths by US military are civilians, and huge chunk of that is women and children. This isn't a uniquely Russian thing.

> but whatabout

Setting aside the numbers you've opted to pull out of your ass, there's absolutely no comparison between how the US wages war vs the Russians. Your attempt at drawing an equivalence is ignorant, at best. Just stop.

It isn't whataboutism to point out the propaganda-like language being used when the higher level comment this descends from is about propaganda-sounding language. There is so much endless Russian boogyman shit flying around and while yes, the Russian invasion is horrific and awful, and it's massively frustrating for people to be so overwhelmingly critical of it being Russian specific while completely ignorant of the US having done things that look almost identical for 30+ years.

Claiming these bad things as Russian specific is flat out wrong, harmful to the discourse, and massively lacking awareness.

You also make a claim with zero support. Here's mine:

The 90% number is a pretty accurate number for modern wars in general: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/30823/qc7809568enc.pdf (ctrl F 90%)

For Iraq specifically, the number calculated by one group is 77% civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Iraq_W...

Google for yourself, there's tons of information to corroborate this. Other US wars have much worse figures.

Your tone is frustrating especially given the appearance of hypocrisy when calling someone ignorant when there's easily verifiable evidence if you put in any effort to look. I don't see the need to be nasty to me like that especially when your bold black and white claim is so very clearly wrong.

whatabout, but in more words

"the Russians aren't really heartbroken about it" - I don't understand this. How you can make such assumptions about hearts? Definitely there is a grief from common Russian people and denial of willingness from Russian propaganda. I don't know if Putin personally "heartbroken" and neither do you.

I advise you to educate yourself. The US killed 300 thousand civilians in the second Iraq war using their 'precision' strikes. That compares to 10 thousand civilians who died so far in the Ukrainian war. Both of these numbers are provided by the US gov itself.

> Both of these numbers are provided by the US gov itself.

URL? that's got to be super interesting data.

Wikileaks. Obviously US gov wouldn't say something like that publicly so you need to look into the leaked classified material.

>Russia has launched more cruise missiles in a single conflict (~7500)

What is the source for that number? The only long-range weapons Russia has launched thousands of are the Iranian-made long-range suicide drones.

> The only long-range weapons Russia has launched thousands of are the Iranian-made long-range suicide drones.

They've also used lots of (mostly, IIRC, air launched) ballistic missiles and (conventional) cruise missiles. The reason there have been deep strikes by Ukraine on Russian bomber bases are because those bombers were used to fire long range missiles into Ukraine.

Though the “suicide drones”, while designed as loitering munitions, are basically used as propeller driven cruise missiles rather than in a loitering role.

I feel like your argument shows the opposite: there are significant economies of scale to making munitions. If we have to make a lot of interceptors, in the long run-- it's going to be much cheaper than it is currently.

As an engineer, saying that $20k, the price of a cheap car, is 1/1000th of a GDP of a whole country does not pass the smell test. Google says that Yemen's GDP is $21.61b, so a drone is 0.0000925% of the GDP. In other words it's about a million drones per year for Yemen, and about 7.7 million interceptors per year for the US.

The question isn’t how much each missile/drone costs. The question is, how many of those does each side have and how quickly can you get more?

Maybe $3M missile isn’t that costly to the US, but if you have like 1000 of them and it takes 6 months to replenish the stock, while the other side has 10000 drones that they can replenish in 3 months, you have a massive problem at your hand. (The same problem Ukraine is having re: stockpiling artillery shells that are sourced from US/NATO)

Edit: They where off by a factor of 1,000 for Yemen GDP.

That said if they were actually 0.1% GDP each then 10000 * 0.1% GDP each = 100% of GDP for 10 years. Which would obviously not happen.

The problem is also the stock value of the industrial military complex. If your artisanal rockets are out competed by smart flying sand with a stick, your actual evaluation is in for a correction, fiscally as tactically.

> To be really pedantic, a $20,000 drone out of Yemen is 0.1% of Yemen GDP.

Yemen's GDP is $21B, not $21M.

Not 0.1%, you are off by a factor 1000. Their GDP is 20b not 20m. Would still be relatively more costly but a lot less extreme.

> To be really pedantic, a $20,000 drone out of Yemen is 0.1% of Yemen GDP.

Are you saying that entire Yemen's GDP is just $20M ? Does not seem plausible.

What percent of Iran's GDP is a $20k drone?

> What percent of Iran's GDP is a $20k drone?

About what a third of $3mm is to the U.S. (15x larger) or U.S. defense budget (50x larger). A 3x production-cost advantage in an economically unconstrained conflict is not an advantage. It’s at best a Twitter PR point.

The conflict is actually not far from being constrained by production, which is difficult to scale up for a 3mm$ munition, because private contractors expect lengthy contracts to justify long term amortization of increased capital expenditure.

Given that Iran is producing thousands to tens of thousands of these missiles every year, and is looking to expand production even more, there actually really is a risk that the stockpiles will not keep up, after which dozens of billions of dollars will have to be expended to seriously ramp up production. This dynamic is also the reason why it's been so difficult to ramp up artillery production in support of Ukraine.

Additionally, given that the expensive parts in these drones seem to be homemade in Iran (engines, fuselage, even some of the electronics), and given the sanctions, USD equiv. GDP isn't a great metric since there's no free market to convert Iranian production to USD.

