Iran...?

[StateBoiler]

I hope the people that run this country are smart enough to not legitimize Ahmadinejad as Iranians see bombs come from the sky, and automatically think all that nonsense they were told about us was true.

[StateBoiler]

The only thing that is "stretched" is our ground forces.  We don't need ground forces to keep a virtual knee in Iran's back semi-permanently.

Bulls***. You need ground forces and a navy to accomplish anything beyond one explosion.

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Air Forces are near worthless in an overall conflict. The only thing an Air Force can do is blow up a building and make it look good on the evening news.

As far as naval power, this is our greatest strength in our military, but the geography of the Strait of Hormuz favors the Iranians. They have mines setup (we'd need the Brits to help us there). One military analyst I've read has run a few war games based on the premise of an American-Iranian conflict, and he can't come up with any scenario where our navy doesn't receive damage from the Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz (like a couple ships sunk).

The Iranian military does not need to mobilize against Iraq. Why would they when 60% of the Iraqi population are Shiites that fear the Saudis.

As far as nuclear power, if we take the assumption they have it and they would use it if attacked, can an Air Force general 100% guarantee he can hit every single rocket launcher? No. That's why air power sounds good on paper, but in actuality, the ground forces are needed to go across the landscape and secure the launchers.

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The simplest way to fight an Air Force is to not give them anything to shoot at. You could have used the Daisy Cutters and B52s against the Hezbollah in the past July War and they wouldn't have been able to do anything due to the general scattering of the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Oh we can definitely bomb someone back to the Stone Age without batting an eye.

 

So can France. Doesn't mean it's an option.

I'm not saying the same situation won't happen in Iran, I'm just saying it would be easier for us to stop them (militarily) from making their own nukes than it would have been for us to stop N.Korea.

The best way to ensure an enemy will run into the arms of another enemy is to threaten him. That's why Iran ran to Russia and Russia ran to China. The Russians are right now making money selling nuclear material to Iran, but do you seriously think the Russians will give enough nuclear know-how to Iran to put Moscow within striking range of an Iranian missile?

I've always had the position that Ahmadinejad is a f***ing idiot, the majority of Iranians realize this, and that he will be voted out of power in 2009, as long as we do not legitimize him. At the end of the day, all the radical clerics will side with self-preservation.

And we do not need to go fight the Saudis' war against Iran for them. If they want to do it, let them use their own military.


I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to give civilians basic military training and tactics in high school. That way they grow up knowing about military strategy and what you can and cannot do. These are the voters and the future leaders of the country after all (who are increasingly avoiding military service, that's for the poor people to go be cannon fodder).

Reminds me of my roommate freshman year of college. Bright individual, was his class' valedictorian, entered school almost a sophomore. He was an absolute moron on how the military works. He actually thought we could fight a "perfect war". "All you have to do is send over an airplane to drop a bomb. You don't need ground troops." F***ing dumbass. Opinions like that are why Iraq is a quagmire right now. Every action has consequences that have to be considered! There's no free lunch!

[StateBoiler]

Air Forces are near worthless in an overall conflict?  Are you serious?

Compared to the Marines, Army, and Navy, yes. And it's not even close.

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The only reason the Navy is the strongest asset is cause the most important item to being world power is commanding the seas.

As far as the minesweeping, it's a weak point of our ships that were built. It was not a high priority for the Navy. Go to this blog of a man that follows navies and their capabilities as well as strategies. Good sight. http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/

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Here's the war game analysis.
http://myksandbox.blogspot.com/2007/11/opening-battle-in-hormuz-part-i.html
http://myksandbox.blogspot.com/2007/11/opening-battle-of-hormuz-part-ii.html

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We'll have to agree to disagree. Air power just isn't worth that much in my eyes beyond blowing up one building. Which leads to my strategic opinion on how to fight air power:

"The simplest way to fight an Air Force is to not give them anything to shoot at."

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They weren't. It was an analogy. The Israelis were though. And despite all their air power and bombing runs that lasted a month, they still could not achieve their objectives against Hezbollah because Hezbollah were spread out. That war and it ending in a stalemate as opposed to a decisive Israeli victory is the clearest evidence I can provide on the weaknesses of air power. If we have a war against the Iranians, the Iranians would be best served by following Hezbollah's lead of small units as much as possible.

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Yes, and the Russians will ensure that stays the case.

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We can talk about DoD idiocy another day. There are quite a few people in our military structure at the time that deserve to be shot for what they let happen in the immediate post-war situation in Iraq. However, you cannot control anything with an Air Force. The only thing an Air Force could do is point at a target. That's it. They can't make opposing forces surrender. They can't stop the leaders from making plans. They just blowup buildings. Air Forces are good for non-wars where you want to ensure no one gets hurt (like Kosovo during Clinton's reign). When it comes to real wars, they're pretty easy to neutralize. And when it comes to real wars, you don't half-ass it. You go full bore. Yes you might lose some troops, but if you're not willing to lose troops, it's not really a war worth fighting to begin with.

[StateBoiler]

StateBoiler, you understand it's 2007 not 1907 right?

Now I might have some biases as I'm a USAF Vet and still work for them as a contractor, but I'm pretty sure I'm right when I say air superiority is a HUGE factor in modern warfare.

Also, your link agrees with me.

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If some computer chair General can figure that out, I'm sure the planners at the Pentagon can too.

Raytheon?

Air superiority is a huge factor in modern warfare, but I rank it below sea power and land power.

Americans have a misguided notion that we are invincible in war. This is largely due to the first Persian Gulf War and the Afghanistan exercise where we faced militaries that were absolute jokes. Americans don't want "fair well", they want "perfection without even a scratch". This goes back to the idiocy of the typical civilian on how the military works. You can say that doesn't matter, but whether we go into war or not when not attacked is highly dependent on public opinion.

The silver lining of the Iraq War is Americans now have an idea and realize the limits of their military when we talk about future conflicts.

[StateBoiler]

The silver lining of the Iraq War is Americans now have an idea and realize the limits of their military when we talk about future conflicts.

But the military kicked ass in Iraq when it was allowed to act like a military.  Forcing the Army to play Police while Bush tries to force Democracy down the throats of the locals isn't something the Army and Marines should be doing.

Let me preface my statement by saying I agree.

Howeve, if you overthrow a government, you're the government or anarchy follows. That's a law of history: "If you break it, you own it." When we overthrew Saddam, we in effect made Iraq an American colony. We don't call it a colony because that is "a dirty word", but that's what it was.

I agree it is not the job of the U.S. to police the country, but we ran the country for two years, and how can you run a country if you don't control it? That's why disbanding the Iraqi military was one of those post-war manuevers that boggles the mind. Let them control the territory, it's their home. So what if they were once loyal to Saddam? Stable money flow has the power to change a lot of people's loyalty.