Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense | Hacker News Reader

Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

noahpinion.blog

66 pointspaulpauper115 comments

My gut is Iran wanted the missiles to be intercepted. They wanted to show they are not pushovers but don’t want to escalate too much. In some sense the whole thing was a fireworks display by the countries involved. Like a warning shot.

Every analyst I respect has the same take. This guy even glosses over that it wasn’t a general on a tarmac this time, but a general in a consulate that was extrajudicially murdered. Iran had to respond in a show of force to reestablish deterrence, without escalating the conflict, drawing the US in.

Two kids are on the playground, one has a big brother. They’re both constantly bothering each other. The kid without the big brother has to ride a thin line to not look like he’s trying to kill the other kid (causing the big brother to run over) while still bruising him back enough that the other kid leaves him alone until next week.

Do we know what motivated Israel's assassination of the Iranian general? It seems unwise to resort to assassination unprovoked.

The Iranian general was actively working to help arm Hezbollah, who have been i a low-grade conflict with Israel since October 7th (and before). Think Israel and Hezbollah shooting rockets at each other back and forth for the last 6 months kind of conflict.

Because of this conflict, Israel has ~80k citizens who have had to evacuate their homes because they are too close to the border, and they are afraid to come back with Hezbollah continuing to attack.

See e.g. this random article: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-global...

> According to a report in The Guardian, Zahedi “commanded units in Lebanon and Syria and was most likely a critical figure in Tehran’s relationship with Hezbollah and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad”.

> Arab News quoted a US Department of the Treasury statement from August 3, 2010, saying that Zahedi “also acted as a liaison to Hezbollah and Syrian intelligence services and is reportedly charged with guaranteeing weapons shipments to Hezbollah.”

In terms of international law (for what that's worth), that is a dangerous precedent. Is a US general a legitimate target for Russia now, because we're arming their enemy?

AFAIK, even during the Cold War, when the US was arming Russia's enemies (like Afghanistan) and Russia was arming the US's enemies (like Vietnam), neither nation went so far as to assassinate generals from the other.

We even asked Ukraine not to attack a Russian general.[1]

So, historically, it seems like what Israel did would not generally be considered justified.

(OTOH, we did assassinate Yamamoto, but we were actively at war with Japan.)

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=40049703

I mean, the US did assassinate Soleimani, an Iranian general, in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleima... . So I wouldn't exactly call this a precedent.

But yes, this is a complicated issue.

That link does say:

> Some experts, including the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, considered the assassination [of Soleimani] as a likely violation of international law as well as U.S. domestic laws.

Yeah, I was only pointing out that it wasn't a precedent.

(And btw, imagine Iran having then sent 150 missiles aimed at the US. Seems to me like the US would respond.)

Is there any gentlemanlyness at play in those examples or is it just all tactics.

Easy. They’re losing the Gaza war. Yemen’s blockade and full militarization is crushing Israel’s economy. Bibi is out of a job and possibly his freedom if war stops.

Time for a trump card: escalation of the conflict will keep the extremists happy and keep the hostilities going for possibly years. Bibi’s best choice.

They are losing the Gaza justification. Obviously they have obliterated Gaza and Gaza had no way to defend itself.

HAMAS has retaken Northern Gaza. The area is depopulated but not safe for IDF. Mission Failed (unless the mission was to ethnically cleanse in the first place).

the current regime in Iran has not thought much of the "special" status of embassies historically.

I tend to agree the strikes on embassies/consulates is not a great precedent, but it's hard to think of a less sympathetic victim.

They telegraphed the attack by launching a wave of drones that took hours to arrive. One theory is that they were trying to do a combined drone and missile strike to increase the load on Israeli defenses.

If so, it didn’t work at all. So, allowing the Israelis to have hours of advance notice was either terrible tactics or an overt signal that they don’t want to escalate. I think it was probably the latter.

Yes. Iran had to do something after Israel attacked their embassy, but they didn't want escalate the situation.

The blog post is seriously mistaken to interpret this as "hooray we are all safe from drone attacks!!!"

I don't think the post is saying that at all. I think it's 100% possible for Iran to have made this a light strike, so to speak, but also it have shown us just how wrong we were about missle interception defenses. Iran, just like us, has spies and advanced weaponry. They would also be aware of how feasible missle interception is while regular Joes in America might have no idea.

Peter Zeihan says the same in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4W0FHJ8A0o

This is exactly it. The easy way to get past missile defenses is to overwhelm them. Missiles are cheap. Interceptors are incredibly expensive. The attackers will always be at an advantage. Just throw enough to ensure that there aren’t enough interceptors. This warning shot required multiple nations to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to push back an attack that cost a few million and came from a single source.

I’ve been looking for the prices of the missiles they launched and total cost of attack from Iran’s side. Since you seem knowledgeable, please post references.

The major issue is that the average person's intuition about the nature of the technical challenges around missile defense, and modern weapon systems broadly, are misinformed and essentially naive. There are serious design problems that need to be addressed when developing these systems, but those problems are almost never raised as the difficulties in public discourse.

For example, kinetic intercept ("bullet hitting a bullet") is surprisingly simple and has been a solved problem for several decades. People think it is hard because they literally imagine shooting down a bullet with another bullet, as if the missile was flying blind. Terminal guidance for these cases is computationally trivial -- modern hypersonic kinetic intercept platforms literally use 80486 class processors as guidance computers. Computers are much faster than the fundamental limitations of physics allow the world to change.

Almost all of the true design challenges are materials engineering problems. State-of-the-art weapon systems often operate at the edge of what is known to be possible with ordinary molecular materials, even highly exotic ones. There are severe restrictions on maneuverability when the system is already operating under material failure. In-atmosphere hypersonic platforms are already undergoing controlled disintegration during flight, even small excess stress will cause catastrophic failure of system components.

There is a second set of challenges around extreme throughput data processing in modern sensor-heavy weapon platforms (e.g. F-35) but these are essentially theoretical computer science or exotic DS&A problems.

People were (rightly) critical of the notion that missile defense was something the United States could rely upon to survive a nuclear war.

Scientists pointed out that this is a dangerous strategy, and that non-proliferation and arms reduction treaties were the only sane way to avoid nuclear annihilation. There is no amount of technology that is going to save Europe and the US in an all out nuclear war.

Theatre missile defense is another story. Systems like the S-400, the Patriot missile system and David's Sling can quite effectively protect a region from a variety of conventional aerial threats. They have been dutifully doing their job since the 1990s and are improving.

Metrics of success are going to be:

Ratio of cost of defense vs attack. The US and it's allies spent X on the missiles. Iran spent Y on the attack. If the ratio of X/Y is 1k or more, then it's probably not a feasible long term solution. IOW we're spending a billion to defend against a million dollars worth of materiel (no that's not a misspelling).

Percentage of effectiveness to cost. If a smart missile is more effective by a dumb(er) missile by 20% but costs 10x less to make, one can probably just make up for it by making 10x more of the cheaper missiles.

This same calculus is mentioned four times in this thread as of now. It completely ignores the human cost, as in lives saved, and cost infrastructure not destroyed and capabilities not degraded. It almost like a concerted effort of bad faith actors to popularize a narrative.

>It almost like a concerted effort of bad faith actors to popularize a narrative.

That's not fair at all. This is simply how wars are fought in the modern era. We all wish we could have saved lives and infrastructure in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, etc. ad infinitum, but as democracies, we have to consider the material costs of war. And guerilla enemies can outlast us (as the Taliban did) by spending little and getting us to spend far more.

Nonsense.

The war in Afghanistan ended because there was no way to achieve our goals there given the broad public support for the Taliban, not because we were running money out money. To the contrary, we spend more than ever on defense.

Neither will Ukraine give up once the cost of the war reaches some threshold. They will fight until they are physically unable to carry on, not simply unwilling to spend.

1. We spend a smaller portion of our GDP on defense than before. Military spending as a percentage of GDP is down over the past few decades.