Then there's the problem that these missiles are sorely needed in case of a war in China, so actually going through a significant expenditure, even if money is allocated to increase production in 2-3 years, means that the US Navy may find itself with insufficient stockpiles to defend itself against the PLA, should the need arise. Its' ability to defend against credible Chinese saturation attacks is already marginal.

> conflict is actually not far from being constrained by production

If anyone is talking about escalation risk, production isn’t the bottleneck. We are nowhere close to being resource constrained in the Middle East.

> the US Navy may find itself with insufficient stockpiles to defend itself against the PLA

In a production contest it’s maximum sustainable flows, not stocks, that matter. (Stocks buy you time to get flows up.) To the extent challenging the PLA is a concern, boosting production to counter the Houthis is a net win.

> ability to defend against credible Chinese saturation attacks is already marginal

You’re arguing both ways. If their value is marginal, expending them now is fine.

Your broader point—I think—is correct. America doesn’t want to spread itself thin. But that’s a constraint at the CVN level. Once the carrier strike force is positioned, it’s immaterial whether it’s firing off missiles or guns.

Anyone positioning Iran et al v America et al is missing key pieces in the logistics of war.

The stocks are not sufficient to buy time to get the flows. There are only around 500 SM-6 missiles (long range, suitable to protect large numbers of vessels at various distances, 5mm$ each), and there is only capacity to produce a few hundred for the short to medium term.

The older SM-2s may have more plentiful stocks, but most of them have been deemed too dangerous to use after causing serious damage in test firings, and there are only around 180 modernized versions available, and the missile itself is no longer produced.

Defending against a saturation attack means that the value experiences a step function. Either you have enough missiles to stop most low-tech enemy missiles, and you're going to be largely fine, or you don't, and your entire fleet might sink. It's not something you can afford to. The US Navy is never going to allow stocks to go under what is necessary to stop at least a long-range Chinese attack, and that means at least 600 missiles, which is a serious chunk of what remains.

Boosting production to counter the Houthis is surely something the US will do. It will take 2-3 years to bear fruit. In the meantime, stocks are not sufficient to tank Iran's capability to produce these kinds of missiles.

I think that the most likely outcome is either more shipping companies negotiating terms to transit unharmed, like China's COSCO has all but admitted to have done, or these detours to continue.

I totally missed your comment about SM-2s being deemed "too dangerous" to use." That's not really accurate. There have been two incidents with the SM-2 (2015 and 2018). The USN and the German Navy decided not to do any more test firings of these missiles, but they are cleared for wartime use. And they're being used now without issue so far.

I also would love to see why you think there's only 180 modernized versions, and what you consider modernized. My understanding is that all versions have been either upgraded or their upgrade is budgeted. If you think that the USN has only 680 SM-2 and SM-6 in inventory I don't know what to say. That would be only 10 or so Standards per Arleigh Burke. There are 73 Arleigh Burkes active with a capacity of 90 missiles. Even if they only allocate 50% of these VLS slots to SM missiles, that would require over 3K missiles. And this ignores the Ticos completely. I know the USN puts to see without filling all the VLS slots, but that would be a dangerous, ridiculous loadout that I can't see escaping Congressional scrutiny.

Raytheon says they've produced over 11k SM-2 missiles worldwide. I know that testing has consumed around 3K, leaving 8K for the USN and allies. Even being generous with FMS, I doubt Raytheon has sold more than 2K overseas. That would leave the US inventory around 6K. A far cry from 180.

SM-2ER are the majority of Standard missiles packed on USN ships. SM-6 is really intended to replace them since it can defend against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and serve as a hypersonic ASBM. But it's expensive, so the SM-2 will soldier on, backed up by the SM-3 in the ABM role.

And the production capacity can easily be ramped up if there's enough funds.

As far as I'm aware, new production of SM-2s has ended permanently, and all recent orders I can find are for upgrade kits, of which there's only a few hundred. Early SM-2s are limited in their ability to hit low-flying targets due to their SARH guidance.

I'm basing off on : https://apps.dtic.mil/procurement/Y2014/Navy/stamped/P40_223...

Given the production numbers, it seems that stocks even of SM-2 block 3 through 4 are at most in the low four digits.

I'm sure production capability for the SM-6 can be ramped up I'd there's enough funds, my point is that it's going to be even more expensive than the figure price of the missiles used looks like, and that it's going to be 2-3 years at least before that pans out.

SM-2 Block III and IIIA are designed to excel at low level targets. I didn't have time to go through all the secnav docs to see if all the USN stock has been upgraded, or funded for upgrades, but I believe so. Though I think the USN will eventually have mostly ESSM Block II and SM-6. The SM-6 is just too expensive at almost $5M per all up round. Even if production was ramped up (past the current 125 per annum), the cost is just too prohibitive for use against all but the most dire threats.

ESSM is cheaper at around $2M per round, and quad packs help increase the magazine depth on Navy ships. Production for it is also too low in my opinion, currently at roughly 140 year. Routine testing and missile qualifications could easily eat up 20% of that each year. Sigh.

I just find it hard to believe that increasing production totals wouldn't help decrease unit cost significantly. My USN friends won't mention inventory totals, but they do mention that a lot of ships are going to sea without full magazines. And since at-sea replenishment of VLS systems is still a fantasy, that's a huge issue.

Looks like Raytheon restarted the production line for SM-2...

