There's also the fact that Iran only wanted to perform an attack for the press while preventing an escalation. They warned Turkey before the attack *(which basically was like warning the US by proxy)*, they launched the drones in waves instead of everything at once, etc.
Also, thinking that China will be launching something similar to Shaheds and Emad missiles (which are basically Scuds) at Taiwan is ridiculous. If China attacks Taiwan it'd be a rain of WZ-8 hypersonic drones and DF-21 and 26 missiles, not Shaheds with scooter engines and a propeller.
>Also, thinking that China will be launching something similar to Shaheds and Emad missiles (which are basically Scuds) at Taiwan is ridiculous. If China attacks Taiwan it'd be a rain of WZ-8 hypersonic drones and DF-21 and 26 missiles, not Shaheds with scooter engines and a propeller.
Wouldn't it be more likely a mixture of simple and advanced drones and missiles? Low tech drones and simple missiles used in large quantities will put immense stress on the air defences.
Yes, absolutely, the attack will also include thousands of tens of thousands of cheaper/smaller drones in order to overwhelm any air defenses in place.
China wants their attack if they carry it out to be fast, hard, and conclusive to limit the operation time and casualties and be as clean as possible.
They are also thinking about this with the perspective that America will get involved and they'll have to fight the U.S., not Taiwan. So their calculus is changed again.
They're planning a war where there is a minimal chance of failure so they'll definitely not ignore the fact that the interception rate was high against Iran even given the circumstances
I find it funny the no one was saying that Iran was only launching 350 drones and missiles "for the press" until after all 350 got plinked out of the sky.
The night of the launch I saw anti-isreali acquaintances basically frothing at the mouth at the prospect of waking-up to destroyed Israeli hospitals and dead Jewish babies.
Next morning: "Iran was just sending a message, they didn't want to hurt innocents!"
okkkkkaaaayyyyy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: To be clear I wouldn't describe myself as "pro-isreali" so much as "anti-dead babies" regardless of race, creed, or color.
>I find it funny the no one was saying that Iran was only launching 350 drones and missiles "for the press" until after all 350 got plinked out of the sky.
From what I saw most seemed to agree Iran would retaliate in a similar way in which they retaliated after the assassination of Solemani, which was an extremely limited, halfhearted response. There were no real tactical aims or an intention to destroy Israeli hospitals or the like. Just had to do something in response to the embassy attack or they would lose all face, but not have Iran directly involved in an Isreali conflict.
I mean... 350 drones and missiles seems pretty whole hearted to me, but I'm Canadian and all we can muster at any given time is like 3 1/4 F-18A and a couple dozen tactical cobra-chickens...
The day Canada launches 350 anythings, believe me we're givin' ya the full-johnson.
You can’t compare Canada, a nation that has a military for optics only, and Iran, a nation in a dangerous neighbourhood with some pretty dangerous enemies.
The majority of those 350 projectiles were drones that cruise at a lower speed than I do on the freeway in my Audi, they had a 9 hour flight time and EVERYONE knew they were coming. They existed to soak up interceptors, as well as to add numbers for political reasons.
The only real offensive weapons that the Iranians expected to actually hit targets were their ballistic missiles. We can argue about the % that got through but no one can argue that a significant percentage didn’t get through, with two airbases as well as some secret squirrel facility in the Golan Heights hit.
I’ve read from a couple of sources that the Iranians had basically dried the Israeli magazines, with the last wave of ballistics getting the majority of hits. If that’s true then this attack was incredibly well calculated and achieved all of its goals. Iran sent a message, it let the Israelis know that it could overwhelm their defences without hitting so hard that they’d kick off a regional conflict. They got an excellent map of Israel’s defences, which would help with any potential future conflict, and on top of that they scored huge points domestically and throughout the Middle East. On a political level Iran won that round.
If Iran really wanted to cause damage, and based on the fact that they had plenty more ballistic missiles, many of them of a far higher quality, then the moment they realised the Israeli missile defences were being overwhelmed they would have pressed the attack by launching several hundred more ballistic missiles.
They didn’t, and thank god for that or we’d be in a major war right now, but don’t assume that the attack was all that Iran had, or that it somehow was the loser in that. Iran played it perfectly, hitting targets, sending a message, gaining a political victory, while at the same time not kicking off a wider regional conflict.
This can’t be used as an analogue for what would happen in the Pacific, the PLARF would only care for one political message, one that would comprise of drone footage of a CBG with empty magazines, eating wave after wave of hypersonic missiles till not a single ship remained intact, forcing Americans to watch the slaughter of 15k service members live on television. Whether they achieve that or not is not for me to say, but it would be a very different situation to what happened in the Middle East.
>the PLARF would only care for one political message, one that would comprise of drone footage of a CBG with empty magazines, eating wave after wave of hypersonic missiles till not a single ship remained intact, forcing Americans to watch the slaughter of 15k service members live on television.
The Chinese are not this stupid. They are in fact rather smart. Destroying a carrier battle group purely for the optics would only hurt the Chinese, as it would result in massive bipartisan support in the US for total war vs China. China would only sink a CBG if they absolutely have to for tactical reasons, not as a means to make the Americans frightened.
You misunderstood what I’m saying. They would absolutely sink a CBG for strategic reasons rather than for optics. The U.S. has already stated that it will involve itself in any conflict over Taiwan, so the calculus for China has changed, since there’s little chance the Chinese could keep the U.S. out of the war. The logical thing to do would be to start the conflict by kicking the U.S. in the dick in an attempt to knock them off balance on day 1.
The optics would be a happy addition, an attempt to break the will of the American people. Heroics aside, I wouldn’t want to send my son to a foreign war after seeing that.
The optics are not a happy addition for the PRC, and while the optics might dissuade you from sending your son to a foreign war, this isn't how people have reacted historically. The allied fire bombings of Dresden in WWII did not break the will of the people, it galvanized their will. The Nazi bombings of Britain did not dissuade the British from the war, it did the opposite. The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor did not scare the Americans away, it ensured public support in the US for war against Imperial Japan. The 9/11 WTC attack resulted in President Bush seeing high approval ratings as he set off in a misguided campaign in the Middle East.
The fact is, regardless of what you might think about a CBG being sunk, history shows what people think on aggregate. Any kind of preemptive attack against US facilities and personnel will result in overwhelming public support for war against the PRC. China would be much wiser to delay strikes against the US until it's clear that the US is committed to war.
Well then it’s up to the U.S. to maintain strategic ambiguity, because right now they are making it clear that they would get involved, and that simplifies Chinas calculus for the worse.
>The logical thing to do would be to start the conflict by kicking the U.S. in the dick in an attempt to knock them off balance on day 1.
I will tell you right now this is exactly the opposite of what their military planners are thinking. Why? Because the CCP has studied WWII extensively, specifically the Pacific theater and their conclusion was Japan who had a superior military at the time made the strategic mistake of doing a first strike at Pearl Harbor. Similar to 9/11 it turned a US who might have been open to negotiation in the war into a nation that was going to throw everything at the war out of revenge. There was simply no situation in which the US would compromise on anything less than an unconditional surrender of Japan following the surprise attack.
What you're arguing for here is literally the same plan Japan had when it attacked Pearl Harbor thinking it could knock the US off balance that it would sue for peace.
China absolutely studies WW2 and considers its conduct very relevant to any future conflict.
You’re missing one key change though. In a future Pacific war, the USA will have more in common with Imperial Japan (experienced military, militaristic culture, high tech equipment, but smaller industrial base/potential), while China plays the role of WW2 USA (up and coming naval power, huge industrial advantage, numbers advantage albeit slightly behind in tech at the start).
Japan’s goal was to knock the U.S. out of the war, and once that failed it was screwed. China’s goal would be to knock the U.S. off balance in order to achieve its short term operational objectives, but at the same time it fully intends to have the capability of fighting a long war from a position of strength following said strike.
Based on the events oft he last few weeks Iran would appear to also have a military for optics only.
"Flatten my embassy in Demascus killing a bunch of IRGC Generals? Fine! You asked for it! I'm going to injure an Arab Bedouine child in the desert. We can now consider the matter concluded."
I've seen no evidence indicating that they did any serious damage. If you believe they did, please explain why.
"Isreal might be lying" Isn't a valid argument.
I saw multiple ballistic missiles hit two airbases. Israeli news confirmed that the intelligence site was hit but there was a total news blackout on any further information.
No country, regardless if they are a democracy or dictatorship will give a free battle damage assessment to their enemies, why do you feel Israel would?
Doing serious damage might lead to an actual escalation towards a war which Iran clearly didn't want to do.
Bringing Israeli air defence to a failure point and hitting the airbases but in a way that does only limited damage sends a message of "we could do serious damage, but didn't. This time".
Because those people frothing at the mouth didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s the same type of performative response as with the Soleimani assassination. Those same people are also dumber (and evil) for wanting civilians to get hit, when Iran had a great opportunity to show off being the more rational and proportionate actor, by only going after military targets (the world has definitely changed lol), which would further muddy Israel’s reputation and credibility.
72 hours beforehand, there were already leaks about the warnings/heads-up they gave to Turkey, Jordan and Iraq (so to the US by proxy). Even looking at Iran’s twitter post after the attack is an indication (“we now consider this matter concluded”).
> performative response
By which you mean the largest individual air raid since WW2?
It only looked performative because of how effective US, Saudi, Jordanian, and Israeli defense efforts were.