2. The cost of the War in Afghanistan was an important factor in the American publics' changing attitude towards it. Once Trump got elected saying the war was a disaster and we should have never gone there, and we spent trillions on it and got nothing in exchange, the war effort was on borrowed time. And he said that, and was applauded, because American citizens, who still have power in a democracy, don't love spending trillions on a war against an enemy they can't eliminate (partly because they spend far less than us). Those same American citizens roundly rejected the, at the time, leading Republican candidate Jeb Bush, who was most known for his relation to the leader who started that war.

Here's a source: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/may/01/donald-tru...

3. Ukraine won't give up because they are being invaded, similarly as Hamas does not give up as they are being invaded. Of course any amount of money is worth one's homeland. But the willingness of the US to continue supporting Ukraine is based on money because, again, American constituents don't like spending billions on other countries even if the cause is just.

This calculus has been rejected four times in this thread now. It completely ignores any recognition of armament economics. It's almost like a concerted effort from lizard deep state street team actors working for internet points to popularize a jingoistic ra-ra USG narrative.

I take offense to being labeled a bad-faith actor trying to control a narrative. It's just an argument. You either agree with me or don't.

In war the economics are money and people. E.g. We could invade Iran. It might cost $300bn US and 100k personnel dead and 200k wounded. It's just pure economics.

US corporations make the same judgment when it comes to safety every day. A drug might kill 5 people from side effects but save 40,000. Is it worth it?

I do have to ask: are you actually claiming the total cost of the iranian attack was $1mm, or just posing a hypothetical? I can't find cost estimates for most of iran's missile portfolio, but this seems pretty low. the fixed wing drones are thought to have a unit cost around $50k, but that's with a pretty large error bar [0]. I'm having trouble finding unit cost estimates for their cruise and ballistic missiles, but it's a safe bet that the ones capable of reaching israel are at least 2-3x more expensive. even if the attack consisted 100% of those fixed wing drones, that would be at least $15mm just in expended munitions.

anyways, sure, spending 1000x the cost of incoming munitions on interception is not tenable if that's the entire conflict. but most conflicts don't consist of one party lobbing missiles while the other tries to shoot them down until someone runs out of money. it looks like that right now because the US is caught between supporting an ally, protecting freedom of navigation, and preventing further escalation in the region. the two carrier strike groups alone could do a lot more damage to iranian production and infrastructure than its military could in return. it's fortunate that no one wants that.

[0] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/17549019063238084...

Do we know for sure what has been reported is true, was it really only a few?

Perhaps we should consider that the goal wasn't to do a lot of damage but instead saber-rattling. It would seem wise for Iran to both to satiate the demands of their constituents desire for retribution without triggering escalation. That Israel was told to 'take the win' by the US seems to be as good as result for Iran as one could possibly hope for.

The cost of the attack seemed to be 1/10th the cost of the defense so that does appear to be a net win for the attackers.

I worry that the west will become over confident with our missile defence and use it as an excuse to push conflict as close to nuclear exchange as possible. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell; 'like teenagers playing a game of nuclear chicken'

It's true. There's photo and video evidence plus confirmation from multiple separate sources (different countries).

You don't fire 300+ missiles and drones just as a "show of force". It's expensive. Their stated goal was to overwhelm the missile defense system and it clearly failed.

> The cost of the attack seemed to be 1/10th the cost of the defense so that does appear to be a net win for the attackers.

Not really. First, Iran is far worse off. Second, it showed that their missiles are crap. Many of them failed on launch and some crashed in Iraq (they intended to fire more).

But this was also a unique situation where Israel held back. In a typical case a firing would receive an immediate deadly response. E.g. planes and missiles from Israel returning the favor. Thus the cost for Iran would have been much higher.

Lastly, you should calculate the cost if the missiles would have hit the target.

> I worry that the west will become over confident with our missile defence and use it as an excuse to push conflict as close to nuclear exchange as possible. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell; 'like teenagers playing a game of nuclear chicken'

I partially agree with that notion. Still, as an Israeli I'd rather have that defense system over ideology. I can tell you that if a missile had hit anything important the outrage would have been terrible and the retaliation would have been immediate. In that sense at least, it gives the space to take a breath and deliberate.

>But this was also a unique situation where Israel held back. In a typical case a firing would receive an immediate deadly response. E.g. planes and missiles from Israel returning the favor. Thus the cost for Iran would have been much higher.

I feel like we are observing separate conflicts altogether. Israel whose conscript army is nearing its end in terms of endurance, who has been bogged down in urban guerilla warfare for 6 months, while responding to Houthi and Hezbollah strikes, who has also lost much of the goodwill and support it had from its international partners, who needed those partners that are starting to get sick of them to defend from a very early telegraphed missile strike.

You think that Israel would even consider an immediate deadly response to open a fourth front in a war they can't afford, a war the public is getting sick of, and a war that the very disliked leader of the nation is cynically prolonging to maintain his waning grip on power?

One thing I appreciate about HN the variety of perspectives I'd never be exposed to otherwise

> You think that Israel would even consider an immediate deadly response to open a fourth front in a war they can't afford, a war the public is getting sick of, and a war that the very disliked leader of the nation is cynically prolonging to maintain his waning grip on power?

It's worth keeping in mind a few things.

The world's public might be "getting sick of" the war, but most Israelis are united around wanting to see the end of Hamas. They'd like things done faster, obviously, but aren't "sick of the war".

Also, almost everyone understands that the real enemy behind everything is Iran, and that the real threat to Israel is a nuclear Iran. There is a definite strain of thought that wants to take the Iran attack as an opportunity to do the one thing that is actually important for Israel's survival - try and stop Iran from getting a nuke.

As for the leader of the nation "cynically prolonging" the war, I'm personally conflicted on this. I definitely oppose Netanyahu and think he would do anything to cling to power... but it's not clear in what way the war could be "shortened", short of Israel just deciding to leave Hamas in power, which most Israelis oppose. (That's not to say I agree with anything else he is doing, or with other aspects of the war.)

> The world's public might be "getting sick of" the war, but most Israelis are united around wanting to see the end of Hamas. They'd like things done faster, obviously, but aren't "sick of the war".

The Israeli public is getting sick of the war, mass protests against Netanyahu and against prolonging the war and not bringing back hostages are growing from 0 right after the attack to quite populated right now in front of our eyes.

Getting sick is a process. It doesn't mean over 50% think the war should end right now. But the part of Israel which can vote is getting sicker of the war than they were at the beginning.

As for Iran gaining nukes. They will likely gain them if they haven't already gained them. Same as Israel. Israel cannot extrajudicially assassinate Iranians forever. What they should avoid, instead of Iran getting nukes, is losing so many world allies that nuclear armed countries abandon them or begin to oppose them.

Lastly, Hamas will not be "eradicated" or "eliminated" the same way no amount of American might and force could "eradicate" or "eliminate" the Taliban. Hamas is unlike ISIS or other defeated jihadist groups and far more like the Taliban in that they have a liberation struggle other jihadist groups don't have. That is going to sustain them beyond any kind of prolongedilitary conflict Israel or especially its allies can stomach. None of this is what I want to happen, it's just the facts on the ground. You can't eliminate people's desire to be free or to secure their homeland. Israelis understand this when it comes to their own land, but fail to comprehend it when it comes to other people's land.

> The Israeli public is getting sick of the war, mass protests against Netanyahu and against prolonging the war and not bringing back hostages are growing from 0 right after the attack to quite populated right now in front of our eyes.

Eh. There's definitely less "enthusiasm" than in the beginning, but for the most part, even those who want a hostage deal don't see it as instead of the war, or at least not instead of removing Hamas from power. They mostly prefer the hostages to come first, but then Hamas to be dealt with. (I'm speaking of my general impression in broad strokes, but polls I believe back me up.)