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1990XP/

> US Navy is never going to allow stocks to go under what is necessary to stop at least a long-range Chinese attack, and that means at least 600 missiles

Agree.

> stocks are not sufficient to tank Iran's capability to produce these kinds of missiles

My core point is it never gets to Iran making missiles, the Houthis firing them and the U.S. doing nothing more than intercepting. Well before it becomes a production contest, the situation is resolved diplomatically or escalated.

> the most likely outcome is either more shipping companies negotiating terms to transit unharmed

This would be difficult for a Western company to do without risking sanctions.

> My core point is it never gets to the point where Iran is making missiles, the Houthis are firing them and the U.S. is doing nothing more than intercepting them. Well before it becomes a production contest, the situation is resolved diplomatically or escalated.

Given the “final warning” issued 4 days ago by the coalition, I think escalation or resolution (probably the former) is very much a “sooner rather than later" thing.

> Given the “final warning” issued 4 days ago by the coalition, I think escalation or resolution (probably the former) is very much a “sooner rather than later" thing.

Perhaps.

We have a tightrope to walk: trying not to spark a regional war but also ensuring that warnings and redlines are taken seriously.

At the same time, if your adversary knows what the response will be, they have the option of deciding the action is still worth it (or even the response would be desirable). This can even be perverse (e.g. two level games; leaders deciding to take a punch that is a net loss for their nation to rally support around themselves).

So blurry redlines --- and the full range of responses ("in a time and manner of our choosing"), including covert and deniable ones --- are employed. Ambiguity is usually advantageous to maintain, and players employ mixed strategies.

> Additionally, given that the expensive parts in these drones seem to be homemade in Iran (engines, fuselage, even some of the electronics), and given the sanctions, USD equiv. GDP isn't a great metric since there's no free market to convert Iranian production to USD.

I wouldn't be so sure that the parts are locally sourced.

[0] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/bizarre-theft-wave-tar...

Not the same type of hardware. They might need larger engines for their reusable drones, but the ones they used for Shaheds are in-house clones (funnily enough, a Wankel engine for one of them). The Wikipedia pages for the suicide Shaheds has teardowns and sources.

huh cool. I guess the Wankel's found a niche that doesn't mind the short engine rebuild period.

Yemeni rebels don't pay for these, though. It's free 'aid' from Iran. So arguing costs doesn't make much sense. Similarly mujahedeen in Afghanistan got free Stingers MANPADs

You're embedded assumption is that Yemen would be paying for these drones.

Examined on its own, that's a bold claim.

But its not Yemen, its Iran that's paying for it - with money from oil smuggled past sanctions.

Smuggled? Are you implying that any deal the US does not like is illegal? Wake up. This age is over.

Shipping from Iran to Yemen is also vulnerable, however.

Most of the missiles and other weapons are being smuggled in relatively small boats. It simply isn't practical to stop and search most of them. In theory the US and other nations could declare a blockade and simply sink any vessel that enters Yemeni territorial waters, but that would be a major escalation and require a lot more naval forces to be deployed

That assumes the US won't fight back. US contributes ~6% of Yemen GDP in foreign aid. Yemen is a big food importer. US could shut off foreign aid and blockade Yemen and collapse their economy - they wouldn't be able to afford food, let alone 20k drones.

The Houthi strategy isn't an economic strategy, it's a "hope the US isn't willing to kill us" strategy.

>US could shut off foreign aid and blockade Yemen and collapse their economy - they wouldn't be able to afford food, let alone 20k drones

Yemen's already in famine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_Yemen_(2016%E2%80%.... The drones are supplied by Iran.

Yes, of course, let's starve even more people, that will sure gain us more friends...

There is a non-zero chance we are headed for a situation where global warming and sea level rise will make hundreds of millions, mostly from equatorial regions, desperate refugees. It could be that an attitude of self-righteousness might become impossible to maintain. Friends come and go.

So, you propose to do what? Let those people drown? Or actively shooting them? Or maybe proactively let the starve? Either way, it would be genocide.

Yes, we might need to shoot at them.

What is it with you people just casually argueing for genocide? Do you think this is, I don't know, tough or edgy?

Do you propose doing nothing about the people firing rockets at shipping? What about the lives of the sailors on those ships?

Is there some intrinsic right that the rocket-firers are defending that warrants treating them as other than aggressors in this situation?

Why do you call it genocide? Surely if you shoot at ships in international waters, and it is not defence, then you're bringing whatever acts of defence follow on your own head. Acts of defence seem impossible to class as genocide (but I'd like to hear arguments to the contrary if you have them).

OP talked about the millions of potential refugees from climate change we might have. Not the Hoithi rebels firing at international shipping as retaliation of what happens im Gaza.

Regaeding the latter, yes, for bow I think doing nothing militarily is exactly what is needed.

I think you missed who the "them" was in this later part of the thread: not Yemenis attacking civilian shipping, but rather hypothetical future climate refugees from islands that disappear due to sea level rise.

Not only that, people whose most fertile agricultural land is now under salt water.

You set up a straw man. An insincere response to an insincere question.

HN has always had a core of fascist affinity but it's quickly becoming more open, unfortunately.

The Saudis with help of the US has already tried to get rid of the Houthis. That didn't exactly went well.