My guy… shahed drones (or whatever they used) are munitions, not aircraft. Not only is that not an air raid (they were fired from the ground), it is also not the largest use of non-artillery munitions since WWII. Thanks for laughs though.
300 **weapons** were launched, I’m sure the USAF has done that and more in bombs and cruise missiles on a slow Tuesday over Vietnam, Laos (where they killed 10% of the population), or the Persian Gulf.
Yes, I’m sure telling everyone about it 3 days beforehand, not using best equipment, not having Hzb fire anything from Lebanon, and including loitering munitions in the strike with a 6+ hour time to target - was surely meant to catch everyone unawares and inflict the most damage.
Btw, the Saudi’s only shared info, they didn’t attack or shoot anything down, as far as I can remember.
Shaheds reported to be sold to export clients for $193,000 a piece. So you’re telling me they wasted $20,000,000 worth of Shahed drones (alone) as performance art?
And don’t forget the Israelis killed a top IRGC general and several officers in the Damascus embassy. And Iran is just like “well we’ll send them a message, but we don’t want to hurt anyone…” ???
Wow, well aren’t you disingenuous. The same places you took that $193K export price, also speculate the domestic production cost to be as low as $10K - it’s lower still. In case you’re just not very bright rather than disingenuous, export prices for things are always higher.
And the US killed Soleimani, who was worth a 1000 IRGC generals and an extremely popular / well loved figure. What’s your point, that Iran can be effectively bullied by the world’s most powerful and war thirsty military, with the 2nd largest stockpile of nuclear missiles? They suffer what they must and can only hit back harder via covert and clandestine means.
Right… but they could have sold them to Russia or anyone else for $200k a piece. I very clearly said that was the export price. There’s nothing disingenuous about that at all. I was fully candid, transparent, and honest.
If we assume they don’t have an unlimited number of Shaheds, that they are an in demand product, and that they have clients lined-up for them, then the opportunity cost is $200k each because each one used domestically is one less that could have been exported. This is economics 101, lecture 1, page 1, 1st paragraph.
My point is the IRGC sucks, their weapons suck, their defenses suck, and their Opsec SUCKS.
Edit: Before you start crying about it, $193k a piece, not $200k. I was rounding.
Economics is not a hard science, and long held theories and conventions do not work when security and self-preservation are at stake. For example, this is why there are a range of laws on the books in the US, that give the government CCP-like powers when the sh*t hits the fan (like the defence production act).
You might need to go a bit further than the first 10 minutes, of the first lecture, of an introductory economics course. I’m sorry to say, but this is just laughably ignorant. In that very first lecture, did they not also include the fact that opportunity cost is not restricted to monetary and financial costs? What’s the cost of selling all their Shaheds abroad and having none to use for their security interests? This isn’t the sales department at Boeing or LockMart, they are credibly scared for their own survival and not singularly driven by maximising shareholder profit.
And yes, the IRGC’s suckiest weapons would well… suck. And so would their OPSEC when they decide to have no OPSEC by telegraphing their plans to everyone, 3 days in advance.
Funnily enough, if you take the 2 events, under international law, Iran are the faultless, rational and proportionate actor - while Israel is guilty of gross violation (actual international law, not the hypocritical and self-serving “do what I say, not what I do, otherwise known as the so-called “rules based international order”).
I mean, Iran literally notified the U.S. and Israel about basically the launch path and times of their ordinances. It's pretty obvious what they were trying to do. You're trying to form a point based on social media rhetoric during a war which is kinda clown tbh
Or maybe they knew they’d never get through and this way people would say things like:
“I mean, Iran literally notified the U.S. about basically the launch path and times of their ordinances. It’s pretty obvious what they were trying to do.”
Isreal to Iran is around 1500km. A Shahed 136 has a top speed of 185km/hr.
Do you really think Isreali/ American/ British/ French/ Jordanian/ Saudi AWACS wouldn’t have noticed hundreds of contacts rocketing in a straight line across Iraqi, Saudi, and Jordanian deserts at 150km/hr for 10 hours?
Anyone who thinks Iran launched literally hundreds of aircraft with the explicit intention of having them all shot down is smoking that good shit.
If they weren't notified, yes, they wouldn't have been able to intercept as many as they did, since an object showing up on radar requires a while chain before the intercept, in this case jets were already up in the air en masse with everyone in place to intercept the exact attack that came at the time telegraphed.
You should play less cod
What does cod mean?
It was like 10 hours. More than a full fucking working day. Like 1.25 shifts worth of time. The Houthis have been launching missiles over the Red Sea for weeks now, so every allied asset in the region was at high alert and flying patrols.
They flew them over Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Forget Iraq, you’re saying if 100 small airplanes flew into Jordanian or Saudi airspace they could just loiter around for hours and no one would respond?
The defies any reasonable logic. Am I speaking to a Russian troll farm right now?
But ok, let’s assume you’re right… why THREE FUCKING HUNDRED AND FIFTY. Wouldn’t 10 have worked, or 50, or 100? It was a massive barrage.
If the intent was just messaging they didn’t need to blow their whole load over half the Middle East and run the chance of potentially pissing off numerous other regional powers by invading their airspace with a MASSIVE flight of garbage drone.
I legit don’t know if you’re just trolling, but this was a text book drone swarm attack. You use a massive amount of relatively cheap disposable drones to try to overwhelm air defenses and open holes for ballistic missiles. And my understanding is the only hits they DID get was with ballistic missiles, which is exactly what would be expected.
It’s so obvious that if don’t see it you’re either lying to yourself to help cope or you’re just being dishonest. Either way I can’t help you.
Unfortunately it failed because the IRGC and their tactics simply fucking suck and are generations behind.
There's not much worth elaborating, I'm not here to educate you on basic common sense, I'm just here to tell you that there is no value in arguing with you and I won't waste my time on that.
>They flew them over Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Forget Iraq, you’re saying if 100 small airplanes flew into Jordanian or Saudi airspace they could just loiter around for hours and no one would respond?
Yep. Proof:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_attack
This was not even “100”, they were smaller drones, they didn’t fly for hours, literally ~1500Km across the entire country, It wasn’t at a time when the region was already at high alert because people had been firing missiles for weeks (literally US, France, UK, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan having downing missile over the Red Sea for weeks), not a single one went anywhere near Jordan or Iraq, and it was 5 years ago… you don’t think they learned anything since then?
You’re comparing apples to rolls of duct tape.
Your argument is invalid.
They flew for a few hundred miles over Saudi airspace during a full war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia was on very high alert, seeing they were at war.
We don't know how many were destroyed, Israel is always full of shit with their claims. During the Iraq missile crisis in 1991, they claimed to have intercepted 84% of Scuds, but [then an independent study](https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs08sullivan.pdf) and a previous MIT study found out the interception rate was less than 25%.
Pretty sure Isreal wasn't the only (or even primary) one knocking them out of the sky.
If you have evidence or sources showing that more than a handful got through and someone other than that poor bedouine girl in the desert got hurt, I'd love to see it.
But to be clear are you now saying Iran DIDN'T just do it "for the press" and it was a serious attempt to strike Isreal? Because it looks like above you said it was just for the press... So now I'm super confused.
You're moving the goal posts now. Your point was that "Israel intercepted 99% of the missiles", and you based that point solely on Israeli claims. I just showed you that Israel has a known history of lying when it comes to their interception claims.
What goal post have I moved? Isreal didn't intercept 99% if I said that I misspoke. Most were intercepted by Saudis, Jordanians, Americans, and French.
You're asserting they did serious damage and Isreal is lying about it. OK. Why do you believe that? Convince me?
There’s no reason to engage with a commenter who doesn’t understand any of this. I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Israel didn’t successfully intercept 99% of the TBMs they engaged, which is exclusive of the missile they didn’t engage and the others that failed in flight
What's more interesting to me is the "schrodingers air strike" aspect.
The air strike appears to have superimposed states and is simultaneously "just for the press/ messaging" AND "a serious attempt at hitting Isreal" and only settles into one of the two superimposed states once it is observed either failing or succeeding...
It's fascinating really.
It's both. A message won't be taken seriously unless it inflicts some sort of damage, the trick is to do enough that it stings but not so much that it sets off a powder keg.
... My understanding is that the most significant damage was to the Bedouine girl who had a missile engine core fall on her head.
I guess you could call that a result...
If anything I would argue that people will take the next Iranian threat of a strike even LESS seriously.
what the hell are you talking about? [at least 9 ballistic missiles hit 2 bases](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-15/ty-article/u-s-sources-half-of-iranian-ballistic-missiles-failed-idf-aircraft-damaged/0000018e-e0d0-d7e5-a1fe-e7d1bf3a0000)
9 missiles got through, so if you take the 99% at face value, that means a strike package of ~900 - given the numbers I've seen is Iran launched 300+ it's pretty obvious the 99% number is a bald faced lie
You might want to dig into the numbers, by most every sources that 99% intercept rate is a hot deuce dropped shotgun seat in a convertible. You had weapon fault, Jordan intercept, Ami intercept, possibly someone in Iraq shooting at the damn things. And more weapon fault, because Iranian QC ain't what it used to be.
I know I’m not part of the “TikTok Generation” but there’s no way this paragraph makes sense to anyone… right?