> As for Iran gaining nukes. They will likely gain them if they haven't already gained them.

I don't think it's necessarily unavoidable, and I think it's well worth avoiding. Iran has repeatedly says it wants to wipe Israel out completely. If they have nukes, it will be incredibly hard to oppose them in a war, and they can much more easily make good on their threat.

It really is something that is an existential risk for Israel.

> What [Israel] should avoid, instead of Iran getting nukes, is losing so many world allies that nuclear armed countries abandon them or begin to oppose them.

I don't think it's an either/or. Especially since most of Israel's allies are also enemies of Iran, it's in fact quite the opposite - many countries are happy that Israel is doing the dirty work of actually dealing with Iran.

And you can see that in the unprecedented level of cooperation between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors, who had once been enemies of Israel themselves!

> Lastly, Hamas will not be "eradicated" or "eliminated" the same way no amount of American might and force could "eradicate" or "eliminate" the Taliban.

Maybe. It's a military and political question. I don't think it's a given. I think given enough time, and given a political solution for governing, Israel can effectively eliminate Hamas. At the end of the day, they are made up of specific people, possess specific weapons, etc. Once those are gone, they are effectively eliminated.

> You can't eliminate people's desire to be free or to secure their homeland. Israelis understand this when it comes to their own land, but fail to comprehend it when it comes to other people's land.

Most Israelis understand this. Hamas's desire isn't to be free or secure in their own homeland - Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas could've turned its thoughts inwards on security and on building up Gaza. They absolutely had that option. They choose to use it to fight Israel.

I think everyone would've been better off, especially the Gazans themselves, if Hamas had actually tried to improve Gaza and had just... not fought Israel and not spent vast resources on this war.

Again, it's really interesting to get these viewpoints. Thanks for sharing them with me. I really have to say they don't seem to resemble the facts on the ground I have noticed. Just a few things I noticed that I can't imagine anyone I know saying:

1) most people want a quagmire war that will never end trying to defeat a populist force fighting for their homeland. The US has lost every single war of this kind in the last 60 years. Why would Israel win one?

2) Iran can be militarily stopped from getting nukes, or that it matters. I think our best shot was the JCPOA, and the fact that we haven't tried anything close to that since tells me that the US has given up trying to deter Iran's nuclear program. Even if Iran gets nukes, what will change? There is still MAD (there already was MAD between Israel's allies and Iran's allies). The whole world has largely moved past this issue, it seems, but you think it's very relevant.

3) Hamas can be eliminated even though the Taliban weren't. These are really similar forces fighting really similar blockades, embargoes, and invasions, with very similar popular support. Why is this the albatross of the past 60 years of losing offensive wars against populist guerilla fighters?

4) Hamas doesn't want freedom or had some kind of opportunity to better a completely embargoed, blockaded, and dietary restricted Gaza. This is a pretty surprising take honestly. What incentive does anyone have to run a business or improve any lot in life when your mortal enemy controls every import and export into your territory and even how much food you can have? What is the point of money or progress in such a world? You can't bring more stuff in from the outside until you destroy the blockade around you... I'd think anyone on any side here could see that.

> Again, it's really interesting to get these viewpoints.

Thanks, that's why I comment - I want people to get an Israeli perspective on things. Though I am a very liberal Israeli compared to the majority of the population, which is why I sometimes try to represent the consensus viewpoint as I understand it and not just my own. (I call that out when I do that.)

> 1) most people want a quagmire war that will never end trying to defeat a populist force fighting for their homeland. The US has lost every single war of this kind in the last 60 years. Why would Israel win one?

This depends on what you mean. If by "fighting for their homeland", you mean what Hamas means, which is to rule all of Israel, then... the US can afford to lose these wars. Israel can't. Physically can't. If Hamas gets what it wants, there is no more Israel, and probably no more Israeli Jews.

So it's an entirely different situation.

> 2) Iran can be militarily stopped from getting nukes, or that it matters.

First, I have no idea if it can or can't be stopped. Israel and the US is acting like it can, so hopefully they're right

> Even if Iran gets nukes, what will change? There is still MAD (there already was MAD between Israel's allies and Iran's allies). The whole world has largely moved past this issue, it seems, but you think it's very relevant.

If Iran has a nuke, even leaving aside the apocalyptic scenario of it just arming a terrorist group to attack Israel with it (which is possible), there's still a huge issue: Israel will then be able to act much like Russia does, which is invade and conquer neighboring countries, with the world being very afraid of direct confrontation because they're (rightly!) worried about nuclear war.

I find it interesting that you think the "whole world" has moved past this point - you're ignoring the actions of all of Iran's neighbors, who are signing historic agreements to help each other because they're all terrified of Iran. So no, I don't think anyone who has any skin in this particular game would agree with your assessment (and this includes most US security/etc experts. Don't forget that Iran doesn't just chant "death to Israel", they chant "death to Israel, death to America"!).

> 3) Hamas can be eliminated even though the Taliban weren't. These are really similar forces fighting really similar blockades, embargoes, and invasions, with very similar popular support. Why is this the albatross of the past 60 years of losing offensive wars against populist guerilla fighters?

I answered this earlier, but Israel doesn't really have an alternative, and comparing to the US is a huge misread of the situation. The US is basically not threatened by any of these armed groups in a "direct" manner. It can't be invaded.

Hamas is a group that has quite literally invaded Israel 6 months ago and killed 1000 citizens, grabbed 240 hostages, shot rockets at Israel (and these are being shot from minutes away, mind you, at most). It has pledged to do this again and again.

Or let me put it another way - there are still around 100k I think Israelis who are internally displaced. They can't go home, because their homes are right on the border with either Hamas or Hezbollah. Do you think if Mexico decided to attack the US, killed thousands of its citizens, and 100k Texans had to relocate for fear or Mexico... that the US would "lose" a war against Mexico like it did against the Taliban?

> 4) Hamas doesn't want freedom or had some kind of opportunity to better a completely embargoed, blockaded, and dietary restricted Gaza. This is a pretty surprising take honestly. What incentive does anyone have to run a business or improve any lot in life when your mortal enemy controls every import and export into your territory and even how much food you can have? What is the point of money or progress in such a world? You can't bring more stuff in from the outside until you destroy the blockade around you... I'd think anyone on any side here could see that.

I think you're extremely underselling the degree of freedom and opportuniy that they had.

Yes, there was a necessary blockade since Hamas promised to keep attacking Israel. A promise it almost immediately kept by firing rockets at Israel. So for one thing, it could've just... not done that, promised to stop attacking Israel, and tried to get an actual diplomatic peace with Israel. That's exactly the opposite of the purpose of Hamas, but a group that actually wants to improve its lot in life could've done that.

Secondly, Gaza received tremendous amounts of aid, and despite the blockade, did receive imports and had a not-terrible quality of life. This despite the fact that Hamas spent probably billions of dollars of its resources not to help Gazans, but to wage war (and to fatten the pockets of its leaders, who are literal billionaires).

Just look at the videos Hamas proudly put up of it taking water pipes, sent to Gaza to help get water to the people, and converting them to rockets to fire at Israel. They are literally taking aid that is supposed to help improve Gaza and using it to wage war.

Gazans incentives to improve Gaza is because they live there. They could choose a path of improving Gaza, making its economic conditions better, making their daily lives better, stop attacking Israel, and a few years of peace later, negotiate with Israel and Egypt to get some restrictions lifted. They actually did that to some extent, but all the while planning the massive October 7th attack, which has reset all expectations of them acting in a peaceful or rational manner.

Hamas has made it clear that they only care about attacking and destroying Israel. In that sense, I agree with you - if that is your only goal, then you don't have any incentive to improve Gazan's actual lives. I just think that that goal is fundamentally evil and stupid, and everyone's lives would be better if Hamas didn't pursue it.

