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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

The blog post said that the Iran war costs the US at least 1 billion USD per day. The US is incredibly rich and can afford the cost. What I don't see being discussed: What if the US (and Israel) does not put troops on the ground in Iran, but continues relentless, daily aerial bombing... forever (1/2/3 years)? I am not saying that you can control a country from air superiority only (this has been widely discussed by military strategists -- it cannot), but you can endlessly bomb their military assets. What would happen? Honestly, I don't know. I don't think it has been done in the last 50 years of war. (Please provide counter examples if you know any.)

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That's one way to make sure people living under aerial bombing firmly support a regime defending their sovereignty, hence legitimizing the islamic republic. Example: Taliban, with boots on the ground, didn't get any weaker at the end.

"There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see." - Sir Arthur Harris

The response is as applicable now as it was then. Time will tell.

This same blog really chastises that statement and tries to debunk it. I don't really see anything wrong with that article so until then, I guess I believe airpower can never win a war https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...

Many of their military assets are underground out of reach of bombers. And you need somewhere to stage out of. Probably not the Gulf bases that are being wiped by missiles and drones at the moment. The aircraft carriers have been having issues and are being pushed back out of missile range. So it becomes more difficult and expensive to keep the bombing up.

I mean the answer to underground facilities is you just keep bombing the entrance which is exactly what they've done. Iran still has insane supply levels of ballistic missiles so the US/Israel are eradicating their tele-launcher fleet.

The US bombed basically all of the Iraqi military in 1991, yet the war didn't end and Iraq didn't leave Kuwait until troops on the ground went in. Air power alone cannot control territory or compel political change

The second the first bomb hit, the Republican Guard went from a standing military force to a guerrilla army, similar in a lot of ways to what the US faced in Iraq, just vastly better-trained and better-equipped. The US couldn't subdue Iraq with hordes of troops on the ground for years, so why would anyone imagine an air-only campaign would have better results against a stronger and larger opponent?

I don't think we could see a bombing campaign like the one we've seen so far anywhere near that length of time. Partly for munitions reasons and partly for target reasons. There is only so much stuff to blow up and only so many bombs to blow things up with. We can't produce them at any where near the rate that would be required to just to do this for years.

Russia has been bombing Ukraine for years, and they're not closer to winning the war now than they were when it starts.

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