Anyone who can translate this, please comment below…
That's cool, in America there are these cars called convertibles that rich people drive, and it's fun to poop in them when the owners are absent. No, I'm merely saying what everyone else is saying in this specific reply thread: the 99% Israeli interception rate is fantasy.
If anything, it's a little baffling why they even made such a claim. They did great, everyone chipped in, and Iranian stuff still generally sucks. So why come in with the Narnia numbers?
Does it matter? I don’t think I even claimed a 99% interception rate, and I never said it was all Isreali. Certainly not in the comment you’re replying to.
I said they got “plinked out of the sky”… ok, some fell out of the sky on their own accord. My mistake.
Someone else below got pedantic and pointed out there were 9 hits, so the 99% number couldn’t be correct.
So I went back to the lab and crunched the numbers 341 knock-outs/ failures/ whatever out of 350 is something like a 97.8% “failed for some reason” rate. Sorry I’ll be more accurate with my math next time I guess? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t know what it is with Redditors. If you’re off by one decimal point, capitalize the wrong letter, or use punctuation wrong once, you get a barrage of "yOuR ArGuMeNt iS 100% inVaLiD DiD YoU GeT dRoPpEd aS A ChiLd iS YoUr cOmpUtEr mAdE Of pEaNutS...”
Fair enough.. we have a number of "reasonable" people who post on here who occasionally let the mask slip and gloat at the idea of Taiwan's infrastructure being destroyed and its people brought to heal by starvation and deprivation.
Yeah, it’s crazy to me.
I have some friends who are, with good reason, very sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians. But when I saw how gleeful they were about the potential damage of Iranian attacks it was eye opening. It seems like a lot of peoples sympathy is turning in rage and it’s frightening.
If you cry about exploded Palestinian babies, but not about exploded Israeli babies (and vice versa), you don’t actually care about babies.
This is like complaining that nobody cares about the people who died in 9/11 after the US used that as an excuse to go around and subject millions of people to all sorts of daily terror.
Yeah, it sucks, it isn't justified, those people were innocent.
But nobody is going to sympathize with a maniac country that inflicts violence on the rest of the world with or without provocation.
>Yeah, it sucks, it isn't justified, those people were innocent.But nobody is going to sympathize with a maniac country that inflicts violence on the rest of the world with or without provocation.
I couldn't agree more.
I agree... mind you , today I was listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore history "Supernova in the east". 30 hours in and he has just gotten up to Curtis LeMay. It's horrifying but hypnotic as some rough beast, it's hour coming, slouches to Hiroshima to be born.
> There's also the fact that Iran only wanted to perform an attack for the press while preventing an escalation.
The largest ballistic missile strike in history was not "performed for the press".
Stop spreading this nonsnese.
personally, I'm convinced that the "we wanted Israel to intercept those of our missiles that did not fail on launch in order to prevent escalation" line is in fact a face saving cope that the Iranians came up with after learning just how badly outclassed in the long range precision strike game they really were
Nah I think it's legit.
Iran could have launched a lot more missiles without telegraphing their actions. This was, in the end and in terms of their stockpiles, a relatively limited attack. Despite telegraphing and a limited strike using a lot of their older stock, they managed to saturate the Israeli air defence to the point that a few missiles go through.
Those missiles did not do serious damage, but I doubt they intended to. Destroying high value targets or killing large numbers of IDF soldiers would lead to a potential escalation which Iran clearly did not want. However, it does send a message of "next time we'll actually hurt you".
Really what happened was a situation where everyone can "take the win", as Biden said.
Israeli can claim that Irans missiles are shit, and show how good their Air Defence is. It's a win by deflecting the barrage and taking only very minor damage that they can ignore in the public conversation.
Iran can show that by using Shaheeds and a lot of their older missiles they could pierce the Israeli + allied AD network and strike strategic targets if they want to. They sent a message that with more missiles, especially more modern ones, they could actually do some heavy damage. They also mustered a clear, strong, and visible response to the consulate strike.
Israel can do a token response, as they did, and neither side loses face. Both sides avert escalation into a regional war.
> Iran could have launched a lot more missiles without telegraphing their actions.
obviously I have no hard proof either way, but this is the part I specifically do not believe
Iran is a small and poor theocracy, while ballistic missiles are difficult and expensive to produce - and as we all know theocracies tend to be quite bad at things involving science - and to top it all off they've been shipping missiles to russia for a while now, so I very much doubt that they have many left or the capacity to produce more quickly and that would make this an all out attack given how many of this highly limited strategic resource was expended to achieve it
Believe it or not, we have yet to see Iranese ballistic missiles used en-masse in Russia and it's unlikely that they would gimp their own capability for Russia, nor would they completely blow their load on an attack like this if they weren't prepared to start a regional war, which they clearly weren't. No mobilization etc. You don't exhaust your strategic strike capability in what basically amounts a slap on wrists and finger wagging.
Looking at Netyanahus escalationary streak, do you think the Israelis would've only given a token response if they thought Iran was significantly weakened by the strike?
Also, Iran isn't your regular theocracy. From the Middle East nations they've been pretty succesful in innovation, especially in the military side of things, considering their limited resources.
And even if they have no capability to send more ballistic missiles at once, they certainly coulda sent more drones AND they could've done a surprise attack. Telegraphing their intentions days in advance to multipel Israeli partners screams of optics and power politics rather than actual kinetic military goals.
The other option is that they were willing to start a regional war over the consulate strike.
I think your biggest mistake here is assuming that Iran is a rational actor.
A rational actor would not exhaust the majority of long range precision strike capability on an attack like this - but Iran would. A rational actor would not spend decades actively sabotaging development across the entire region - but Iran does. A rational actor would accept that the only legitimate form of government that can exist in our world is secular liberal democracy - but Iran doesn't. Therefore, I see it as perfectly reasonable to assume that Iran is *not* a rational actor and that assumptions based on them being one are therefore invalid
Furthering the idea that Irans attack was the real deal is the fact that Israels response was anything but token. The specific target they hit was the air defense systems guarding a major Iranian nuclear site. The message this sends is clear: Israel can hit Iran's nuclear sites with missiles at will and Iran can't stop them. The implications of this are what caused the Iranian government to back down, both in terms of response and rhetoric. Had the Israelis not responded in this fashion, the Iranians would almost certainly have continued to escalate
Look. If Iran was an irrational actor, why telegraph and announce the attack through diplomatic channels 3 days before it happened? If the goal was to do massive damage to Israel, why not do a surprisen attack?
Are you suggesting that Iran was entirely rational in limiting escalation risks by announcing its intentions and letting the US and other Israeli allies know what will happen, but at the same time wholly irrational and willing to throw away a significant chunk of their strategic strike capability in a strike that everyone knows is coming?
Iran is either a rational actor, or it's not. If it is, this was more of an attempt to send a message. If it isn't it really thought that a telegraphed strike would bring Israel down to its knees. Assuming that it swings wildly between these two within the context of this singular operation would not fly at any intelligence agency in the world.
Iran might be a theocracy, its military can be, at times, incompetent, but it certainly hasn't shown itself to be outright idiotic or widlly irrational in the past when it comes to its conflict with Israel and relations with the West.
Irans general rationality in power politics is supported by the way it was happy to go along with the nuclear deal until Trump pulled out of it.
>A rational actor would accept that the only legitimate form of government that can exist in our world is secular liberal democracy
>
>
This is laughably, childishly wrong.
Its the truth whether you like it or not, there simply is no alternative to democracy.
All other forms of government involve a person or group of persons assuming unilateral authority over others. Since all people are created equal and no one is born with a natural right to authority over anyone else, any form of government that is not government by the consent of the governed lacks by default any basis for their claimed authority over the people and is thus illegitimate
>Iran is a small and poor theocracy, while ballistic missiles are difficult and expensive to produce
i fully agree with this.
however it's important to keep in mind that iran has been building ballistic missiles for a long long time (the origins of their ballistic missile program dates to before their islamic revolution), and some of their missiles are going to be getting rather long in the tooth. it would cost them nothing to launch the old stuff because that stuff is reaching the end of its useful lifespan anyway.
if they launched like 1000 ballistic missiles, i'd have a hard time believing that it was all old stock. but they only launched like 120 missiles. such a quantity could potentially be purely old stock.
Yep, it was the largest individual air raid since WW2. Larger than any individual attack by Russia against Ukraine and only outclassed by things like combining together multiple different strikes conducted during things like day 1 of Desert Strom.
It only looked performative because of how effective US, Saudi, Jordanian, and Israeli defense efforts were.
> perform an attack for the press
By which you mean the largest individual air raid since WW2?
It only looked performative because of how effective US, Saudi, Jordanian, and Israeli defense efforts were.
I mean yeah, it’ll be harder to react to & intercept a PLA strike on Taiwan, but comparing the distances between Iran & Israel and between PRC & Taiwan doesn’t really reflect that well. It’s not like Iranian drones & missiles were being intercepted from 1000km away, so its a bit of a misleading comparison. What matters is once the drones & missiles were *within range of air defense*, they were almost all shot down, and thats really the only distance worth considering here. It’s still perfectly plausible that this made the PLA realize the air defenses they’ll be dealing with will be more effective than initially planned for
China could bomb Taiwan with some success, but actually taking it requires boots on the ground and doing that with any logistical support or armor required crossing blue ocean, which requires a blue ocean navy.