Israel needs the support of the US to continue operating as it does. The US support of Israel was already on a demographic timer, the unwavering support of boomer evangelicals is dying out with them and even the new evangelicals have an net unfavorable view of Israel. The Gaza conflict has simply sped up this already seemingly inevitable decline. Losing popular support causes a cascade loss of other support; political, economic, and then military. There has already been unprecedented pushback against Israel from Joe Biden who is clearly worried about his own reelection chances. I.e. the loss of public support is already causing a loss of political support.

Acquiring nukes keeps getting easier, improvement in material science, electronics, etc. Even North Korea has them now, in my view the only thing keeping Iran from getting nukes is the ability to use them as a bargaining chip. Unless it's Israelis plan to completely destroy Iran then taking away that bargaining chip would just end up with Iran getting nukes.

To be honest I'm not sure how Israel survives this.

You might be right about all of that. I think waning support from the US to Israel makes sense - most Israelis no longer support the current Israeli government!

That said, US and Israeli interests are incredibly aligned. They have basically the same enemies (Iran, to some extent Russia and China, and Islamic fundamentalists in general), and the same outlook on the world. This isn't necessarily recognized by all citizens, but it's actually true about the world. I think the truth eventually overrides momentary episodes of changing public support.

> There has already been unprecedented pushback against Israel from Joe Biden who is clearly worried about his own reelection chances. I.e. the loss of public support is already causing a loss of political support.

I'm a fairly liberal Israeli on these issues, but I think it's worth mentioning that the "unprecedented" pushback also comes after the unprecedented support Biden gave Israel. And the pushback is in essence, mostly correct.

> Acquiring nukes keeps getting easier, improvement in material science, electronics, etc. Even North Korea has them now, in my view the only thing keeping Iran from getting nukes is the ability to use them as a bargaining chip. Unless it's Israelis plan to completely destroy Iran then taking away that bargaining chip would just end up with Iran getting nukes.

Yeah. That's a problem. I have no idea. I'm hoping Israel and the US have actual plans to stop Iran getting nukes, but what do I know?

I will mention that the fact that getting dangerous weapons in general is getting so much easier, is making me very scared for humanity as a whole. (See e.g. the issue I think most of humanity should be worried about, which is reducing existential risk, with the most obvious current problem being AI safety.)

I view things through a realism/realpolitik lense. China was supposed to be US ally against Russia in order to have a Chinese - Russian conflict to keep both week. But China became too powerful in their own right and the Ukraine conflict has now created a strong alliance between China and Russia. Much of realpolitik is to keep both your enemies and allies in constant conflict with each other, even secretly pitting allies against other allies, and secretly weakening allies by promoting the worst in them. Suitably paranoid hegemons consider peace to be a time where countries build up strength for later use against them. On that basis I consider Israel an ally of convenience with the actual intent of using the 'unsinkable carrier' in preventing peace in the middle east and keeping the region in a weakened state. I guess unsinkable carrier is better than the reason of the baptists support of Israel. To remind people, it is so the jews can all die there in another holocaust to fulfil a biblical end-times prophecy and usher in the apocalypses where the baptists will ascend to heaven. Of course it's in Israel's interest to go along with both of these - for now.

The unprecedented support was assumed, the unprecedented pushback is new. And now Israel has been prevented from re-retaliating against Iran. This is a Suez Canal moment, where the 'special bond' between UK and US in effect ended and it led to a deep crisis of confidence in the UK and an deep sustained economic downturn. Unlike Israel the UK wasn't surrounded by hostile entities seeking their destruction.

Iran has been playing a long game for a long time, just like Israel was with Gaza. There may not be any good options left, I did think that a quick and decisive war against Iran to be the last viable option but Israel is apparently being prevented from doing so. On a balance of probabilities I don't think Israel would have won that conflict but there was at least some chance which I think is more of a chance than they have now.

I always viewed Oct7th incursion as a trap to invoke the exact response it did, I think by overestimating their support Israel has now found themselves in a position they're unable to get out of, hense trapped. I could be wrong, but I don't know how yet, and I am interested to see how it pans out. Sadly it seems that I wasn't wrong about Ukraines chances against Russia. Maybe a rapid de-escalation preceded by scapegoating Netanyahu is still possible?

FYI I probably won't be able to answer much since dang limited my account after I took offense at people who think my country shouldn't exist. But I'll bite.

Israel isn't remotely close to stretching its forces. The army is actually pushing hard for retaliation and most forces from Gaza are already at home by now. There's an importance of "perceived power" in this region. It's crucial to Israeli survival that it appears powerful.

This is also a much "easier" war for Israel as it can fight against a "normal" army. The Hezbolla and Hamas are problematic as they aren't official armies (although they do have battalions and structures), they hide in civilian populations and make combat difficult. Hamas never brought the army remotely close to its limits; during the entire campaign in Gaza many of the people drafted were actually up north waiting for Hezbolla.

Houthi missiles are just stupid, Yemen is too far away. The problem is the costs of far east goods that results from the blockade. But that's mostly an annoyance.

All three of these fronts (and Syrian sourced attacks) are really from one source: Iran. They have been pulling the strings as part of an ongoing shadow war. Some believe it would be best to attack the head of the snake.

All of the problems Israel is experiencing with its allies are the main reason it didn't retaliate (at least not yet).

Well, everything you say is quite surprising to me. But thanks for sharing your perspective. I've certainly never heard most of these points before.

It's pretty clear that Israel is stretching the extent it can take its conscripts to. Otherwise they wouldn't be debating drafting haredis (at great political risk). They wouldn't be pulling out of Gaza. Allies and the upper brass themselves wouldn't be saying the conscript army needs rest. And you wouldn't be seeing the big, news-making mistakes the conscript army is making after 6 months of urban warfare.

The idea that a war against Iran would be easy is, quite frankly bonkers. It sounds like something Netanyahu would say to everyone's groans and disappointment. It sounds like Putin's hubris before he invaded Ukraine...

>Some believe it would be best to attack the head of the snake.

This reads like it's not serious about the practicalities of war. It honestly reads like Hamas propaganda talking about how they're going to directly kill Netanyahu when such a move is realistically impossible for them.

> It's pretty clear that Israel is stretching the extent it can take its conscripts to. Otherwise they wouldn't be debating drafting haredis (at great political risk).

Let me endorse the fellow commenter here - this is a misread of the situation. The army has pulled back most troops from Gaza, partially because they need rest, but also because they don't have anything to do right now. They're holding territory, but there's no planned next move - the army is waiting for the government on this. If a Rafah operation proceeds, then I assume more troops will re-enter Gaza.

As for the debate over drafting Haredi, as fellow poster said - this is an unrelated political thing that is cropping up now. Well, not entirely unrelated - this has been debated for decades, but it's probably being used now by people who oppose the current government. It's being used now partially because at this moment, the importance of the draft is more obvious, but also because the opposition is trying to bring down the government, and this is a way to do it.

It really has nothing to do with needing these conscripts for the current fight.

It seems like we basically agree actually.

> The army has pulled back most troops from Gaza, partially because they need rest

Right they need rest because they are stretched beyond what they're meant to endure as a conscript army. They also can afford a rest they need.

> s being used now partially because at this moment, the importance of the draft is more obvious

Right because the current army needs rest and could use fresh reinforcements.

So what's our disagreement here?

We're talking about this point in time. Not theory. Right now people who were drafted for military reserves in October are mostly home now. At this point Israel has manpower.

The drafting of Hasidim is a different issue altogether that's been going on for decades. It's reached a boiling point mostly due to unrelated circumstances. A supreme court ruling came in that effectively invalidated the current legal hack as discriminatory. Since Netnyahu's coalition relies on the Hasidic vote he is trying to find a solution. They demand complete, permanent immunity from the draft which is a red flag here. Especially at this point in time.

Right now numbers are reasonable but if the war develops into an all front war then yes, Israel will be stretched. Regardless, a war against Iran would employ mostly pilots and missile defenses. Those are different forces from the ones engaged in combat in other fronts. So saturation isn't linear.