Never in my wildest dream would i think that the Houthis would be one doing the first modern blockade of a strait. I always expected the US to do the first modern block in the Malacca strait, when China is forced to do a Armed reunification with Taiwan.

China would never be "forced" to invade Taiwan. If that happens it will be a choice.

> US interceptor missiles are something like 3 million dollars each. The Houthis drones are closer to 20 thousand

That’s a 150x cost difference. Well within an order of magnitude of America versus Iran’s economies and defense budgets.

Which is irrelevant, since before this becomes a production problem it would become the diplomatic ones of bombing Houthi supplies in Yemen and intercepting IRGC vessels on the high seas.

While the Houthi drone itself is inexpensive, the cost to the economy of a drone hitting shipping is substantially greater than the $3M cost of the US interceptor missile.

Good.How about ten drones ($200k) and ten interceptors ($30m)? Is the cost of the economy still greater? Alright, let's up the numbers. Forty drones vs forty interceptors, $800k vs $120m. Do the numbers still work for the US? Like, would Yemen gladly pay $800k to kill an american vessel? I guess yes. Would it be economically effective to spend $120m on a protection of said vessel? Perhaps not.

So, at a certain number between one and forty drones the economy stops making sense.

This is what happens here in Ukraine as well: russian drones are cheap and readily available, while interceptors are expensive af and quite scarce.

According to this:

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/22b-worth-of-cargo-is-now-...

the average value of goods per container ship is ~$350M per ship not including the value of the ship itself. However I think the impact to the economy from a missile hitting a ship far exceeds the value of the goods, the ship, and the cost of any missiles used to defend those goods.

This doesn't take into account the cost of smuggling the drones from Iran to Yemen. There is a reason cocaine is an order of magnitude cheaper in Colombia than in Miami.

$3M each is what DoD is charged, or maybe an export price, for low quantities. Real marginal cost of mass production is much lower.

That is the big question here. How much can/should the US scale production. We know from several current wars the cheap drones are a big issue. So we need to come up with a solution. Can we develop a new anti-drone weapon system that is cheaper? Can we mass produce these missiles and thus get them much cheaper? Some other option I'm not aware of? Whatever, the fact is every half-competent wannabe general now knows that drones are cheap to build and expensive to defend against. The US needs to respond somehow or we will lose to them.

Drones are cheap. EW is even cheaper. The US has multiple C-UAS systems in use and even better ones in development. Some are just EW systems, some are cheapo gun based systems, and other are directed energy weapons. Missile based systems are the best but also the most expensive of the currently deployed solutions. The cheapest missile system is probably the APKWS that we've shipped to Ukraine. This uses a laser to guide the missile to the drone. But for countering FPV/Mavic type drones, even those are overkill. Just jam the entire area on the frequencies in use, and deny everyone drone use.

It's important not to draw too many conclusions from the Ukraine war. The combatants are fighting a much different fight on both sides than what the US would do.

EW is very much not magic, and both Russia and Ukraine absolutely do use it.

The problem with barrage jamming is that it's extremely locatable and your jammer just ends up getting blown up. The solution is to have many smaller jammers, but then range is decreased dramatically, and it can still be economical to just bomb them, possibly with an anti radiation munition (slapping such guidance on a drone is not expensive).

That said, the range is sufficiently small that it doesn't matter - cheap systems can just use visual odometry and inertial sensors and fly themselves the remaining 300 meters to the target. There are videos of Russian lancets operating exactly like this, flying high, locating a target, and then autonomously homing in as they get into jamming range.

The idea that neither Russia nor Ukraine tried just EW is quite ridiculous. It's well known that Russia had excellent EW, there was a report in the Texeira leaks that Ukraine could no longer use Excalibur guided shells because Russian long range jamming rendered them useless - the GPS jamming made them unable to arm, and that even US guided HIMARS missiles and JDAMs had to rely on inertial sensors for much of the trajectory with significantly reduced accuracy.

Yeah, our military says HIMARS are pretty much done due to the russian EW. By dragging this war, the US gave russians the opportunity to learn and battle test their solutions against HIMARS.

Excaliburs are on a much different level though. Word is, you don't need much EW at all. You merely have to give them a strong look and that's enough to drive it way off course.

Excalibur is highly effective when not being jammed by Pole-21 systems. It's just that Ukraine currently doesn't have enough systems to counter the GPS jamming. GMLRS faces the same issues. Both systems have inertial guidance in the face of jamming, but the accuracy drops off quite a bit. Just means you need to launch more GMLRS per target, or attack when jamming is off.

Never said EW was magic, nor that neither Ukraine or Russia was using it? If they weren't, the battlefield would be even more lethal. Russia has been a leader in EW for decades.

But it is the most cost-effective solution. Russia has been deploying vehicle mounted EW systems to jam drones (with some success), as well as jamming GPS. And the Ukrainians have been jamming as well. There's no wunderwaffe in any war, it's more a game of cat and mouse.

Just like APS is now becoming standard on tanks and AFVs, localized EW jammers targeting control frequencies of small drones will be the cost of having a real military. There's also been research into using APS against drones (this would require additional sensors).

And the JDAM/HIMARS jamming is a bit overrated. Even in inertial mode, JDAM has a 30m CEP, and HIMARS has a 60M CEP. Definitely not as good as with GPS, but still a serious issue for the Russians.

In a previous similar thread, it was mentioned that directed energy weapons could be an effective & efficient response to drones, and have already been in development and testing by the US military for some time.