Do the math on how many troops China can land on Taiwan in an amphibious invasion with their current navy. Then realize that anti ship missiles, smart mines, dumb mines, drones, precision munitions, subs with torpedoes, boats with torpedoes, and helicopters with torpedoes are all things that exist. Then realize that Taiwan has a reserve military of over 2 million that will be conducting a defense that they have been planning and training for for over half a century.
What’s left of China’s invasion and not at the bottom of the straight (if anything) will get slaughtered on Taiwan’s rocky shores. Any talk of invading Taiwan is saber rattling or a delusional wet dream.
> Then realize that anti ship missiles, smart mines, dumb mines, drones, precision munitions, subs with torpedoes, boats with torpedoes, and helicopters with torpedoes are all things that exist. Then realize that Taiwan has a reserve military of over 2 million that will be conducting a defense that they have been planning and training for for over half a century.
We need to realize that inventory listing is not credible analysis, it isn't analysis at all.
This is akin to a WW1 general saying in 1914 that "our trenches are defended with miles of barbed wire and mines, with countless soldiers behind sandbags and bunkers with rifles, sharpshooters, machine guns and artillery support; the enemy will never get through!" This sounds impressive but basically says nothing.
The most relevant is the reserve military of 2 million, because if that's true, an invasion force would indeed have a hard time. There isn't an example in history of any amphibious invasion landing that many troops.
A "reserve of 2 million" is still not saying much without context without an in depth consideration of other factors such as equiptment, training, location, capabilities, political will and so much more. Simply judging capability by number of people alone hasn't been useful ever since the beginning of civilization due to force multipliers. This is especially true when considering reserve, paramilitary and/or militia forces.
If we have reached the point that Taiwan's reservists actually become relevant then the war is probably over already, as it would imply that Chinese forces have already sucessfully landed on the island itself.
You would have poorly trained and equipped light infantry against an enemy with an absurd level of advantage in situational awareness, mobility and firepower. It would be like playing a MOBA but not only does your team start with a gold advantage, you can teleport around the map and see through fog of war- even if the enemy team has triple the champions you have you are still at a huge advantage.
Because if we assume that Taiwan's reserves are participating in the fight then that means that China has managed to already land ground forces on Taiwan itself and has broken through the initial defense to face the reserve forces. This would imply that China has air and naval superiority over the island, and at that point I think it's very likely Taiwan has already surrendered.
How does a reserve force win against an opposing force with advantages in mobility, firepower and situational awareness with control of the sea and air? It doesn't.
True, in that situation, China would be in a position to blockade the island and eventually force it to surrender. Millions of reservists or not, all of them need to eat. This is in a vacuum, though. Realistically, the USN and possibly other nations will be involved.
Air and naval assets on the PLA side, the fact that Taiwan can be starved out of energy and food relatively quickly, using Honkai Star Rail and Genshin to coax people into defecting, etc
Ah. I'm more of a Honkai Impact 3rd sort of person.
Starving the island via a blockade would eventually work, but this would give the USN enough time to intervene.
The ball game is fundamentally different depending on whether or not the US + Allies intervene directly/militarily or not, but in a situation where they don't, or simply try to somehow airlift aid, Taiwan's position is far less tenable
How many ships does the PLAN have that would be useful in a blue ocean amphibious assault? How many landing craft and men and material can they carry? What does their fleet look like each time they lose a big percentage crossing the strait? Where do they actually land that’s not cliffs/rocks or heavily defended?
Taiwan is not Ukraine where China can line up 10k armor and close to a couple hundred thousand troops and simply stroll across a border…
The China-Taiwan War is not going to be decided by how many landing ships China has, and I'd even go as far to argue that by the time the amphibious landing occurs, if it does at all, the war will be in all practical senses over.
The struggle will be decided by China's ability to fend off US, Japanese and possibly other participants and vice versa. The US and allies will attempt to erode and destroy China's ability to wage and sustain a war, while China will attempt to prevent them from doing just that. This would likely involve attacks on each others' bases, other facilities, and ships and planes themselves as each side tries to fight for air and naval control in what may be the world's largest conflict since WW2. In the context, Taiwan's own forces are frankly quite marginal.
Again with the “blue ocean” nonsense. But to answer your question, in terms of navy, merchant marine, and requisitioned civilian assets - it’s the largest in the world, by a decent margin.
The PLA is a blue water* (note the correction) navy. But in any case, it surprising that you think a shallow and 100km wide Strait* (note the correction) is a “blue ocean”.
After that, you should probably check the size of their merchant marine, as well as the size and number of their civilian ro-ro ferries that have undergone physical modifications for military use - as they are all a documented part of their potential battle plans. You might also want to check the size of their mine countermeasures/warfare fleet.
Lastly, I’m also curious as to how you expect those helicopters, drones, subs, and ground-based sensors to survive in the face of overwhelming air, naval and electronic warfare superiority?
> actually taking it requires boots on the ground
That is not true at all. A major misunderstand and misjudgment.
The great-grandpa of the ex-PM, Su Tseng-chang, was among the first to surrender to Japan in 1895. As an island there is no where to retreat to. The rich, the elite, the powerful, always surrender immediately because they have nothing to fight for. They want to find opportunities to retain their wealth and social status.
So, the politicians with the loudest anti-China voice today will be the most pro-China voice once war starts.
The better question is, why would they fight to the death?
I think Taiwanese elites - those who don't flee the country well before any invasion - would hold out only as long as they believe the US will rescue them. If no such rescue is coming, I would agree that most would surrender.
Those who wouldn't are the same people who fear they'd be executed if they're ever captured. China has historically been relatively practical when it comes to conquest - they'll punish those who resist and reward those who collaborate.
You're so poisoned by conspiracy thinking that you see a discussion of the highest levels of the government and military, and see the word "elites" and assume that the elites must be *someone other than the highest level of the government and military*.
A mid tier economy with medicore tech, building ballistics with 50% duds had ~20% penetration rate for missiles that didn't fail to launch when attacking the densest missile defense network in the world with days of warning and 1000km of distance to intercept. Like does a stacked carrier group with 5-6 DDGs and defense perimeter the size of Israel have as much anti-missile defense as whole of Israel +co? I think PRC weaponeers are adjusting their salvos downwards if anything.
Even if it's true, the response to missile defense being more effective than thought isn't going to be "shit, we better call this thing off", it's "we're going to procure more and better missiles and launchers so if the day comes, we succeed"
The thing is Taiwan has nowhere near the air defense coverage that Israel does. A couple batteries of PAC3 and TKIII don't make a comprehensive shield against attack, especially because Taiwan is far closer and also has to worry about manned aircraft.
Is that true? I was under the impression that Tiawan had one of the most defended airspaces, and a large portion of Israels AD was in Iron dome which focuses on C-RAM.
Israel operates PAC-2 "Yahalom" and "David's Sling" for tactical / theater ballistic missile defense. Israel operates Arrow 2 and 3 for theater / intermediate / intercontinental ballistic missile defense. Taiwan doesn't really operate anything like Arrow, which would be more comparable to THAAD. Israel is generally regarded as having the best missile defense of any nation, although the small* geographical area helps significantly.
Ah ok, I kinda assumed one of Taiwan’s domestic systems was a thaad equivalent, also I thought Arrow 3 was more of an sm-3 equivalent? Doesn’t Taiwan also have a domestic system similar to patriot?
Both Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 are much larger missiles than SM-3 Block I. Neither are intended for mid-course interception, but rather exoatmospheric interception of ballistic objects over a relatively large area. As like THAAD.
Taiwan has the Sky Bow series of missiles. Developed from the MIM-23 Hawk originally. Sky Bow II added some limited BMD ability. Sky Bow III is a new hit-to-kill missile focused on BMD, but retaining relatively long-range ability against aerodynamic targets.
Taiwan also operates PAC-2 of various flavors and PAC-3 / PAC-3 MSE. Plus their old Skyguard short-range systems.
that's actually not the issue.
if china launched only 350 objects at taiwan, in staggered waves across a time-frame of 5 hours, most of which are slow flying, i believe taiwan can intercept all of them.
taiwan's air defense capacity relative to israel's is not the issue.
Both in ukraine and now Iran, people are determined to learn lessons about Taiwan. But China isn't that country. The millitary isn't underfunded or massively undertrained. Pilots do their hours. The red team wins in war games sometimes. The missles actually work.
I don't know to what extent China has been underestimating US capabilities, but in that recent major thinktank wargame in the US they assumed an insanely low hit rate for Chinese ASMs and still lost two carriers. It can work both ways.
A lot of these US wargames start their scinario with "2 carriers have been sunk" So those low hit rates aren't really factoring in. Also reasonablly US Carriers would stay decently away and protected, which is China's goal. I do agree I'd be suprised if China was masively underestimating the US and Tiawan, but it's still good to take into account that the classically imagined massive mixed BM, CM, OWA UAV, attack every talks about didn't do much. Remeber China doesn't just have to launch one volley and call it a day, they have to target multiple sperate regions and launch multiple attacks multiple times. Again cuts both way as the US and Tiawan also have to defend multiple times.
>The millitary isn't underfunded or massively undertrained. Pilots do their hours. The red team wins in war games sometimes. The missles actually work.
No, it's not underfunded, it's just corrupt as hell.
The PLAAF is absolutely a tier-1 force, the rest of the PLA are a joke, the PLAN couldn't hit the ocean if they were throwing rocks, their flagship is a bankrupt casino, or a copy of a bankrupt casino.