> The idea that a war against Iran would be easy is, quite frankly bonkers.

I didn't say it would be easy. I said "easier" with quotes trying to convey nuance. War sucks. But a war against a "normal army" is something that is simpler and clear. Urban warfare is just terrible for any army.

In the case of a war with Iran Israel can rely much heavier on air superiority which is probably its strongest suit.

> >Some believe it would be best to attack the head of the snake. > > This reads like it's not serious about the practicalities of war. It honestly reads like Hamas propaganda talking about how they're going to directly kill Netanyahu when such a move is realistically impossible for them.

Notice this isn't my opinion but I understand where they're coming from. Proxy wars suck.

I do think that if Israel could destroy the Iranian reactor it would be a huge accomplishment and would ultimately be a good thing. Israel did that in Iraq and effectively blocked Saddam from having Nuclear weapons. It did it in Syria and stopped Assad from a similar accomplishment.

You wouldn't.

That's not a meaningful claim about what other people would or wouldn't do.

The juice looks entirely worth the squeeze from here. Iran now knows exactly the saturation point of your defenses with all allies engaged.

You're entitled to your opinion.

I'm not making a claim on what people would do. That's just standard military practice when a missile is fired you fire back at the source to prevent additional firing.

Iran has no clue about the saturation point and got nothing. First, this was 100% synthetic since Israel knew about the attack and was very prepared. It got help from Jordan, US, UK and even the Saudis. According to army sources Israel already practiced for missile volumes with double the intensity. The fact that a couple went through doesn't indicate saturation, it just indicates the complexity of the problem space.

Also, this is relevant to a point in time. Missile defenses are easy to bolster with additional resources. Right now light dome isn't even active yet and might be a game changer (energy based interception). Software and sensors improve very rapidly and additional deployments are easy.

What we do know is that a large number of Iranian missiles crashed in Iraq and Iran because they are so badly made... Anyone in the market for Iranian tech now understands the quality of their product and its usefulness.

I believe the US is struggling to reach production of 650 Patriots a year. Given the shambolic state of our industrial base, I strongly doubt that any of the other platforms are in better logistical shape.

I am deeply concerned that the US armories will be empty in two years at this rate.

> Anyone in the market for Iranian tech now understands the quality of their product and its usefulness.

No matter, Putin is desperate enough to buy anyway.

>You don't fire 300+ missiles and drones just as a "show of force". It's expensive.

The reality is 300+ ordnances is chump change.

US attack on Syrian in 2018 consisted of 100 TLAMs/tomahawks with alleged ~70% interception rate on generations old RU hardware. The ability to intercept subsonic munitions at this point is basically known (hence why US pushing hard for stealth subsonics that are harder to engage), and being able to shoot down drones and cruise missiles is table stakes for any advanced military. Even more so with advanced notice. So Israel + co being able to take out 100% of subsonic munition is given, considering HOW MUCH MORE defense capabilities it has relative to Syria on 8x less land coverage*. The real kicker is the number of ballistics that slipped through, especially with US alleging 50% were duds that never launched properly. Assuming half of IR ballistics were duds, we're looking at ~10/50, 20%+ interception failures on small salvo (50-100 missiles is small), by one of the most sophisticated and dense anti missile networks in the world. The that ghetto salvo of 300 ordnances mix from Iran can penetrate that is the real news, how missile defense has surely improved, which is great against small states with limited capabilities, but not nearly enough for any adversary that can throw high 100s-1000s. Defense analysts suggest this was a calibrated retaliation because 300+ missiles and drones is really not that much.

* Should be noted a carrier strike group with defensive DDGs screening the carrier 100km+ away constitutes larger defensive perimetre larger than the size of Israel. Consider if a carrier group has more defense than the entire country of Israel with US+UK+Jordan help from local basing and DDGs. Consider what 10 ballistics do to a carrier. IR demonstrated that sending cheap garbage with 50% dud rate is enough to satuate the best defense that (a lot of) money can buy.

You're mixing cruise missiles and ballistic missiles which are very different things to intercept. Also comparing the volumes the US is able to fire with the volumes for an embargoed poor nation like Iran is probably not at the same scale.

300+ is more than was fired in a single attack against any country ever. Calling it small is disingenuous. It's possible that many of the duds weren't part of the initial tally published but it's unclear from the reports.

The significance here is the time-frame. This was done rapidly at a relatively short distance. As long as the defending side has enough missiles the volume doesn't matter (admittedly this is a big ask) what matters is the concurrent intensity required to overwhelm the defenses. But this is a pretty bad example regardless.

First, Israel is tiny. Its a smaller area to defend and that means fewer deployments/radars etc..

Iran is still just far enough to defend against. Missiles fired by their troops in Lebanon are much harder to intercept. There's just not as much time.

There was an intelligence warning and everyone was prepared.

>cruise missiles and ballistic missile

No I'm not, I distinguished between the different ordnances and known interception probabilities, as known as what info is publically available if one follows the space. Cruise missiles / TLAMs / tomahawk equivalents, aka subsonic munitions, not ballistic mach1-<mach5 or >mach 5 hypersonics, are "easy" to intercept. Even with 30 year old Russian hardware, S200-300s (as seen against US tomahawks in Syria). Older platforms shot down U2s 50 years ago, they can shoot down cruise missiles. Indeed all of those were shot down along with subsonic drones. Likely garbage subsonic drones, without any stealth shaping nor TERCOM/terrain hugging. Which is expected. What penetrated was ~10 ballistics, out of 50/100 depending on dud rate, ~10-20%. That's really the new revelation, we only know from past 10 years US FTM tests that missile defense has consistently intercepted against 1-2 < mach5 ballisitcs, but couldn't extrapolate at scale.

Now we know againt allegedly crude Iranian ballistics (if dud rate true), with forwarning, 10%-20% made it through. Which is a great number mind you relative to where we were 10 years ago, but it's also pretty terrible stats with respect major assets like carrier survival. Or in IL case, IR calibrating future attacks to satuate defense. People see 80%-90% ballistic interception, are thinking missile defense strong, which it is true relative to powers that can't coordinate large strike packages (which granted is most of the world), but people who see 10-20% ballistic penetration see dead carriers and MIRVs deliverying nuclear payloads.

>300+ is more than was fired in a single attack against any country ever.

Coalition air strike during Gulf war hovered between 800-100 sorties per day, with planes carrying multipe munitions. Thousands of essentially uncontested fires. This is the first time a "decent" size salvo was directed at western missile defense. 300 mixed salvo is small, even smaller since we're really talking about 50-100 ballistics. Like US sent ~100 tomahawks against IIRC 3 targets in Syria with fraction of anti missile coverage. AKA even against shit tier Syria, US weaponeer were throwing 3 digits to shut down a few targets. Hence IMO 300 mixed ordnance against IL who is definitely 3x more capable than Syria capabilities is "calibrated" not to be big. Like IR probably expected more to penetrate, but just demonstrating a strike package like this was enough penetrate western/IL defense is enough, even if west wants to spin it as embarrassment.

>Calling it small is disingenuous.

It's small in the sense that 50-100 ballistics is close to floor of what modern anti missile defense networks are designed against, i.e. a loaded carrier group with 5-6 DDGs ~500 VLS tubes is designed to intercept 100s of ballistics. 50-100 ballistics maybe substantial relative to Iranian capabilities, but it's small relative to missile defense capabilities western (well US/IL) hardware is designed for. For reference PRC H6 salvo against a carrier group would have 200-300 antiship ballistics. Double that with hypersonics from land. That's what a large salvo a dense missile defense network is calibrated against. Another comparison, estimates of disabling PRC bases in SCS is like 300-400 tomahawks for just major installations on Spratlys and Woody Island. So measured against targets with less missile defense density than Israel, with forwarning, and assistance, the 300 ordnance mix IR planned, of which only 100 had serious chance of penetrating, is indeed "small".