When has America ever backed down on spending money for war?

Right now, for Ukraine.

Fair. Though I would slightly defend my position that qualifies as aid instead of letting America pull the trigger.

It was the same in Vietnam. It even caused the US to end US dollar gold standard

No, they won't, because the immediately coming war between the US-led coalition organized to reopen the sea lanes and the Houthis is not going to be conducted by simply trying to intercept attacks.

You're grossly underestimating the US military. Do you remember the 20T for Trillion spend in the mid east on 2 optional wars for 20 years.

US is in no danger of ever running out of money for missiles.

Id imagine the marginal cost is a lot lower than that though

Judging by how broken the US economy seems, I’d say that’s already here.

What economy have you been looking at?

The economy where people cannot afford housing.

The economy where consumer credit card debt just hit 5 trillion.

The economy where high skill jobs like people on this forum can’t find work.

If you think this is a healthy economy you’re either too rich to care, or being lied to by whatever news outlet you read.

The economy of feels

> The only military option to stop the attacks are drone / bomber incursions into Yemen

After they withstood years of war with Saudis? Those sandal-and-skirt guys are much tougher than people think.

Conventional military wisdom is that you cannot win a war from the air. Case in point: Vietnam. You have to put boots on the ground to secure the area and the Saudis aren't about to do that and the American people would never support dying for a Saudi war.

You don't need to a win a war here, just make life sufficiently hard that most of the fighters give up.

Due to their histories, the Yemenis - like the Afghan - have extensive experience using guerilla tactics against better equipped occupiers. Top it off with the mountainous terrain in the northern and eastern regions and you have a recipe for failure through attrition.

> extensive experience using guerilla tactics against better equipped occupiers

That’s fine. Let them fight their civil war. The problem is long-range precision warfare extending past their costs. Knocking out that capability doesn’t require boots on the ground.

You underestimate how important the Palestinian cause is to the Yemeni people. I’d wager they’d be willing to “pause” the infighting for quite some time.

Also, this move is making the Houthis immensely popular: they are winning the PR war internally right now.

> this move is making the Houthis immensely popular: they are winning the PR war internally right now

As I mentioned elsewhere [1], this is fine. A stable, adversarial Yemen is better than the clusterfuck it currently is. A big part of the problem with the current situation is there is nobody to negotiate with who can credibly claim to control these armed factions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38917581

Guerilla tactics don't work against shipping lanes and no one (well, not the coalition to defend shipping, at least, certain of their neighbors might have other thoughts) wants to occupy Yemen in the first place.

Flying cheap drones with homemade explosives into commercial cargo ships sound pretty guerilla.

Why can't the west use radio jammers to make any drone non-responsive once it leaves Yemen ? Russia has been doing this on its border with great success.

I think it's just a very large area and jamming is far from fool proof.

> make life sufficiently hard that most of the fighters give up

You need to degrade their capability to fire long-range assets precisely. That’s doable. If it’s locals lobbing unguided rockets into the ocean, that’s commercially manageable. Guided missiles and helicopter landings are not.

This is an interesting statement to make, considering Yemen's recent history.

It's Yemen, have you checked their GDP per capita recently? Life there is already hard enough that it's difficult to make it significantly worse.

If harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages will stop harboring pirates.

> harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages will stop harboring pirates

The history of area bombardment is it strengthens civilian resolve. Think: the Battle of Britain, Vietnam and America’s wars in the Middle East.

> Aren’t there counterexamples? How would Dresden be considered?

I would say that Dresden is not a counterexample. Every year on February 13, many Dresdeners gather on the Neumarkt to commemorate the destruction of the city on the Bombennacht (night of the bombings) in 1944. The spectacle polarizes German society. Right-wing revisionists like to point to the destruction of Dresden to portray Germany as a victim of the Second World War. But for many Dresdeners, this is actually a matter that is associated with personal grief because they lost family members in the bombing. As a result, the possible political implications of this culture of remembrance fade into the background for many Dresdeners. Dresden is therefore a good example of how people move closer together after extensive bombing and how this effect can last for 80 years.

Aren’t there counterexamples? How would Dresden be considered?

Strategic bombing in Europe was a drastic failure. The only successful part of it was that it fundamentally wiped out the Luftwaffe. German military production increase annually in spite of the Allies putting so much effort into the bombing campaign.

Strategic bombing has only influenced one country to surrender.

There's an argument that it didn't influence Japan to surrender: instead, the declaration of war by and imminent invasion of the Soviet Union is what finally caused them to surrender.

Yeah, that's the other main argument that we'll never have a definitive answer to. Maybe in 300 years we'll have enough distance to evaluate the evidence without all the cultural biases and baggage, but I doubt it. Every time I read more info about the Manhattan Project and US nuclear policy in the 1950s, my opinion changes. And then when you read about how Truman acted AFTER the war in regards to nuclear weapons employment, I can easily understand that he was going to use nukes no matter what.

Japan's political environment during the war was incredibly complex, and trying to view their rationale and motivation through a Western lens is very dangerous. And I don't think the Soviets were anywhere close to an imminent invasion of the Home Islands. I don't think they had the appetite for doing more than grabbling the Kuriles and Sakhalin Island, instead preferring to let the US suffer the casualties.