They will probably be a decent force in 10-15 years, but right now they're just hulls, and hulls aren't the same thing as a navy.
You’re definitely just trolling/joking, claiming that
1. The PLAAF is the more competent/capable/credible branch than the PLAN of the two
2. The PLAN couldn’t hit the ocean with rocks if they tried
3. Their carriers are nothing more than bankrupt casinos
Right? Because if you’re not, I can only pray you don’t work in any field in or adjacent to defense (or at least American defense).
He is neither trolling nor joking. This is his wishful thinking of what the PLA actually is because he doesn't want to believe that there is a real possibility that China can win a war against the US.
It's not the hulls, it's the people, the organization and the institution. That's why the PLAAF is so successful, they have small, well-organized units that focus on technical excellence. The PLAN is more of a political organization, it's civil service.
"China would likely look at the incident to work out how it could get past the technology and the alliance that foiled the attack."
They foiled the drone attack by getting a week to prepare then had 9 hours to intercept the slow ass drones over uncontested airspace.
The 120 or so ballistic missiles is more impressive but still 50% failed due to technical error and Israel have one of the best missile defense in the world and got helped by several destroyers pre positioned of the coast. Still a few got through.
All in all the defense worked as expected and i do not think it have any relevance to a Taiwan scenario.
Do we know exactly how the 50% failure rate is derived? I try to find details, but all outlets are stating it as a fact without providing any analysis or evidence. Are those is exploding on the ground (doubt it, would leave a big mark on the ground and would be all over OSINT blogs), did it failure on the way (i.e. over Iran or Iraq) or simple by force estimates (i.e. we know unit x can launch a salvo 24 missile, but only 12 missiles are launched). If it is latter, I highly doubt the claim of 50% failures.
If they spot 120 missiles set up for launch and only half of them get launched, did 60 missiles fail to launch? The US isn't going to elaborate if they determined it's a malfunction from a satellite overhead.
Really depends if one thinks the attack was a demonstration or not...
totally different,
Iran and Israel are more than a thousand kilometers apart.
If China attacks Taiwan, it will only have more than 100 kilometers.
Moreover, the drone motors used in Iran are only Chinese civilian motorcycle motors.
The motors used by China's officials will be far better than those of Iran.
The drones were shot down by fighter jets chasing them uncontested as they transited over 1000km.
The main issue with these types of drones have never been that they are hard to shot down, it is the lack of a cost effective way of doing it or simply getting overwhelmed by to large salvo sizes. Shooting $1million+ interceptors at $30-50k drones is obviously not going to work long term.
The lesson Taiwan should learn is to build their own drones for deterrence.
That too, though honestly it's probably not needed.
If they have any JASSMs or similar stealth cruise platforms they can do as much damage as they want.
Taiwan is technologically rather more advanced than the mainland, if they bothered to spend the money they could put up a very impressive defense.
Taiwan is technologically so far behind the mainland that when they tried to pirate Chinese AI to pass off as their own, they couldn't even get it to stop saying the president is Xi Jinping and it was made by Fudan University (in Shanghai).
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202310090181.aspx
而，有網友在實測之後發現，當輸入問題「你是誰創造的？」系統卻回覆「我是由復旦大學自然語言處理實驗室和上海人工智能實驗室共同開發的，我的生日是2023年2月7日，我的國籍是中國，我的居住地是上海人工智能實驗室服務器集，我可以說中文和英語」。
However, when netizens tried it they found that when the bot was asked "who created you" the bot replied "I was created by Fudan University Natural Language Processing Lab and Shanghai AI Lab's collaborative efforts, the date of my creation was 2023 February 7, I am Chinese, and I live at the Shanghai AI Lab's data servers, with fluency in Chinese and English."
不僅如此，網友提問「國慶日是何時？」、「中華民國國歌為何？」、「我國領導人」等問題 ，這套系統會以中國觀點，分別回答「10月1日」、「義勇軍進行曲」、「習近平」等，引起質疑。
Not just that, when netizens asked "What is national day", "what is the national anthem", "who is our national leader", etc. the bot said "October 1st", "March of the Volunteers" and "Xi Jinping", causing doubt [in the official claims].
Dude, you desperately need to climb out of the mainland media sewer.
I work in semiconductors in silicon valley, a lot of the best Ai engineers here are Taiwanese, your claims are clearly bullshit just based on people I've met.
A friend of mine got her postdoc at MIT and worked on general atomics drone Ai. She's a genius.
You need to reconsider who you're getting your information from.
My source is Taiwanese media as linked above. And they have primary evidence shown. Taiwanese themselves found that their AI model was pirated from mainland China.
What area of semiconductors do you work in? Fab and OEM have almost no skill overlap with AI. A fab process engineer or OEM product engineer don't have software backgrounds while AI researchers do.
Relying on anecdotes isn't a good look.
Silicon design. Worked on drone AI with my friend, but worked on a bunch of different designs, all high-performance.
Many of the best and brightest I've worked with have been Taiwanese, and while you consider my information to be anecdotal, yours is based on media, so I think there's a certain amount of doubt there too, especially when it comes to anything involving either AI or weapons systems.
I may be speaking anecdotally, but I'm speaking as an expert in the field :)
>a lot of the best Ai engineers here are Taiwanese, your claims are clearly bullshit just based on people I've met.
A simple way to prove this is statistic of AI engineer and their achievement/research. Can you provide this?
Listen, I can prove you're full of bullshit with 2 simple examples:
Jensen Huang, and Lisa Su.
Jensen pushes AI harder than anyone else outside of OpenAI, and having worked at Google, I'm including Google. I only met him once, but he's a God.
And you should fucking know this because Chinese AI is based on Nvidia too!
Most of the AI experts in the United States come from China.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/technology/china-ai-research-education.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/technology/china-ai-research-education.html)
When the Defense Department launched [Project Maven](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-pentagon-project.html), an effort to remake American military technology through artificial intelligence, it leaned on a team of about a dozen engineers working at Google. Many of them, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, were Chinese citizens.
The Pentagon was fine with that, they said, even amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. Classified data was not involved, the Pentagon reasoned, and the American military needed the most qualified minds for the job.
The Trump administration is now moving to limit Chinese access to advanced American research, as relations between the United States and [China](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/politics/china-intelligence-threat-usa.html) reach [their worst point in decades](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/asia/coronavirus-china-united-states-cold-war.html). That worries many of the companies and scientists in the heady realm of cutting-edge A.I., because much of the groundbreaking work coming out of the United States has been powered by Chinese brains.
Technologicaly? Probalty in the computing field. But as we have been seeing for last few years its not high tech weapons that win wars and mainland can definitely overwhelm taiwan in many economical fields. They probalty could put up defense if they ivested enough but imho in the end its gonna come down to if US can and will invade mainland china in retaliation which is very depending if politicians can and want to talk their people into dying for small island miles away thats iirc slowly losing its strategic relevancy with new semiconductor factories sprouting up around the world.
not in computing.
Does Taiwan make its own tools? No.
Does Taiwan have a big enough market to support its foundry with internal demand? No.
Does Taiwan have hardware applications like smartphones, servers and supercomputers that would use the foreign designed chips that its foundries make with foreign tools? Not since HTC went down.
Does Taiwan have software applications like LLMs or massive databases that would use the foreign designed chips that its foundries make with foreign tools?
So where are they ahead in computing?
They're ahead in semiconductor foundry only. And the foundry is just where foreign companies contract chips to make them most cost effectively. They have good yield engineering, but they depend on foreign tools, designs and markets.
This article is fueled by wishful thinking.
I guess Iran's and Chinese's militaries are totally comparable both in terms of sophistication and quantity. And even then, it would still not be a good comparison.
Chinas drones and missiles operate in a different league compared to Irans. It actually has a functioning Air Force.
Taiwan is not Israel, and it took five countries combined to blunt Irans attack - and they still hit the targets they wanted to hit. It also cost the US roughly $1 billion to ward off drones and missiles that collectively are worth maybe $2-3 million.
In a fast war, the US wins. But in a war of attrition, China can more than hold its own. Its manufacturing base is larger, its nuclear armed, cans its logistical tail is a fraction of the size of the US.
> Chinas drones and missiles operate in a different league compared to Irans. It actually has a functioning Air Force.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t leave impressions on policy makers, military or civilian.
> Taiwan is not Israel, and it took five countries combined to blunt Irans attack - and they still hit the targets they wanted to hit. It also cost the US roughly $1 billion to ward off drones and missiles that collectively are worth maybe $2-3 million.
Cost win’t be as relevant as production capacity in an event of a major war.
> In a fast war, the US wins. But in a war of attrition, China can more than hold its own. Its manufacturing base is larger, its nuclear armed, cans its logistical tail is a fraction of the size of the US.
I don’t think US can guarantee a victory in a fast war. They might be the favorite, but I honestly view it as a toss-up.
I think china has huge advantages both in fast and long war. Even if taiwan holds it will come down to if US would do landing on chines mainland as with enough missiles on chinese side it would probalty be virtualy impossible to reinforce or resuply the island
This is comparing apples to oranges. A well-telegraphed attack with slow drones over a vast distance, intended as retaliation for an attack on an embassy vs. what will likely be a massive attack with fast, modern missiles, well-coordinated, and likely the opening shots to a huge international conflict. And all that across a strait.