> was done rapidly at a relatively short distance

By distance I think you mean terminal interception which is the easiest/most technically mature form of interception, but generally missile defense wants to move away from terminal, to more difficult midcourse because terminal is constrained by prepositioning of hardware, which since Israel is small is less of an issue. If anything because Israel is small, it has disproportionate density of sensors and overlap in shooters coverage. Like it shouldn't be controvesial to suggest Israel has the densest anti missile coverage in the world. More than most carrier deployment only gets 1-2 DDGs escorts - 180 VLS of which only a fraction is dedicated to missile defense. Israel small size = almost any hardware in it, is within interception range, especially considering they'll be prepositioned against IR direction. IMO that's really how this event should be interpretted. How the geographically densest and most advanced missile defense network in the world allowed 10-20% of ballistics from sanctioned country with limited industrial base through.

>has enough missiles the volume doesn't matter

Which is really crux, this is the unknown unknown territory. If IR missiles penetrated, either 10/50 went through before IL ran out of inteceptors, meaning IL only had enough inteceptors for 40-80 or so ballistics, or interceptor performance is 80-90% effective. Either way, IR showed it can penetrate IL missile defense with pretty medioore hardware (again relative to what missile defense is designed against), without hezbollah running interference. It's not a win in the sense that they probably expected more damage, but it's not a loss either considering what it revealed about current state of the art missile defense and the implications there of. Like PLA bomber/rocketforce weaponeers are adjusting their spread sheet formulas. Question is which direction.

Pure ineffectual saber rattling. If it wasn’t, they’d first hit air defense installations. They know where they are. Iran wanted Israel to not intercept just a few of the things it knew it couldn’t intercept. It’d be absolutely moronic for Israel to respond to something so obvious. Next time they might not be so “lucky”.

Apparently they provided 72 hours advance notice to neighbors (who probably tipped off the US and Israel, given the US warnings of an imminent attack). The Iranians presumably expected the information to leak. The US also had naval and air assets parked in the region to assist. It's hard to imagine a more favorable scenario for the defender. That makes it rather dangerous to try to generalize the performance in this instance to future events.

It also makes this whole exercise seem like dramatic saber-rattling rather than a serious effort to damage Israel's military capabilities.

> Iraqi, Turkish and Jordanian officials each said Iran had provided early warning of the attack last week, including some details.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-notice-att...

50M in offensive spend to burn through 1.3BN in defensive munitions seems highly effective to me. Great intel-gathering op.

That was far more than 50M. Heavy ballistic rockets aren’t cheap even in Iran. And Iran could have used them to cause several times the amount of damage just by hitting a couple of AD deployment points. I think Israel understands that too, hence the difficulty with deciding how or whether to respond

So am I off by one order of magnitude or three?

Definitely at least one order of magnitude off. For comparison, one Patriot battery can cost over a billion dollars, and they hit none. Not because they couldn’t (it doesn’t intercept hypersonics, which Iran has) but because they chose not to.

They needed to do more damage. iran looks really bad when after such a large attack they hit to little. Iran didn't suceed in any retribution. (other than money spent on a defense test)

Iran has no great options available to them, and of the terrible options on the table I think they picked the best one for them. Now if Israel wants to attack Iran directly they have to make a mountain out of a molehill and it’ll cost Israel public support at a time where public support for Israel is rapidly waning.

Iran has the option of not inciting violence.

Of course, there would be no war if the other side would just surrender

Iran is a third side and they are enticing people who could learn to get along to not,.

As far as I understand from what I've read, Iran even separated the attack times of missiles and UAVs to make them easier to monitor and shoot down without overloading air defense systems. For example, Russia deliberately syncs these attack with large numbers of aerial weapons to overload Ukraine's air defenses beyond their capacity—Iran could not have been unaware of this tactic, but it chose not to.

Right after the attack Iran's permanent representative to the UN stated that "The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe". It looks convincing that Iranian pyrotechnic show is more of a reputational response, given that some of the targets were shown in propaganda videos days before the attack (if not directly leaked to Western counterparts so that Israelis had time to prepare and/or evacuate personnel).

they separeted the launch times so that slow and fast things would arrive at once. That meant the world had hours to shoot down slow drones.

Isn't the problem with these missile defense systems that the per-unit cost is very high? And so in a longer term battle (like Russia vs Ukraine) one side can drain the other's defenses and $$ through the continuous use of cheap drones where the cost of the missile defense rocket far exceeds the cost of the sent drone?

yes and no. the difference in cost between the weapon and the countermeasure matters, but it's not the whole story. the value of the thing being defended also matters. in the absence of a viable alternative, it's easily worth burning $1-2mm per interceptor to prevent a mission kill on a $2bn destroyer or a strike on a major population center.

not saying this is you personally, but people seem to view this kind of thing as being similar to RTS, where players start on even footing on a symmetrical map, and games are won or lost by stringing together resource-efficient "trades". real world conflicts aren't like that. western countries have relatively deep pockets and low tolerance for casualties (and collateral damage to an extent). as a result, they are willing to pay a premium for training, survivable equipment, and precision munitions. it's a different doctrine altogether.

Deep pockets in the sense of "can print indefinitely or until the inflation leaks into Bitcoin", and shallow pockets in the sense of actual artillery shells and interceptors.

Why would "inflation leaking into Bitcoin" stop governments from printing money?!?

It's not as if the shady "crypto" tail wags the big dogs of the real economy, is it?

There's just never been anywhere for the coordinated inflation to leak into before. Novel territory, just keeping an eye on the future. A dollar continues to buy less of everything, be it equities or commodities.

The cost per unit could be dramatically lower for drones soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam

A 100 kW shot is a big one. 100 kW is around $15 from the grid in Israel. Maybe double that a few times for inefficiencies, it's still a lot cheaper than an effective drone.

Yes, and this has been anticipated for a long time. The US started doing serious R&D work on dealing with autonomous swarm attacks 30-40 years ago. Recent generations of solid state lasers appear to fill that role nicely, since they are very cheap to operate. Some of the US test systems actually use white light, which I did not anticipate, which means that wavelength-selective defenses (e.g. dielectric mirrors) won't be effective.

The next gen systems being developed are laser based. Bringing the cost per interception way down.

We've had the idea of directed energy beams, but I don't know. The US likes to spend big money at small problems. And then we're surprised when Ukraine (e.g.) uses low cost tech to make big advances.

Slow drones can be shot down even with machine guns, but missiles require expensive interceptors, and fast missiles can't (practically) be intercepted (yet).

Cheap drones are evolving fast, but so too are counters for them.

I’m guessing they’ll come up with cheaper solutions for shahed type drones, as they are slow and comparatively easier to shoot down.

This is a great article and an excellent breakdown of how what we hear on the news can be so off base.

Just to nitpick, this part stuck out to me:

>Fast forward two decades, and this outlook looks dangerously naive. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s attacks on Israel, and a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan or the Philippines show the importance of ballistic missile defense as a way of blocking attacks by invading states. In 2006, in the middle of the War on Terror, it might have seemed inconceivable that just 18 years later, the world would see multiple authoritarian empires waging aggressive, expansionist wars, and that the U.S. and its allies would be playing a beleaguered defense. But here we are.

Hmm, one of those countries' actions is not like the others no? Iran's missle launch was not an invasion of Israel. It was definitely Israel who violated Iranian sovereignty first here, no? With the killing of IRGC commanders in a Syrian consulate. Neither country has attacked Israel recently. The US and Israel have assassinated targets in the country of Iran recently, while the reverse has not been true. Who is really invading who here? And in that sense, Yglesias' point that missile defense is only important if you want to meddle in and invade sovereign nations seems to be correct for the one conflict of these which existed back then (Israel v Middle East) (whatever you may believe about the value of such moves)

> It was definitely Israel who violated Iranian sovereignty first here, no? With the killing of IRGC commanders in a Syrian consulate. Neither country has attacked Israel recently.

