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Comment by panarky | Hacker News Reader

The big lesson from the US/Israel war against Iran is that the power balance has shifted away from strike capability toward defense magazine depth.

You can't win with stand-off strike capability. You can't seize and control territory, you can't keep strategic choke-points open, you can't change regimes.

But you can definitely lose by spending two or three multi-million dollar air defense interceptors per incoming projectile that costs 10x to 100x less. Especially when your supply chain can only produce hundreds of interceptors per year and your adversary makes that many missiles per month and 10x that many drones per month.

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> You can't win with stand-off strike capability. You can't seize and control territory, you can't keep strategic choke-points open, you can't change regimes

To be clear, there is zero historic evidence—going back to the Blitz—that strategic bombing has ever been able to do any of these things.

Except the one about choke points. That isn’t strategic. It’s tactical. And using artillery or airpower for shaping operations absolutely works.

> you can definitely lose by spending two or three multi-million dollar air defense interceptors per incoming projectile that costs 10x to 100x less

Agree. Fortunately, the MIC seems to have recognized this. None of it fundamentally changes the value of carriers. It just means they need to be defended differently from before. Sort of how you can’t sent lone carriers out into the ocean, they have to be escorted.

I agree with all of this except the notion that this is a recent change. Infantry being needed to seize and hold territory has been standard military doctrine around the world throughout history. Air power can tip the balance between opposing armies but has never been enough to settle a war alone. I'm confident that every person working in the Pentagon is aware of all this, aside from the SecDef.

I'm also not aware of a single case in history where a massive bombing campaign from a hostile country resulted in an immediate populist uprising and a regime change that favored that aggressor country. Having your city bombed for weeks on end tends to cause people to shelter where they can, worry solely about how they will survive the wreckage, and bond with their fellow citizens.

The fact that an air campaign and magical thinking was the complete game plan from trump and hegseth shows how utterly unqualified they are for the positions they have.

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