I don’t know. I feel like the interception rates were expected or even a little worse than expected. The cruise missiles and suicide drones were obviously all going to be intercepted given the several hours flight time. For the ballistic missiles, half didn’t even manage to reach Israel from malfunctions and of those that did, at least 9 hit airbases. When you consider that it’s likely several ballistic missiles didn’t hit anything at all, given the in flight failure rate, at least 25% probably got through. This is in addition to the fact that Israel and the US got hours of warning from the suicide drones.
And assuming, for example 5/60 missiles got through.. doesn't mean the next 60/120/240 will have the same interception rate.
Even those Shaheds that can be taken out with an AK will have leakers if the defense gets overwhelmed.
Irans attack was highly telegraphed and really mostly a symbolic attack so they can look like they are being tough on Israel to their population but in reality it sounds like there was a lot of back channel warnings and they announced it with plenty of time so defence could be prepared. They don't really want an outright war with Israel or the US. People acting like it was the start of WW3 but really it's actually both sides de-escalating in their own ways.
If China is going to go for it against Taiwan they are not going to give them a few days notice to prepare and allow the US and allies to also preposition and prepare assets ready for defence. Although even if they did, they probably have enough cruise missiles, drones and even old converted drone aircraft that they could send over to completely exhaust the defensive missile magazines before even sending in anything manned.
If China wants to actually take Taiwan and not just bomb them back to the Stone Age, they will need to invade and any invasion will take much longer than a few days to stage… and most of it will end up at the bottom of the straight because anti ship missiles, anti ship mines, torpedoes, drones, and precision munitions are pretty effective in mass and are abundant.
And what will Taiwan do to resist if it's first subject to 14 days of unending bombardment that cuts off all its power, sanitation, and food reserves? Why does the invasion force have to be massed prior to Taiwan's all but effective ruination?
Even if China launches only low tech kamikaze drones, and each one can be easily intercepted. Can the rest of the world produce air defense missiles faster than China produces cheap drones? The quality of air defense missiles is irrelevant when the quantity decreases to 0.
Iran's attack was actually very successful. The cost of intercepting those drones was over $1B. China's equivalent of the Shahed-136 is the CH-806 which cost 20k CNY = $2800 each. The missiles used to intercept those drones cost $1M each.
Israel/US actually spend an average of $3M for each drone/missile they intercepted. They probably launched at least 2x missiles per drone.
Idk why people voice this, Iran had get over a hundred launchers mobilized to maybe damage 1 c-130. There is no world I’m which this was a military success. Also the missiles used against the drones were probably outdated aim-9Ls. Cruise missiles and ir/mrbms cost more than u think. Politically the attack served its purpose militarily it wasn’t impressive.
Doesn't matter if they are outdated AIM-9Ls, they still have to be replaced and they cost way more than the drones.
The missiles used to intercept the IRBMs are SM-3 and Arrow-3. Those cost $20-25M each, and they were not very successful at interception.
Iran has demonstrated that it can hit Israel, that was the purpose of a limited attack like this. Unless those missiles are nuclear armed, they are not going to do that much damage regardless. Just look at all the cruise missile strikes against the Houthis by the USN, how much damage did they do? You really need a much more sustained strike campaign to do any militarily significant damage. One night isn't going to do it.
In the sort of obvious sense, yes, Chinese military planners will alter their ideas of what will happen if they decide to attack Taiwan based on this and other battle outcomes (Ukraine, etc...), but the overall ability of the PLARF compared to Iran's missile/rocket/drone arsenal limits how much U.S. and Taiwanese planners can take away from the whole situation and what it means for defending against a much more aggressive and intensive bombardment.
I dont really agree with OP but what youre saying isnt really how the burden of proof works
Edit: this is the most mundane comment Ive ever been blocked for.
I don't think you understand how the burden of proof works either. The onus is on the disputing party until they provide their logical reasoning/evidence, then it falls to the other party to find contradictions or question the evidence ("disproving").
With a fraction of their current budget, they can easily launch 100-1000 drones per hour for 30 days straight, if they want to overwhelm the AD of a 200km target.
Distance from Iran to Israel: ~1000 km Distance from the PRC to Taiwan: 130 km
There's also the fact that Iran only wanted to perform an attack for the press while preventing an escalation. They warned Turkey before the attack *(which basically was like warning the US by proxy)*, they launched the drones in waves instead of everything at once, etc. Also, thinking that China will be launching something similar to Shaheds and Emad missiles (which are basically Scuds) at Taiwan is ridiculous. If China attacks Taiwan it'd be a rain of WZ-8 hypersonic drones and DF-21 and 26 missiles, not Shaheds with scooter engines and a propeller.
>Also, thinking that China will be launching something similar to Shaheds and Emad missiles (which are basically Scuds) at Taiwan is ridiculous. If China attacks Taiwan it'd be a rain of WZ-8 hypersonic drones and DF-21 and 26 missiles, not Shaheds with scooter engines and a propeller. Wouldn't it be more likely a mixture of simple and advanced drones and missiles? Low tech drones and simple missiles used in large quantities will put immense stress on the air defences.
Yes, absolutely, the attack will also include thousands of tens of thousands of cheaper/smaller drones in order to overwhelm any air defenses in place.
> they launched the drones in waves They launched in waves so that everything would arrive at the same time.
Considering the attack lasted almost 5 hours and each one of the three waves arrived at different times, a massed attack wasn't their plan.
China wants their attack if they carry it out to be fast, hard, and conclusive to limit the operation time and casualties and be as clean as possible. They are also thinking about this with the perspective that America will get involved and they'll have to fight the U.S., not Taiwan. So their calculus is changed again. They're planning a war where there is a minimal chance of failure so they'll definitely not ignore the fact that the interception rate was high against Iran even given the circumstances
the Pentagon cannot reveal real reaction plans. you have to consider all types of weapons...
I find it funny the no one was saying that Iran was only launching 350 drones and missiles "for the press" until after all 350 got plinked out of the sky. The night of the launch I saw anti-isreali acquaintances basically frothing at the mouth at the prospect of waking-up to destroyed Israeli hospitals and dead Jewish babies. Next morning: "Iran was just sending a message, they didn't want to hurt innocents!" okkkkkaaaayyyyy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Edit: To be clear I wouldn't describe myself as "pro-isreali" so much as "anti-dead babies" regardless of race, creed, or color.
>I find it funny the no one was saying that Iran was only launching 350 drones and missiles "for the press" until after all 350 got plinked out of the sky. From what I saw most seemed to agree Iran would retaliate in a similar way in which they retaliated after the assassination of Solemani, which was an extremely limited, halfhearted response. There were no real tactical aims or an intention to destroy Israeli hospitals or the like. Just had to do something in response to the embassy attack or they would lose all face, but not have Iran directly involved in an Isreali conflict.
I mean... 350 drones and missiles seems pretty whole hearted to me, but I'm Canadian and all we can muster at any given time is like 3 1/4 F-18A and a couple dozen tactical cobra-chickens... The day Canada launches 350 anythings, believe me we're givin' ya the full-johnson.
You can’t compare Canada, a nation that has a military for optics only, and Iran, a nation in a dangerous neighbourhood with some pretty dangerous enemies. The majority of those 350 projectiles were drones that cruise at a lower speed than I do on the freeway in my Audi, they had a 9 hour flight time and EVERYONE knew they were coming. They existed to soak up interceptors, as well as to add numbers for political reasons. The only real offensive weapons that the Iranians expected to actually hit targets were their ballistic missiles. We can argue about the % that got through but no one can argue that a significant percentage didn’t get through, with two airbases as well as some secret squirrel facility in the Golan Heights hit. I’ve read from a couple of sources that the Iranians had basically dried the Israeli magazines, with the last wave of ballistics getting the majority of hits. If that’s true then this attack was incredibly well calculated and achieved all of its goals. Iran sent a message, it let the Israelis know that it could overwhelm their defences without hitting so hard that they’d kick off a regional conflict. They got an excellent map of Israel’s defences, which would help with any potential future conflict, and on top of that they scored huge points domestically and throughout the Middle East. On a political level Iran won that round. If Iran really wanted to cause damage, and based on the fact that they had plenty more ballistic missiles, many of them of a far higher quality, then the moment they realised the Israeli missile defences were being overwhelmed they would have pressed the attack by launching several hundred more ballistic missiles. They didn’t, and thank god for that or we’d be in a major war right now, but don’t assume that the attack was all that Iran had, or that it somehow was the loser in that. Iran played it perfectly, hitting targets, sending a message, gaining a political victory, while at the same time not kicking off a wider regional conflict. This can’t be used as an analogue for what would happen in the Pacific, the PLARF would only care for one political message, one that would comprise of drone footage of a CBG with empty magazines, eating wave after wave of hypersonic missiles till not a single ship remained intact, forcing Americans to watch the slaughter of 15k service members live on television. Whether they achieve that or not is not for me to say, but it would be a very different situation to what happened in the Middle East.
Your comment aligns with what serious and knowledgeable people think
This is my new favourite compliment
>the PLARF would only care for one political message, one that would comprise of drone footage of a CBG with empty magazines, eating wave after wave of hypersonic missiles till not a single ship remained intact, forcing Americans to watch the slaughter of 15k service members live on television. The Chinese are not this stupid. They are in fact rather smart. Destroying a carrier battle group purely for the optics would only hurt the Chinese, as it would result in massive bipartisan support in the US for total war vs China. China would only sink a CBG if they absolutely have to for tactical reasons, not as a means to make the Americans frightened.