Iran funds Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7th (and has attacked it many other times). It funds Hezbollah, which has been attacking Israel since October 7th, partially from Syria.

And the US funds Israel who has extrajudicially assassinated Iranian civilians in Iran in the past few years.

So can Iran then blow up an American embassy with justification?

The US itself has assassinated Iranian generals.

> So can Iran then blow up an American embassy with justification?

Well, that's a tough question. If you're asking legally or something, idk, I have no real knowledge of this.

If you're asking practically, yes, the US is powerful and is able to do things that other countries can't.

If you're asking morally - there's no question in my mind that the US should do whatever is possible to weaken the Iranian regime. For all its faults, the US are the "good guys" on the world stage right now. The Iranian regime is a dictatorship that has taken a wonderful people hostage and is forcing them to live by religious laws that many (most?) would be happy to live without. It is evil, pure and simple.

It is also incredibly dangerous, has funded terrorism for years, has destabilized the entire Middle East for years, and is likely to wipe out Israel if given the chance.

I'm not shedding any tears over the US trying to stop the Iranian regime.

(And note - this only goes for the Iranian leadership, the Iranian people are wonderful and should be protected at all costs!)

I'm not talking about generals, I'm talking about civilians. Israel famously assassinated an Iranian civilian in Iran with a machine gun deployed remotely.

>If you're asking morally - there's no question in my mind that the US should do whatever is possible to weaken the Iranian regime

My original point was that Iran has not invaded Israel or even prematurely attacked or postured against it, the way Russia and China have done to the territories they wish to invade. It's quite the opposite. You even agree here that the US should essentially have carte blanche to destroy Iran because... it's a religious dictatorship (seriously that's all)??? Some of the closest US allies are religious dictatorships who have the exact same religious rules as Iran??? In fact, the US and Israel heavily court religious dictatorships who force their populations to live by the exact same religious laws!

A very outlandish take, to be honest, but it serves my point well. Iran's actions against Israel are defensive ones against a bloodthirsty enemy who seems to have a very poor reason to want to destroy it.

Are you referring to "Mohsen Fakhrizadeh"? I mean, yes, technically he's not a soldier, but I don't think just calling him "an Iranian civilian" gives the whole context - "he was regarded as the chief of Iran's nuclear program." per Wikipedia.

> My original point was that Iran has not invaded Israel or even prematurely attacked or postured against it, the way Russia and China have done to the territories they wish to invade.

Umm.. that's just false. Even leaving aside the current "round", Iran has been funding terrorists and militias to attack Israel for 50 years. Iran funded Hamas, and to some extent directs Hamas, which invaded Israel and killed a thousand citizens while shooting rockets at Israel. And that's just in the last 6 months. Hamas has been shooting rockets at Israel since 2007.

Hezbollah is a powerful armed group that has semi-taken-over Lebanon, and is parked on Israel's border (illegally against UN ceasefire resolutions, btw) and has shot rockets at Israel and had wars with Israel multiple times.

And this goes way back. Iran famously bombed the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center in Argentina way back in the 90s [1].

As for "not posturing" against Israel - let me just pull a few quotes from the Wikipedia article called "calls for the destruction of Israel" [2] (as if the fact that such an article exists about a country makes any kind of sense in this world):

"Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, stated in 2000 that “the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region”, and in 2001 that “the perpetual subject of Iran is the elimination of Israel from the region"

"In 2013 he labeled Israel a country "doomed to failure and annihilation," deeming it an "illegitimate regime" led by "untouchable rabid dogs" who "cannot be called human beings." He later outlined a nine-point plan for Israel's elimination in 2014.[22]"

""Our dear Imam (Khomeini) ordered that this Jerusalem occupying regime must be erased from the page of time," and that Iran would “wipe Israel off the map” [...] In 2006, he said: "Israel heading towards annihilation”, and in another statement, "The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated”."

Are you really sticking by your assertion that Iran is somehow not a threat to Israel, hasn't "invaded or postured against Israel", and that it's the opposite?

> You even agree here that the US should essentially have carte blanche to destroy Iran because... it's a religious dictatorship (seriously that's all)???

Let's be clear, I'm talking about the Iranian regime here, not the people of Iran. But no, I don't think morally the US or Israel has carte blanche just because they're a religious regime. I think they have carte blanche because to take out the regime because that regime has explicitly, multiple times, claimed that it will wipe Israel off the map.

> Iran's actions against Israel are defensive ones against a bloodthirsty enemy who seems to have a very poor reason to want to destroy it.

If you think Israel is bloodthirsty with regards to Iran, and not just worried about itself, then you're just ignoring all available evidence to the contrary. Even with all of the above evidence aside, when Israel was founded, all the Arab states were its enemies and attacked it multiple times. The so-called "bloodthirsty" Israel now has peace agreements with many of them and is well on its way to have peace with many others, including recent announcements of a possible opening of diplomatic relations with the most populous Muslim country in the world.

And all of these old enemies of Israel are united in fearing Iran and in making defensive pacts against Iran.

Are they all just bloodthirsy countries who have somehow misunderstood that Iran is only interested in defending against Israel? Is Israel somehow only bloodthirsty when it comes to Iran, because... why exactly? (Note that relations between Iran and Israel went from peaceful to this after the regime change of the 1970s, not before.)

Lastly, if you're somehow not convinced by actual history, or the behavior of all other countries in the region, including ones that used to be historic enemies of Israel... if all of that is somehow not convincing about the current regime, why not just listen to the Iranian people? They've been railing against the regime for years and will back up the terrible burden the regime has placed on their daily lives, and also the fact that it's trying to drag Iran into war with Israel that none of the Iranian people even want (nor do Israelis!).

[1]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/world/middleeast/argentin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calls_for_the_destruction_of_I....

They already kind of did once:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

It was the turning point in US Iran relations.

Clearly it was just preemptive because the US would eventually kill so many of their civilians in the Iraq Iran War (/s but this is the kind of logic this thread has been using)...

> The US and Israel have assassinated targets in the country of Iran recently, while the reverse has not been true.

I presume you are referring to the US killing of Soleimani, and the embassy bombing, though neither of those were in Iran. But you're missing the point. Why did those killings happen?

Iran keeps arming proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, militias in Iraq, the Houthis, and maybe some others), and having those proxies attack Israel and the US. (In the case of Soleimani, he was meeting with militias in Iraq who were literally killing US military personnel.) Iran thinks this is a fun game of "we get to kill your people, and you don't get to kill us".

Eventually the US and Israel got tired of the game. The US killed Soleimani at a time and place that made it explicitly clear what he was doing and why the US wasn't going to keep putting up with it. Israel lost patience with Iran's game after the Hamas attack; they are in no mood to allow Iran to be stirring up trouble with Hezbollah on their northern border.

So I think it's rather unfair to point fingers at Israel and the US for killing Iranians, when the individual Iranians in question are deliberately trying to kill US and Israeli soldiers and citizens, and have been for quite some time.

You presume wrong. I mean the killing of Iranian civilians such as Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

The US arms Israel who conducts such extrajudicial assassinations.

By your logic, this makes all American military personnel and proxy civilians fair targets for Iran

So, you mean like the Iranian attempt to assassinate John Bolton? (I mean, they didn't succeed, but does that make a real moral difference?)

Wasn't this a retaliation to the killings Israel and the US did of it's people?

Also, I am keeping military leaders aside. I think most would agree that they sign up for a level of targeting civilians should be exempt from.

First, Bolton was a civilian. (And if you're going to say that "he's an involved civilian", well, so is the nuclear scientist. Iran doesn't have a nuclear program just to produce reactors.)

Second, of course it's a retaliation. But the killings Israel and the US did were also retaliations. And what they were retaliating for were also retaliations. If you condemn assassination-as-retaliation on the US and Israeli side, condemn it on Iran's side as well.

