All Activity
- Past hour
-
Just popping in for the friendly weekly reminder that at no point leading up to this stupid boondoggle did our own intel community assess Iran was developing a nuke. 2025 DNI report saying as much is linked a few pages back. But please don’t let inconvenient facts like that interfere with fear mongering about it. There’s some pretty bad faith comments in here to the point that it’s honestly gotten tiresome. This might sound strange to some of you but it’s perfectly possible to disagree with the policy and strategy underpinning a war without being a “scaredy cat” or “against the troops” or “rooting for failure.”
-
Right on! 🤙🏻 First go at applying this year, wishing everyone best of luck
-
-
Some of the guys on this site are getting hysterical…..I remember when we attacked Gaddafi and the usual weak sisters were decrying how Libya would obliterate us and start WW III. Fox News just announced that they weren’t reporting on the rescue efforts/results for security reasons, Not MAGA reasons like some of the TDS afflicted posters stated.
-
Couldn't the same have been said for OIF? I'm sure there were plenty of parents who were former military that had kids of their own fighting in Iraq over "WMD". I'm sure it's sentiment that will continue to be repeated. Not being dismissive of your point, it has some validity, I don't think this has been handled well politically...but that's just like my opinion man. But I do agree that I hope we use everything we can to smoke 'em win decisively (whatever that means), and get everybody home.
-
Take a breath, kid. Suggesting that a fighter pilot wouldn't find a way to make a joke out of anything is a dead giveaway that you aren't anywhere close to the pointy end of the spear. What exactly do you think these lunatics were going to do with a nuke? They've done everything they can slaughter their great foes, Israel and America. Despite bringing on immeasurable pain and suffering to their people and themselves each time, nothing stops them from their great jihad. This is fundamentally a domestic problem. We've had it so good for so long that it seems a whole lot of Americans, even ones in the military, forgot how world peace is secured. I suspect it's gotten bad enough that there will be no off ramps to the great war, but at least someone is willing to move pieces around on the board to give us a better shot at winning. It's mind-blowing to me that "someone" is a borderline delusional reality TV star, but here we are.
-
Yes, this conflict has been a tactical success so far. The Joint Force has shown that rhetoric matches reality. However, tactical success must convey strategic meaning, as Colin Gray would write. I'm not sure we can have strategic success if the objectives keep changing and the Administration cannot convey the necessity of this conflict to the body politic.
- Today
-
That’s a valid tactical position. However, how do you evaluate if the costs are worth the objectives if the objectives are fluid and ill defined? I felt the same way when I was young and GWOT was kicking off. Now, twenty-five year later, I’d be pissed if my child was captured or killed in an operation that was not well coordinated or communicated at the political level. I’m a conservative, and I hope we absolutely smoke them and everyone comes home safe now that we are in this fight. However, so far, we are worse off politically and strategically, and we are losing lives and money. We are going to get sucked into a ground war if we are serious about the objectives that have been floated because they can’t be achieved solely through the air without nuclear weapons. We know that our ground force in Iraq and Afghanistan were way too small to achieve the desired political objectives. So, where does that leave us? This administration is going to run into the same conundrum that previous administrations have encountered. We have the firepower to eliminate Iran to the point that it will no longer exist as a country, but we aren’t willing to do it because of the humanitarian cost. If we aren’t willing to bear those costs, then maybe we shouldn’t have turned down this road to start with.
-
Y'all are ridiculous. First "it didn't happen" because the multiple reliable osint sources aren't reliable. Then after it's been confirmed by both sides it's "again?" as if it's a joke before knowing the status of the crew. I hope the MIA, potential american POW, has no idea that y'all think this is hilarious.
-
And yet the straits are closed by Iran doubling the price of oil, the regime is still in power, they still have ballistic missile and long range drone capabilities, and now have a POW for political purposes. Remind me how many targets did we strike in Afghanistan? Vietnam? What was the result? Strikes do not equal victory. What are our objectives here? Have they been achieved? No one knows because leadership hasn't said and I'm not sure they even know. It's not that I want this to fail but we have no business being here in the first place. We have no objectives. No means to pull out. No way to achieve meaningful objectives without a long protracted costly and likely bloody conflict. We've been at war in the middle East for decades. Can we stop wasting money, time, and lives over there and focus on home? How are we making America great again when we're slashing funding for infrastructure, Healthcare, etc. to bomb mud huts? When we're irreversibly damaging our soft power by being unreliable negotiators. Trying to bully our European allies to get involved in this. Showing we can't protect our middle Eastern allies who've given us land for bases. All against Iran. Imagine a near peer like China. We'd be screwed both in the soft and hard power spheres. They're already starting to dominate us in soft power.
-
This is war...people seem to forget that whether one thinks we're in this for the right reasons or not. People (dorks on Reddit mostly) are calling this an abject failure and how the US isn't the air superiority king it used to be. We've reigned supreme in the air for nearly a half century and people have become accustomed to/expected that to continue. No one wants to see dudes/dudettes get shot down, but it's gonna happen, even with air supremacy. As @ClearedHot pointed out, pretty good mission success rate so far. Further, we haven't faced an adversary with this capability for over 20 years (maybe even going back to DS). This isn't Ahmad taking plink shots with his AK over in the 'Stan.
-
-
-
The liberal utopian dram playing out in Canada....Despite 97.5% of Canadian citizens thumbing their nose at this new law, their dear leaders are sending the Royal Mounted Police door to door to collect your now illegal guns.1993 CIA headquarters shooting - Wikipedia I've mentioned this incident some time ago in the same context. Bases/Concerts/Outside Airport Security the list is endless. Bad guys don't need to breach security just set where everyone is concentrated and most likely unarmed.Wow, this thread took off since I last checked it. I think one thing most of us can agree on is that the American people should be skeptical anytime any Administration promises a swift, clean military operation. The enemy gets a vote, and it almost always ends up more messy than promised. We’ve lost access to the Strait of Hormuz, several American lives, and billions of dollars of hardware. We have no choice but to double down now. <s>From a geopolitical stance yes. We've shown we can't defend our bases abroad against drones or balastic missiles. A curbstomping doesn't cost us multiple strategic aircraft. It doesn't cost us billion dollar radar arrays. It doesn't cost us American lives. It has Displayed our weaknesses to China. We've shown the degree to which we've ostracised ourselves from our allies with most of Europe refusing over flights. We've shown that we lack any long term planning capabilities or forethought by rushing into this without having a plan for keeping the strait open. We've put iran in a stronger position as they have gone from a theoretical to actual control of the straits. Rising oil prices are increasing the funds in both Iran and Russia's pocket to continue their fight. Iranian leadership may be dead but clearly they're working decentralized ops well. There's no scenario in which we walk away from this in the near term with any meaningful victory. Blowing stuff up doesn't equal winning on the global stage. Oh and no one trusts on the world stage trusts us to negotiate anymore seeing as it was never serious and used as a pretext to prepare strikes. We had a solid deal that this admin tore up the first time. We've messaged to the world "get nukes ASAP or you're next." For the photos. A few more have come out plus some vids of a herk and Blackhawk allegedly conducting sar over Iran. I don't trust everything but there's some decent amount of reports coming out and unfortunately our propaganda arm is just as unreliable. SAR ops vids: https://x.com/sentdefender/status/2040044384951922868?s=20 https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2040059365189722249?s=20b