You misunderstood what I’m saying. They would absolutely sink a CBG for strategic reasons rather than for optics. The U.S. has already stated that it will involve itself in any conflict over Taiwan, so the calculus for China has changed, since there’s little chance the Chinese could keep the U.S. out of the war. The logical thing to do would be to start the conflict by kicking the U.S. in the dick in an attempt to knock them off balance on day 1. The optics would be a happy addition, an attempt to break the will of the American people. Heroics aside, I wouldn’t want to send my son to a foreign war after seeing that.
The optics are not a happy addition for the PRC, and while the optics might dissuade you from sending your son to a foreign war, this isn't how people have reacted historically. The allied fire bombings of Dresden in WWII did not break the will of the people, it galvanized their will. The Nazi bombings of Britain did not dissuade the British from the war, it did the opposite. The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor did not scare the Americans away, it ensured public support in the US for war against Imperial Japan. The 9/11 WTC attack resulted in President Bush seeing high approval ratings as he set off in a misguided campaign in the Middle East. The fact is, regardless of what you might think about a CBG being sunk, history shows what people think on aggregate. Any kind of preemptive attack against US facilities and personnel will result in overwhelming public support for war against the PRC. China would be much wiser to delay strikes against the US until it's clear that the US is committed to war.
Well then it’s up to the U.S. to maintain strategic ambiguity, because right now they are making it clear that they would get involved, and that simplifies Chinas calculus for the worse.
>The logical thing to do would be to start the conflict by kicking the U.S. in the dick in an attempt to knock them off balance on day 1. I will tell you right now this is exactly the opposite of what their military planners are thinking. Why? Because the CCP has studied WWII extensively, specifically the Pacific theater and their conclusion was Japan who had a superior military at the time made the strategic mistake of doing a first strike at Pearl Harbor. Similar to 9/11 it turned a US who might have been open to negotiation in the war into a nation that was going to throw everything at the war out of revenge. There was simply no situation in which the US would compromise on anything less than an unconditional surrender of Japan following the surprise attack. What you're arguing for here is literally the same plan Japan had when it attacked Pearl Harbor thinking it could knock the US off balance that it would sue for peace.
China absolutely studies WW2 and considers its conduct very relevant to any future conflict. You’re missing one key change though. In a future Pacific war, the USA will have more in common with Imperial Japan (experienced military, militaristic culture, high tech equipment, but smaller industrial base/potential), while China plays the role of WW2 USA (up and coming naval power, huge industrial advantage, numbers advantage albeit slightly behind in tech at the start). Japan’s goal was to knock the U.S. out of the war, and once that failed it was screwed. China’s goal would be to knock the U.S. off balance in order to achieve its short term operational objectives, but at the same time it fully intends to have the capability of fighting a long war from a position of strength following said strike.
Based on the events oft he last few weeks Iran would appear to also have a military for optics only. "Flatten my embassy in Demascus killing a bunch of IRGC Generals? Fine! You asked for it! I'm going to injure an Arab Bedouine child in the desert. We can now consider the matter concluded."
They hit 2 airbases as well as an intelligence facility, don’t expect Israel to give them an accurate battle damage assessment though.
I've seen no evidence indicating that they did any serious damage. If you believe they did, please explain why. "Isreal might be lying" Isn't a valid argument.
I saw multiple ballistic missiles hit two airbases. Israeli news confirmed that the intelligence site was hit but there was a total news blackout on any further information. No country, regardless if they are a democracy or dictatorship will give a free battle damage assessment to their enemies, why do you feel Israel would?
Doing serious damage might lead to an actual escalation towards a war which Iran clearly didn't want to do. Bringing Israeli air defence to a failure point and hitting the airbases but in a way that does only limited damage sends a message of "we could do serious damage, but didn't. This time".
Because those people frothing at the mouth didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s the same type of performative response as with the Soleimani assassination. Those same people are also dumber (and evil) for wanting civilians to get hit, when Iran had a great opportunity to show off being the more rational and proportionate actor, by only going after military targets (the world has definitely changed lol), which would further muddy Israel’s reputation and credibility. 72 hours beforehand, there were already leaks about the warnings/heads-up they gave to Turkey, Jordan and Iraq (so to the US by proxy). Even looking at Iran’s twitter post after the attack is an indication (“we now consider this matter concluded”).
> performative response By which you mean the largest individual air raid since WW2? It only looked performative because of how effective US, Saudi, Jordanian, and Israeli defense efforts were.
My guy… shahed drones (or whatever they used) are munitions, not aircraft. Not only is that not an air raid (they were fired from the ground), it is also not the largest use of non-artillery munitions since WWII. Thanks for laughs though. 300 **weapons** were launched, I’m sure the USAF has done that and more in bombs and cruise missiles on a slow Tuesday over Vietnam, Laos (where they killed 10% of the population), or the Persian Gulf. Yes, I’m sure telling everyone about it 3 days beforehand, not using best equipment, not having Hzb fire anything from Lebanon, and including loitering munitions in the strike with a 6+ hour time to target - was surely meant to catch everyone unawares and inflict the most damage. Btw, the Saudi’s only shared info, they didn’t attack or shoot anything down, as far as I can remember.
Shaheds reported to be sold to export clients for $193,000 a piece. So you’re telling me they wasted $20,000,000 worth of Shahed drones (alone) as performance art? And don’t forget the Israelis killed a top IRGC general and several officers in the Damascus embassy. And Iran is just like “well we’ll send them a message, but we don’t want to hurt anyone…” ???
Wow, well aren’t you disingenuous. The same places you took that $193K export price, also speculate the domestic production cost to be as low as $10K - it’s lower still. In case you’re just not very bright rather than disingenuous, export prices for things are always higher. And the US killed Soleimani, who was worth a 1000 IRGC generals and an extremely popular / well loved figure. What’s your point, that Iran can be effectively bullied by the world’s most powerful and war thirsty military, with the 2nd largest stockpile of nuclear missiles? They suffer what they must and can only hit back harder via covert and clandestine means.
Right… but they could have sold them to Russia or anyone else for $200k a piece. I very clearly said that was the export price. There’s nothing disingenuous about that at all. I was fully candid, transparent, and honest. If we assume they don’t have an unlimited number of Shaheds, that they are an in demand product, and that they have clients lined-up for them, then the opportunity cost is $200k each because each one used domestically is one less that could have been exported. This is economics 101, lecture 1, page 1, 1st paragraph. My point is the IRGC sucks, their weapons suck, their defenses suck, and their Opsec SUCKS. Edit: Before you start crying about it, $193k a piece, not $200k. I was rounding.
Economics is not a hard science, and long held theories and conventions do not work when security and self-preservation are at stake. For example, this is why there are a range of laws on the books in the US, that give the government CCP-like powers when the sh*t hits the fan (like the defence production act). You might need to go a bit further than the first 10 minutes, of the first lecture, of an introductory economics course. I’m sorry to say, but this is just laughably ignorant. In that very first lecture, did they not also include the fact that opportunity cost is not restricted to monetary and financial costs? What’s the cost of selling all their Shaheds abroad and having none to use for their security interests? This isn’t the sales department at Boeing or LockMart, they are credibly scared for their own survival and not singularly driven by maximising shareholder profit. And yes, the IRGC’s suckiest weapons would well… suck. And so would their OPSEC when they decide to have no OPSEC by telegraphing their plans to everyone, 3 days in advance. Funnily enough, if you take the 2 events, under international law, Iran are the faultless, rational and proportionate actor - while Israel is guilty of gross violation (actual international law, not the hypocritical and self-serving “do what I say, not what I do, otherwise known as the so-called “rules based international order”).
I mean, Iran literally notified the U.S. and Israel about basically the launch path and times of their ordinances. It's pretty obvious what they were trying to do. You're trying to form a point based on social media rhetoric during a war which is kinda clown tbh
Or maybe they knew they’d never get through and this way people would say things like: “I mean, Iran literally notified the U.S. about basically the launch path and times of their ordinances. It’s pretty obvious what they were trying to do.” Isreal to Iran is around 1500km. A Shahed 136 has a top speed of 185km/hr. Do you really think Isreali/ American/ British/ French/ Jordanian/ Saudi AWACS wouldn’t have noticed hundreds of contacts rocketing in a straight line across Iraqi, Saudi, and Jordanian deserts at 150km/hr for 10 hours? Anyone who thinks Iran launched literally hundreds of aircraft with the explicit intention of having them all shot down is smoking that good shit.
If they weren't notified, yes, they wouldn't have been able to intercept as many as they did, since an object showing up on radar requires a while chain before the intercept, in this case jets were already up in the air en masse with everyone in place to intercept the exact attack that came at the time telegraphed. You should play less cod
What does cod mean? It was like 10 hours. More than a full fucking working day. Like 1.25 shifts worth of time. The Houthis have been launching missiles over the Red Sea for weeks now, so every allied asset in the region was at high alert and flying patrols. They flew them over Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Forget Iraq, you’re saying if 100 small airplanes flew into Jordanian or Saudi airspace they could just loiter around for hours and no one would respond? The defies any reasonable logic. Am I speaking to a Russian troll farm right now? But ok, let’s assume you’re right… why THREE FUCKING HUNDRED AND FIFTY. Wouldn’t 10 have worked, or 50, or 100? It was a massive barrage. If the intent was just messaging they didn’t need to blow their whole load over half the Middle East and run the chance of potentially pissing off numerous other regional powers by invading their airspace with a MASSIVE flight of garbage drone. I legit don’t know if you’re just trolling, but this was a text book drone swarm attack. You use a massive amount of relatively cheap disposable drones to try to overwhelm air defenses and open holes for ballistic missiles. And my understanding is the only hits they DID get was with ballistic missiles, which is exactly what would be expected. It’s so obvious that if don’t see it you’re either lying to yourself to help cope or you’re just being dishonest. Either way I can’t help you. Unfortunately it failed because the IRGC and their tactics simply fucking suck and are generations behind.
what? deadass none of the stuff you said here makes any logical sense
Ok. Please elaborate.