While the Soviet declaration of war surely had some impact, the Emperor said there were three primary factors in his decision to accept the Potsdam conditions; his lack of confidence in Ketsu Go plans to defend Kyushu. The increasing devastation caused by the conventional and nuclear bombing campaigns, and finally, concern about the "domestic situation" meaning internal revolt. Later in private letters he referred to Nippon's deficiency in science, meaning a lack of nuclear weaponry. Hirohito and PM Suzuki realized that with nuclear weapons, the US didn't need to invade Japan.

And that involved nukes

Nazi Germany was already fundamentally beaten by the time of Dresden.

But it definitely didn't strengthen civilian resolve.

There wasn’t much left to strengthen.

And every tough guy wants to say that because it makes them feel good, but history keeps proving them wrong.

Unfortunately, there is a small problem with this approach: Pirates have guns, villagers don't. So villagers don't get to choose whether or not they harbour pirates.

Sounds suspiciously like Israel's theory of operations for Gaza, which has little evidence for its correctness at this point.

I see you haven't been paying attention to Iraq Afghanistan Palestine Vietnam or really anywhere this tactic has been tried. Turns out bombing villages makes piracy more popular

Thats straight out of the Henry Kissinger handbook.

Tell the Palestinians.

They will not out fight you, they will out wait you. Just like Afghanistan.

Waiting is fine, as long as they aren't fighting. Them just hiding out in a cave somewhere counts as winning here, since we only care about protecting shipping.

Since the strategic objective here will likely be to suppress them while changing the context with regard ro Israel-Palestine and their sponsors in Iran and not regime change, that works in the US's favor.

> After they withstood years of war with Saudis?

Different aims. Riyadh sought to remove them from power. That’s a boots-on-the-ground operation they attempted from the air.

Egypt would just need to degrade their coastal capabilities. Taking out vessels, helicopters and arms stores could do that from the air.

It would be politically suicidal for any Arab ruler to fight another Muslim/Arab country in the interest of Israel and the US, not even secular el-Sisi is free of that danger.

Saudi Arabia also attempted to stop the Houthis from bombing Saudi industry, and failed. It's difficult to bomb guided missiles, because they are typically only stored 1-4 at a time in a highly mobile and disguised manner, for example inside a truck, and are only going to be exposed as they're being fired. It's a really difficult task, unfortunately. As far as I known it's never been successfully done without a ground invasion.

> it's never been successfully done without a ground invasion

Counter-battery fire is tremendously precedented and always done at standoff. You can also start hitting arms stores, port infrastructure, training and C3 facilities.

The beauty of this is it’s cruelly win-win-win. The Houthis can use the bombing to strengthen their domestic image, maybe even boost recruitment. Iran can piggyback on that. And America can claim it cleared the Strait. As long as everyone stays in their lane (literally), it’s a stable conclusion.

Counter-battery fire really only applies to gun-based artillery, since it has nearby ammo (or stored ammunition on the vehicle) and the counter-battery radar is sited to detect and calculate the ballistic trajectory instantly.

When it comes to missile (whether drone, cruise missiles, or ballistic missiles), it's much more difficult. The US had a hard time countering the SCUD missiles in 1991. And that was with a huge military, with the best ISR the world has ever seen. A 6-pack of Shaheds can be launched from a trailer that looks all the world like a normal flatbed style semi. A cruise missile can be fired and navigate a course that obfuscates its launch point. Ballistic missiles can fire, then drive away to hide in a city.

The only way to win this fight is to blockade the country from receiving shipments from Iran. Air blockade and naval blockade, combined with strikes to hit known depots etc. This is called war. Not a presence mission, not a "response," but the literal definition of war. The US has no stomach for this entanglement, and hopes that the problem goes away. It won't, but the pain level is relatively low, and the USN is getting some great practice in fighting a LIC in the littoral regions.

Counter battery fire simply does not work. These missiles are not stored nor fired in central locations, there are only a couple at a time. You can fire at the launch spot all you want, there's going to be no one and nothing of value there. It's the same tactics the US itself copied for the HIMARS, and despite thousand of airstrikes Russia hasn't been able to destroy them.

Training and top level command is most likely not even in Yemen. You could hit the ports, that wouldn't stop the import of these missiles - they are shipped in small boats as a kit, assembled wherever, and then kept in a cave somewhere or in a car, ready to be fired. No port or infrastructure needed.

These tactics have been used since the 80s, and no solution short of a ground invasion can stop them. Israel couldn't even stop Hamas and the PIJ from firing guided rockets from Gaza - at the end of the day when the IDF bomb houses that rockets were fired from, it's just theater: they never store more than a dozen munitions, and by the time counter battery fire arrives, they've likely fired all munitions already. This is a tiny 2.4sqm strip fully blockaded, I don't see how you can stop it in Yemen.

> can fire at the launch spot all you want, there's going to be no one and nothing of value there

This is blind counter-battery. You use the shot to place loiters. That then trains your fire.

They're not going to be returning to the firing spot. There's no point doing it. It's been tried, there isn't much to do short of an invasion.

Despite much media ado about destroying the launchers, those are typically just welded pipe or wooden catapults. There's no value in them and no point in ever coming back there.

> arms stores,

Those arms stores do not exist as such, they're most probably highly dispersed and only at the limit can one call them "stores", and if gathered in one place that place is most probably located underground, where aerial bombings would have close to no effects.

