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  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    15 days ago

    Can anyone help me understand the math behind being at wave 98 now, with literally several hundred missiles fired at this point, and the offensive capabilities of the regional adversaries are still functioning so well? There aren’t hundreds of air strips to launch bombers from is there? Are there hundreds of barracks? Hundreds of naval yards? What’s the math here?

    • Razia (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
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      15 days ago

      The thing is, airstrips are really hard to disable fully in the same way that a port is hard to disable. The key infrastructure is huge expanses of concrete and asphalt and that’s really easy to repair and hard to appreciably damage. It’s a poor target for drones and even big ballistic missiles. You can take out supporting infrastructure, like maintenance halls, barracks, command and control, fuel, a dozen other things, but the US (and by extension Israel) have a huge supply chain behind that and massive transport capacity, and can continue flying planes over to airbases, dispersing them and putting them in shelters, and supplying them even after Iran has pounded the base to dust.

      It’s why Iran hasn’t focused all its efforts to totally disabling the airbases, and goes for more vulnerable and cost effective targets while hitting only carefully chosen things like the capabilities I mentioned above. It’s about making air operations harder, more expensive, less secure, and harder on the airframes, and eventually that combined with casualties, picked off aircraft, and a loss of radars and air defence makes bases too vulnerable to use and the US withdraws.

      So, Iran’s waves are definitely having an impact, but it’s not something that can be disabled with a couple of painful strikes, it is an extended effort and while Iran is winning that contest it takes time.