- 3x F-15 friendly fire
- 2x KC-130 refuel mid air collision (1 loss, 1 damaged)
- 1x F-35 damaged
- 1x AEWACs base strike
- 3x KC-130 base strike (same)
- 1x F-15 (this one)
2-3 a week is not great for the greatest military, more than half attributable to Iran.
With 300+ US casualties, that's ~10/day, a fatality every ~2 days. No boots on the ground (that we know of, sure there are some elite ops in the country)
The main issues with this war are strategic questions and people mocking the presidents inconsistent communication. But otherwise for an air campaign this has been about as good as one could expect - within the limits of what an air-only campaign can do.
That's an exceptionally nice way of saying we invaded a country for no valid military reason, starting a war of aggression.
We're no better than Russia now, with their invasion of Ukraine.
> ... and people mocking the presidents inconsistent communication.
Well-deserved mockery. He continues to lie about what's happening, every other sentence.
I don't know about you, but the idea of a radical Islamic theocracy and a well known source of Middle East instability having nukes doesn't sit well with me. As far as reasons to invade countries go, this alone would make for a damn good one.
> inconsistent communication
I feel like "inconsistent communication" is putting it lightly, with trump going back and forth between "we won", "we'll take the oil", and "whatever we'll leave" often within the same day.
Iran isn't somehow able to exert infinite economic pressure forever. They can play the chaos monkey, but how much does it helps them? Threats only work on those who cave in to them.
I don't see why they couldn't. The obvious strategy for Iran right now is to use cluster munitions and Shahed waves to expend as many interceptors as possible before sending in the high-throw unitary (or nuclear) warheads. It makes sense that we saw the smaller MRBMs first since they're the cheapest minimum-viable threat.
> this has been about as good as one could expect - within the limits of what an air-only campaign can do.
We're deep in the missile age. Air campaigns like this sucked during the Scud hunt, and it triple-sucks now that America has to contend with drone warfare. The limits of an air-only campaign have been constricting for the past three decades, and the death toll can only climb if the air war fails.
> They should be able to do much more to regional military bases.
Could, they are not going all out, but they do keep striking gulf states on the regular
> people mocking the presidents inconsistent communication.
Asking questions, we the people deserve some clarity instead of half a dozen changing reasons and being told we already won, but still need to win, and that we'll be done in a few weeks a few times now. We the people have to pay for this, we deserve answers, especially what's the plan for when the shooting stops?
Israel, or at least Bibi, seems to be the only one who is very clear about the goals and intentions.
US military is performing quite well. US political leadership is the questionable part of this war.
It would sure be nice if White House gave a reason to believe that there's an actual plan for dismantling Iran's regime, or Iran's influence, that goes beyond "wing it".
https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-israel-trump-lebanon-apri...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47563815
$700 per plane, might be $1B considering the shortage of parts.