(And, note that if this is ever going to end, some people who are guilty of atrocities are going to have to be unpunished. That feels morally wrong. But both sides punishing the authors of atrocities leads to the current situation, which also doesn't feel very moral.)

I'll agree with the specifics that it looks like some military technologies are more effective than we realized.

I do not think that it's a fair logical leap to say "therefore the US should keep spending a significant portion of its national budget on it."

I think the biggest predictors of whether humankind is alive in 1,000 years are not military at all, and perhaps inversely proportional to military spending. If instead of spending 877 Billion on military per year instead spent that much on clean energy, AI, or health-related technologies I imagine we'd find humanity in a much better state.

You don't get to choose when you are attacked. So despite your wishful thinking you need to prepare for war if you want to see results of your other actions.

We can be prepared for war without the enormous amount of waste we spend on "defense".

We make so many tanks and gear that we outfit rural police with equipment they will never need just to get it out of warehouses

Those are old ane obsolete tanks. While I agree the police doesn't need them, the army both needs updated equipment and we need the assembly lines there and ready to produce lots of military stuff which we will need a lot more of in case of war then peacetime.

> The attack included about 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles.

If Israel attacks Iran with 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles is that a proportionate response?

US gas prices might go up, so no https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/15/...

What is the point of such questions? Everyone who does an Int'l Relations class in college knows that eye for an eye is not the way any modern nation calculates its actions. It's all about the countries in your sphere of influence and what they (and sometimes, if they're democracies, their constituents) will accept and what they will bristle at you doing.

Tldr shortsightedness, and not predicting the ability of detection to help missiles chase other missiles.

I'm allergic to implications that social spending isn't enough, or that military spending is immune to criticism because "of course it will pan out".

The US cannot assume it will be a continued military leader ipso facto. If we fall significantly behind countries with desire for world domination and a hate for democracy, we will be on the receiving end of massive cyber attacks and drone swarms.

I've always seriously doubted Ukraine shooting down any "hypersonic" missiles. The problem is not solvable. Hypersonic missiles are really just manuevering ballistic missiles, and its impossible to plot an intercept path unless you have a really really big explosion. Missile defense is done, along with large military assets like surface ships.

It shot down what is claimed to be "hypersonic" missle by russians. I don't know about "kinzhal" speeds, but the rockets are indeed was shot down a bunch of times. Speaking about "cyrcon" missiles, they do travel at the hypersonic speed but slowing down at the last miles of trajectory and can (and was) shot down too.

A lot of propaganda from both sides but figures being thrown around put some numbers to guestimate bounds in less than credible manner. Given Iran at least could coordinate mixed salvo of ~300 ordnances. May or may not have shit industrial base with 50% dud rates. Israel+Co, missile defense on ballistics largely works. Which should be expected if one follows US FTM interceptor tests. Subsonics being completely vulnerable should also be assumed, TLAMs has been shot down with reliable consistency in last 10 years, including by RU.

Rough interpretations depending on how pessimistic/optimistic one is of each side's narrative. One end of spectrum is coalition took out 95% (evidence of ~10 hits) of ballistics assuming no duds and all arrived in IL airspace. Other end of spectrum is coalition took out 70-75% assuming allegations of 15+ hits if only 50% made it to IL. High Iranian duds makes ABM performance worse. Also don't know if penetrations happened because interception failure or they ran out of interceptors - i.e. coalition had ~100 interceptors with "99"% interception rate but ran out of interceptors which allowed tail end of salvo to land uncontested. Was Iran competent enough to calibrate strike to just overwhelm IL defense? That seems to be in keeping with narrative that IR wanted to signal they can hit Israel without massive escalation. Plus now IR has data now on most of IL missile defense network for follow up strikes assuming IL +co can replenish interceptors in time.

Take away is defensive has equal or greater missile defense coverage as the entire country of IL + co, one of the densest network of missile defense : geography size ratio in the world, with uncontested assets in region to intercept, multiple days of warning, a ~100 garbage-adequate ballistic salvo timed with subsonic used to draw magazine fire, is large enough to slip through and potentially hit target(s). Iran's attack validates notion that 10s-100s million of drones/missiles can deplete billions in missile defense and take out strategic target worth billions - good chance ~5 missiles kills/mission kills a carrier. This is bad (but not novel) news for countries less capable than Iran, and good news for countries that's more capable.

IMO what we have seen in UKR, Red Sea and Israel is missile defense can reliably be saturated by 100s of ordnances, given proper ISR, which TBF only less than handful countries is capable of delivering in a coordinated package. Even then US DDGs can't reliably prevent Houthis from hitting ships. How many assets/locations has as much missile defense as Israel + multiple in theatre US/UK basing and multiple DDGs? Arguably none.

What’s the conclusion here? Basically, the last paragraph says pundits should talk to different sources, and that they should “keep the interests of the nation” in mind. He concludes by saying some vaguely ominous thing about politics not mattering if America “goes down”.

So all in all, the thesis of the piece is that no one knows how or why defense contractors are spending a significant fraction of American GDP. But that’s actually ok because critics were wrong and the military projects actually worked after decades of development.

So what does any of this matter?! As he says, journalists and pundits and activists yelled for years and had no effect, zero results. Patriots kept getting made, the F35 was never canceled. The public, even institutions like universities and journalism, have no information and no influence. The author thinks thats fine, the missile defenses work (maybe we’re still not totally sure), and that this is just too important a task for democratic accountability.

The conclusion here is that American military might is definitely, definitely, definitely not on the wane, or engaged in asymmetric warfare the narrative class tricked us into believing to be backwards religious zealots with no hope of ever playing on the global stage, and that this new multipolar world is fake Russian news.

It's hard to understand what you're trying to say, tbh.

I don't think anyone thinks American military might is on the wane. The blog post is very clear that given the info people knew at the time, the ineffectiveness of missle defense systems was reasonable to believe in...

But America's war record in the past few decades shows that might alone cannot win wars. And given that our might is high and our strategy has been a bit poor, it's not insane for people to want to spend less money and time on the former and more on the latter...

> It's hard to understand what you're trying to say, tbh.

Frankly, it's really not that hard at all. The GP is (pretty clearly, IMO) trying to say that all those things they are on the surface on it saying are in fact not necessarily true. They do that by formulating them in an exaggerated, IMO rather clearly sarcastic, manner, to say, in effect, that "The conclusion here" is the conclusion that the reader is at least intended to come to.

> I don't think anyone thinks American military might is on the wane.

AFAICS, the GP does.

> The blog post is very clear that given the info people knew at the time, the ineffectiveness of missle defense systems was reasonable to believe in...

AFAICT, the GP thinks it still is.

> But America's war record in the past few decades shows that might alone cannot win wars.

The GP is probably thanking you right now, for spelling out his point for the sarcasm-impaired.

I genuinely didn't realize GP is being sarcastic. Thanks for helping me understand

The F-35 comment seems especially relevant as (for some reason) negative F-35 posts show up on hacker news all. of. the. time[0]. I don't get why negativity on this plane is such a hot topic here, it's like the lab leak theory of military planes.

On at that note why is this post here? Is there a theme to hacker news anymore?

[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The narrative is pushed in part by Boeing PR and lobbying, who would prefer the world buy the upgraded F-15EX instead. BAE/Daussalt/Saab also stand to benefit.

Armaments for the last war. I have no idea why anyone thinks the expensive-pilot-in-expensive-platform is going to survive the drone swarm paradigm shift.

Anti-Americanism is cool and intellectual-coded. F35 hysterics is just an instance of that.

I mean here is a different take on the topic: Both "real" targets were struck.

https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter/status/17796491189288101...

We probably will not know what really was and what could have been anyway, I guess it's part of the game.

strategic ambiguity

Noah is a genocide apologist and kinda gross. The big take away is Israel needs help to defend itself and should be taking orders from the US, not the other way around.

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