Just look at how difficult it is right now for Israel to take out Hamas's weapons cashes in Gaza, and we're talking about a much concentrated operation in terms of space and most probably Israel knows a lot more about Hamas's weapons caches than the US would be able to ever know about where the Houthis store their weapons.

> And America can claim it cleared the Strait.

See the thing is, if shipping companies don't trust the waters they simply won't send ships there - claims don't matter one whit.

> if shipping companies don't trust the waters they simply won't send ships there - claims don't matter one whit

What part of removing long-range precision strike capability suggests an empty claim?

Counter battery only works if you know where to fire. If your first clue is they just launched their entire storage of missiles there is nothing to do. If you are fast enough maybe you can get the now-empty launcher, but modern military practice is shoot and scout so odds are against that.

Getting information on where things are stored is hard. It needs boots/spies on the ground (satellites can only get limited information and are easily fooled). As pointed out elsewhere, modern best practice is to not have a large warehouse that is easy to find and destroy, instead you scatter this stuff around in small units.

> just launched their entire storage of missiles

If they launched their entire stockpile, it’s no longer an issue. The question was using one launch to take out a couple missiles, maybe a launcher and those operating it. Done repeatedly, this will degrade a static force. (Additional levers would need to be pulled on resupply.)

They will then ro to the next stockpile and launch again

What I don't understand: The Houthis seem to have virtually no air defense and high-value assets like helicopters that are hard to hide. At the same time, they seem to be involved in constant fighting with someone, so those assets are presumably valuable to them outside of their use to sabotage international shipping.

So if hitting the launchers is hard, how about destroying one of those assets every time they attack shipping?

> ...bomber incursions into Yemen which of course Egypt has no interest in doing since it could turn into a full hot war pretty easily.

How would the Houthis respond?

Much less, what do they have that can possibly hit Egypt.

That said, bombing might not do the trick. Just create more suffering in Yemen.

Ghadr-110 has a claimed range up to 2000km, which is just about the distance from Sanaa to Cairo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghadr-110

https://www.mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-tool.php?circles=%...

> Ghadr-110 has a claimed range up to 2000km

It also seems to have a new place in history. A losing place but still. . .

On November 6, 2023, a Ghadr-110 missile was launched from Yemen by the Houthis towards Israel, which was intercepted by the Arrow-2 system while it was still outside of Earth's atmosphere, in what was described as the first instance of combat in space in human history

This idea of the Houthis as some sort of desert people misses that they took over the military of what was formerly an ally of "The West"..

They have attack helicopters: https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2..., https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2...

They have American & Soviet fighter jets (F-5 / SU-22): https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2..., https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H4BV3xzWWXk/TnIKIQMOAFI/A...

They have tons of cruise missiles: https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-PARADE-R..., https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-PARADE-R...

And ballistic missiles: https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-PARADE-R...

They're being supplied by Iran and whoever else hates Saudi Arabia, so they have a ton of capability to launch pretty devastating attacks on their neighbors -- hence why we have destroyers and aircraft carriers in the region. The missiles targeting merchant ships are bad -- it'd be worse if they started targeting land-based military targets in other countries.

> They have American & Soviet fighter jets (F-5 / SU-22)

They have, from the accounts I’ve seen (including their own propaganda videos) a single flyable F-5 constituting their entire “fast air combat capability” of those delivered to Yemen more than 40 years ago (and the F-5 was an older cheap export fighter then.)

And... I wouldn't expect it to be flyable much longer. Mobile missile launchers may be hard to find and kill on the ground, boring conventional fixed-wing jet fighters aren't, and even though they aren't the strategic target of the coalition the US has put together, US combat doctrine very heavily favors early destruction of an enemy’s air combat capability and air defenses to maximize freedom of operation.

True enough - but they've carried out multiple strikes with the SU-22s in their possession and can presumably restock / refit those with Iranian support -- they also have several dozen older MIGs. There's no doubt that they'd be annihilated if they tried to use those for continued offensive missions outside of the Yemeni borders but they could likely pull off a single fast attack on Cairo or Suez if they were so inspired.

I would view claims of "several dozen older MIGS" with great suspicion. There's a report of a single MIG-29, but no word of its flying condition. In the civil war, Yemen had to rely upon mercenary pilots to fly them, as well as maintain them.

> but they could likely pull off a single fast attack on Cairo or Suez if they were so inspired.

No. They couldn't. Yemen to either is like three times the range of the SU-22 on a shortest distance path, which would take them through Saudi Arabia and close enough for mistakes of intent to Israel, either of which—as well as Egypt—has Air Forces more than capable of intercepting and destroying them if they magically gained the range to try to pull of that kind of flight.

The Houthi Air Force is useful for their civil war, and not a whole lot else.

They've been targeting land-based military (and industrial) targets in other countries. They've been fighting Saudi Arabia for maybe a decade, using a variety of drones/cruise missiles.

Their air force is a joke though. A single flying F-5 (vintage 1970), and some decrepit SU-22 Fitters with no range.

Also, those aren't "attack" helicopters. They're bog standard Mi-8 transport helicopters. You can use them to attack, but they're nothing like a Hind/Hokum/Havoc or Apache helicopter.

Houthis have long range missiles (courtesy of Iran). They regularly launch them at Israel, they can launch them at Egypt too.

> How would the Houthis respond?

