U.S. uses hundreds of Tomahawk missiles on Iran, alarming some at Pentagon | Hacker News Reader

U.S. uses hundreds of Tomahawk missiles on Iran, alarming some at Pentagon

washingtonpost.com

29 pointsbreve14 comments

If I was American I wouldn't care so much about the stock pile but about the amount that was and is still being used everyday. 3.5M$ x 850 is a lot of wasted money when diplomacy is much less expensive.

Seeing the NASA ask for a permanent moon base at $20B while the pentagon is looking for $200B really puts it into perspective. You’re telling me it’s going to cost 10x as much to wage war on Iran as it is to build a moon base? Wtf are we doing.

If you think NASA will be able to build a moon base for $20B, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Oh yes absolutely it will cost more than $20B. But that’s an order of magnitude difference. If NASA has price overruns by 9x it’s still cheaper. That’s why it’s so stark.

NASA didn't go to moon for the love of science and because it was cool. They went there because Sputnik was an ICBM with a radio for a payload instead of a warhead.

didn't know that Neal Degrasse Tyson was also on HN.

Diplomacy hasn't worked for the past 50 years, why would it work now?

What fantasy world are you living in? Until now, people around the globe had access to food, clothing, medicine, and energy because prior administrations at least had the decency not to provoke a full-scale war with a nation capable of cutting off critical natural resources to much of the world.

Because MAGA ideology sees prosperity only through the lens of triumphantly screwing over others, they can't recognize mutual benefit as a victory. This shortsightedness will cost countless lives in the years ahead.

The US dumped more bombs on North Korea than all of WW2 combined and it still ended up in a stalemate.

A stalemate with China. Not a stalemate with North Korea, who were pushed all the way back to the Chinese border, until the Chinese army joined the fight.

Even then, it only became a stalemate because US politicians were unwilling to risk further escalation (as in Vietnam).

> More than 850 have been fired in just four weeks, people familiar with the matter said, raising concerns about the weapon's limited supply.

https://archive.ph/xa4li

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme... goes into a lot more detail on many more of the munitions and the supply and manufacturing chains.

how else are we suppose to pump up the militarial industrial complex?

By declaring thousands of truck engines and wheels "unfixable" repeatedly and ordering more while giving the scrap so terrorists can buy the waste cheap to make weapons and bombs to keep an illegal war going. Or by buying a diesel-fueled power plant that's too expensive to operate. Also, buying and losing expensive parts and declaring them "unserviceable". It just has to be done at very large scale.

PS: THAAD missiles are $12M each and GMD missiles are $75M each make for much simpler burning money rather than using it for food, housing, medications, or healthcare.

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