U.S. is burning through Tomahawk cruise missile stockpile

It would be, unless China isn't yet militarily ready.

Also if China's Taiwan plan includes using surrogates like Iran to cause simultaneous trouble, then reducing Iran's capability asynchronously eliminates one US worry during a Taiwan scenario.

Don't interrupt your enemy when they are busy making mistakes.

Iran is shaping up to be a quagmire worse than Afghanistan or Iraq. Even if Trump pulls back from the brink, the GCC economies are significantly damaged, Iran will extort a massive wergild, and European and Asian economies will suffer another energy shock. China is relatively unscathed.

They don't need to do anything militarily. Just keep up with Belt and Road and being a stable trade partner while the US has a trade war with everyone and started an active war with Iran over nothing, and is threatening allies. Fill the vacuum the US left behind and see what happens when the US wants to put sanctions on China in the future.

They are waiting for the political pendulum to complete its swing. Once the blue resurgence hits, US will be deeply distracted with domestic issues and too broke for adventures. Spring 2027 will be unseasonably hot…

If China has any sense they will be looking at how well Iran and Ukraine is going for the invaders and maybe think twice before they make the same mistake.

Invading Taiwan now would be incredibly costly for China even if they win.

> perfect time

Or not. China just saw two supposedly biggest military superpowers fail to achieve their military objectives. China supplied Iran with tons of most advanced SAM they could muster, and it took Iran over a month to shoot down _one_ 50 year old airframe. Gunning for Taiwan right now could provoke orange one to erase Iran oil infrastructure.

>>or lint traps stuffing and toilet cloggings will happen.

Thank you for your service

Is it a coincidence that America's greatest ally is testing drone swarms on FirstNet?

Lessons learned for the 3rd term!

Europe is celebrating America's idiocy. We actually are ok with the price of oil et al going up.

Its worth it to see the orange bozo act up.

> 911 became a holiday in some regions.

Name one country that made September 11 a public holiday.

A lot of "celebrated misfortune" is a byproduct of arrogance and the pretense that the US is "smarter" (witness how often the US likes to play "world police"... and how often it correlates to US self-interest. There's nothing wrong with self-interest, but no-one's buying some noble "world police" bullshit when it only seems to happen when the US has something to gain). Certainly not limited to, but also certainly amplified hugely by the present administration.

I know that wars are going on and I guess I have talked about this war in particular fair-share on it.

But when all of the Epstein thing happened, I genuinely thought that US media which moved the headlines faster than I can think about the issues for, would actually slow down given the severity and we as a society could think about it.

And then the US Administration did these wars with less discussion of Epstein files and their implications.

I used to see people raise these points within the start of war but as this war is getting streched more and more, it seems that the news cycle may've forgotten a bit about the files

A lot of my assumptions on the world and how it operates feel challenged by this pace of going from epstein to wars, Reading 1984, it feels like using war as a distraction so that nobody digs in too deep but everyone feels panic and fear so that they are easily controllable.

I hope that accountability can take place within the context of epstein files. Some of it is still redacted even unconstituionally.

(I kind of wish to do some data analysis checking the frequency of Epstein files related posts in Hackernews (for example) after the Iran war actually now [maybe-later, maybe this will also be one of the ideas which I might not implement right now] but I will try to share if I find any interesting results and perhaps someone who is also interested can do that as anecdotally, I feel like I see almost zero mentions of Epstein now from Media or very little aside from some comments like the GP's comment which mentioned Epstein in saying Epstein-fury.)

Arguably this has been happening since the Cold War, as aircraft-launched missiles back then were designed to take out incoming cruise missiles. But in principle using something like an F-15 firing something like an AIM-120 is cheaper than using a Patriot, because the Patriot missile has to include a huge booster stage, a disposable radar, etc, while those can all be integrated into the plane instead in the case of an AMRAAM. In practice of course whether or not it is cheaper is dependent on the cost per flight hour of the plane and how many AMRAAMS you're making versus how many Patriot interceptors you're building. In that regard though, this _is_ new, because there's a fairly recently introduced missile called Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) that puts a relatively cheap seeker head onto a cheap otherwise-unguided rocket (I'm pretty sure the cost of an APKWS seeker + rocket is less than $50k), and those are cheap enough that you can send up an F-15 with hardpoints full of them and not worry nearly as much about letting loose several million-dollar missiles.

This is indeed to save on more expensive missiles. A very cheap missile, the APKWS, is augmented with a cheap laser guidance kit to make the APKWS II, a cheap short range air-to-air missile.

APKWS II isn't useful for counter-manoeuvring targets like fighter jets, but it is perfect for one way drones. The Hydra 70 rocket it is build from doesn't have the range by itself to protect a wide area, but an F-15E can carry a number of 7-rocket pods, and has the speed to chase down drones and cruise missiles over a wide area, like a hummingbird zipping between flowers. Depending on loadout restrictions due to fuel tanks, an F-15E could employ 42 APKWS II and a mix of short range (AIM-9X) and medium range (AMRAAM).

All of this requires airborne cueing, which is why the loss of the E3 Sentry is so serious.

https://www.twz.com/air/f-15e-spotted-packing-big-laser-guid...

> That seems an odd choice.

Why? In Ukraine everything that can fly (light aircraft, helicopters, fighter jets, etc.) are shooting down drones.

Or more specifically “We used up all the ammunition”. Americans got nothing for it other than higher inflated costs.

>Netanyahu's self-destructive tantrum that dragged the US into this mess in the first place.

Trump was bought by the Israel lobby long ago. Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Ellison and others gave him hundreds of millions to ensure he’d start this war while he was still campaigning.

The issue is that capability being gone without any ammo. As the article mentions:

> Again, the Tomahawk would be a primary weapon system used in a conflict with China, where the target sets can range into the tens of thousands, and the country’s anti-access umbrella will require the use of standoff munitions like none other in history.