It assumed that Houthi is a proxy of Iran so the question is how Iran would respond.

I thought the Houthis were no longer receiving funding from Iran with the SA-Iran deal of 2023. Did that change?

> I thought the Houthis were no longer receiving funding from Iran with the SA-Iran deal of 2023. Did that change?

I think its more “Iran lied and has used less overt channels” than “that changed”.

> which of course Egypt has no interest in doing

Because someone else will do it for them. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and everyone based on Djibouti have a joint interest in keeping the Bab al-Mandab strait traversable.

Saudi Arabia pretty much triggered this whole mess by invading, excuse me, "intervening in" Yemen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...

It’s difficult to blame Riyadh exclusively without taking into account Iran’s role in the Houthis’ takeover of Yemen [1]. Saudi Arabia regionalised and intensified the conflict, but they didn’t start it. (To your credit, I don’t think the Houthis would have long-range precision weapons were Riyadh out of the picture.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_takeover_in_Yemen

> The US Navy's most advanced weapons systems can intercept most of the missiles but not all of them, and at some considerable degree of risk to the US vessels.

Aren't Egyptian Navy vessels much cheaper than american? They can just zerg rush and eat the damage. I don't think that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles piled up.

> They can just zerg rush and eat the damage.

The last time the StarCraft doctrine was used in a real war was over a century ago and it did not go well.

> I don't think that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles piled up.

Are you willing to bet the lives of Egyptian sailors on that assumption? How about your own?

This isn’t a video game.

Zerg rushes have worked since then. worked for Chinese "volunteers" in the Korean War. Iran-Iraq saw a bunch, and they mostly worked, if you don't mind elementary age kids running through mindfields.

at sea, this approach took down the Russian Fleet at Tsushima Strait. The MCII exercise, contentious as it were, showed that an Iranian attempt at that might have worked.

hell, for all of their losses in Ukraine, the Russians are still gaining ground, and a lot of that came at the expense of modern Straf-Bat penal units.

that said, Egypt is a tank power, not a ship power, and flooding the area with older gear is a good way for most of it to end up at the bottom of the ocean. it's a non-starter of an idea for them.

"Gaining ground" is not really particularly a meaningful metric if you don't take a look at its magnitude and the attrition on equipment and manpower.

It is in any case a full brute force approach that bellies an enemy that is unwilling or unable to train their troops.

Yes, quantity is a quality all its own, but that's why the US military is one of the biggest armed force on the planet. We do literally have the biggest air force in the world, for example.

> We do literally have the biggest air force in the world, for example.

In fact we have 4 of the top 10: #1 (airforce), #2 (Navy), 4(Army), and #5(marines).

Who is #3? China?

russia.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-a...

> Are you willing to bet the lives of Egyptian sailors on that assumption? How about your own?

Egypt usually doesn't have any problems with that. They're not a liberal democracy, so enduring high casualties is not a political problem for them.

I don’t see the connection. Liberal democracies risk the lives of their militaries all the time. Does Egypt have a history of selecting strategies that needlessly waste military strength in service of their social structure?

1939 was less than 100 years ago. Didn't go well for Poland. "Blitzkrieg" means "lightning war".

> ”Blitzkrieg" means "lightning war"

Blitzkrieg was early combined-arms warfare; its modern iteration underwrites American military supremacy.

Zerg rushing is an r-production analog that uses swarms of cheap, expendable units to overwhelm the enemy numerically. This is closer to the Soviet (and now Russian) doctrine of using humans to absorb ammunition. It fails against combined-arms armies because it lacks manoeuvre. It works when the enemy is production constrained, e.g. Ukraine.

The Russians, and Soviets, never did this. Their doctrine of mobile combined arms warfare, that worked really well during WW2, is called deep battle.

Zerg rushing works in video games.

> Russians, and Soviets, never did this

The Soviets in WWII used human waves against the Nazis. (EDIT: They did not, they used them against the Finns in the Winter War.) That said, the USSR was capable of combined-armed warfare.

Russia has proved incapable of combined-arms warfare. They launched human waves in Bakhmut, and are largely using numerical advantages in raw recruits to push for marginal gains. This isn’t how a modern army fights.

Soviet himan waves are as much myth as are the Germans calling it Blitzkrieg. The only thing comming close to these himan wave attacks are the failed Banzai charges of desperate Japanese forces. And thoae never worked.

It's not "human waves" in Ukraine, it's advance by attrition in Ukraine, as JumpCrisscross pointed out above. The Russians have not considered themselves limited by causalities, while the Ukrainians have to conserve manpower and materiel. So the Russians can "afford" to throw a bunch of squads out along a front, and if 90% or more are casualties, they don't care, so long as they can take some ground. Then, once they do, they rinse, lather, and repeat. It's a hideous expenditure of human lives, but it has worked tactically. Whether it is a significant gain operationally or strategically, I don't know. (Russia is going to pay a price down the road for losing all those young men, but it won't be paid by the old men sending them to their deaths.)

> Soviet himan waves are as much myth

The Red Army definitely used them against Finland. But you are right, they weren’t used against the Nazis.

Zerg rushes are maybe effective at overwhelming an enemy position. It can be considered to be acceptable for a tactically successful operation. Eating missiles without good outcome is usually not part of a tactically successful operation.

how much do you think zerg rushing with ships cost?

6000 vespene gas

Carrier has arrived.

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