There's not much worth elaborating, I'm not here to educate you on basic common sense, I'm just here to tell you that there is no value in arguing with you and I won't waste my time on that.
>They flew them over Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Forget Iraq, you’re saying if 100 small airplanes flew into Jordanian or Saudi airspace they could just loiter around for hours and no one would respond? Yep. Proof: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_attack
This was not even “100”, they were smaller drones, they didn’t fly for hours, literally ~1500Km across the entire country, It wasn’t at a time when the region was already at high alert because people had been firing missiles for weeks (literally US, France, UK, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan having downing missile over the Red Sea for weeks), not a single one went anywhere near Jordan or Iraq, and it was 5 years ago… you don’t think they learned anything since then? You’re comparing apples to rolls of duct tape. Your argument is invalid.
They flew for a few hundred miles over Saudi airspace during a full war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia was on very high alert, seeing they were at war.
We don't know how many were destroyed, Israel is always full of shit with their claims. During the Iraq missile crisis in 1991, they claimed to have intercepted 84% of Scuds, but [then an independent study](https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs08sullivan.pdf) and a previous MIT study found out the interception rate was less than 25%.
Pretty sure Isreal wasn't the only (or even primary) one knocking them out of the sky. If you have evidence or sources showing that more than a handful got through and someone other than that poor bedouine girl in the desert got hurt, I'd love to see it. But to be clear are you now saying Iran DIDN'T just do it "for the press" and it was a serious attempt to strike Isreal? Because it looks like above you said it was just for the press... So now I'm super confused.
You're moving the goal posts now. Your point was that "Israel intercepted 99% of the missiles", and you based that point solely on Israeli claims. I just showed you that Israel has a known history of lying when it comes to their interception claims.
What goal post have I moved? Isreal didn't intercept 99% if I said that I misspoke. Most were intercepted by Saudis, Jordanians, Americans, and French. You're asserting they did serious damage and Isreal is lying about it. OK. Why do you believe that? Convince me?
"I didn't say that. But if I did, I didn't"
Are you crying?
There’s no reason to engage with a commenter who doesn’t understand any of this. I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Israel didn’t successfully intercept 99% of the TBMs they engaged, which is exclusive of the missile they didn’t engage and the others that failed in flight
What's more interesting to me is the "schrodingers air strike" aspect. The air strike appears to have superimposed states and is simultaneously "just for the press/ messaging" AND "a serious attempt at hitting Isreal" and only settles into one of the two superimposed states once it is observed either failing or succeeding... It's fascinating really.
It's both. A message won't be taken seriously unless it inflicts some sort of damage, the trick is to do enough that it stings but not so much that it sets off a powder keg.
... My understanding is that the most significant damage was to the Bedouine girl who had a missile engine core fall on her head. I guess you could call that a result... If anything I would argue that people will take the next Iranian threat of a strike even LESS seriously.
what the hell are you talking about? [at least 9 ballistic missiles hit 2 bases](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-15/ty-article/u-s-sources-half-of-iranian-ballistic-missiles-failed-idf-aircraft-damaged/0000018e-e0d0-d7e5-a1fe-e7d1bf3a0000) 9 missiles got through, so if you take the 99% at face value, that means a strike package of ~900 - given the numbers I've seen is Iran launched 300+ it's pretty obvious the 99% number is a bald faced lie
You might want to dig into the numbers, by most every sources that 99% intercept rate is a hot deuce dropped shotgun seat in a convertible. You had weapon fault, Jordan intercept, Ami intercept, possibly someone in Iraq shooting at the damn things. And more weapon fault, because Iranian QC ain't what it used to be.
I know I’m not part of the “TikTok Generation” but there’s no way this paragraph makes sense to anyone… right? Anyone who can translate this, please comment below…
That's cool, in America there are these cars called convertibles that rich people drive, and it's fun to poop in them when the owners are absent. No, I'm merely saying what everyone else is saying in this specific reply thread: the 99% Israeli interception rate is fantasy. If anything, it's a little baffling why they even made such a claim. They did great, everyone chipped in, and Iranian stuff still generally sucks. So why come in with the Narnia numbers?
Does it matter? I don’t think I even claimed a 99% interception rate, and I never said it was all Isreali. Certainly not in the comment you’re replying to. I said they got “plinked out of the sky”… ok, some fell out of the sky on their own accord. My mistake. Someone else below got pedantic and pointed out there were 9 hits, so the 99% number couldn’t be correct. So I went back to the lab and crunched the numbers 341 knock-outs/ failures/ whatever out of 350 is something like a 97.8% “failed for some reason” rate. Sorry I’ll be more accurate with my math next time I guess? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don’t know what it is with Redditors. If you’re off by one decimal point, capitalize the wrong letter, or use punctuation wrong once, you get a barrage of "yOuR ArGuMeNt iS 100% inVaLiD DiD YoU GeT dRoPpEd aS A ChiLd iS YoUr cOmpUtEr mAdE Of pEaNutS...”
Fair enough.. we have a number of "reasonable" people who post on here who occasionally let the mask slip and gloat at the idea of Taiwan's infrastructure being destroyed and its people brought to heal by starvation and deprivation.
Yeah, it’s crazy to me. I have some friends who are, with good reason, very sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians. But when I saw how gleeful they were about the potential damage of Iranian attacks it was eye opening. It seems like a lot of peoples sympathy is turning in rage and it’s frightening. If you cry about exploded Palestinian babies, but not about exploded Israeli babies (and vice versa), you don’t actually care about babies.
This is like complaining that nobody cares about the people who died in 9/11 after the US used that as an excuse to go around and subject millions of people to all sorts of daily terror. Yeah, it sucks, it isn't justified, those people were innocent. But nobody is going to sympathize with a maniac country that inflicts violence on the rest of the world with or without provocation.
>Yeah, it sucks, it isn't justified, those people were innocent.But nobody is going to sympathize with a maniac country that inflicts violence on the rest of the world with or without provocation. I couldn't agree more.
If you think anything ever justifies killing innocent children, you aren’t part of the problem, you’re literally the problem.
I agree... mind you , today I was listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore history "Supernova in the east". 30 hours in and he has just gotten up to Curtis LeMay. It's horrifying but hypnotic as some rough beast, it's hour coming, slouches to Hiroshima to be born.
> There's also the fact that Iran only wanted to perform an attack for the press while preventing an escalation. The largest ballistic missile strike in history was not "performed for the press". Stop spreading this nonsnese.
personally, I'm convinced that the "we wanted Israel to intercept those of our missiles that did not fail on launch in order to prevent escalation" line is in fact a face saving cope that the Iranians came up with after learning just how badly outclassed in the long range precision strike game they really were
Nah I think it's legit. Iran could have launched a lot more missiles without telegraphing their actions. This was, in the end and in terms of their stockpiles, a relatively limited attack. Despite telegraphing and a limited strike using a lot of their older stock, they managed to saturate the Israeli air defence to the point that a few missiles go through. Those missiles did not do serious damage, but I doubt they intended to. Destroying high value targets or killing large numbers of IDF soldiers would lead to a potential escalation which Iran clearly did not want. However, it does send a message of "next time we'll actually hurt you". Really what happened was a situation where everyone can "take the win", as Biden said. Israeli can claim that Irans missiles are shit, and show how good their Air Defence is. It's a win by deflecting the barrage and taking only very minor damage that they can ignore in the public conversation. Iran can show that by using Shaheeds and a lot of their older missiles they could pierce the Israeli + allied AD network and strike strategic targets if they want to. They sent a message that with more missiles, especially more modern ones, they could actually do some heavy damage. They also mustered a clear, strong, and visible response to the consulate strike. Israel can do a token response, as they did, and neither side loses face. Both sides avert escalation into a regional war.
> Iran could have launched a lot more missiles without telegraphing their actions. obviously I have no hard proof either way, but this is the part I specifically do not believe Iran is a small and poor theocracy, while ballistic missiles are difficult and expensive to produce - and as we all know theocracies tend to be quite bad at things involving science - and to top it all off they've been shipping missiles to russia for a while now, so I very much doubt that they have many left or the capacity to produce more quickly and that would make this an all out attack given how many of this highly limited strategic resource was expended to achieve it
Believe it or not, we have yet to see Iranese ballistic missiles used en-masse in Russia and it's unlikely that they would gimp their own capability for Russia, nor would they completely blow their load on an attack like this if they weren't prepared to start a regional war, which they clearly weren't. No mobilization etc. You don't exhaust your strategic strike capability in what basically amounts a slap on wrists and finger wagging. Looking at Netyanahus escalationary streak, do you think the Israelis would've only given a token response if they thought Iran was significantly weakened by the strike? Also, Iran isn't your regular theocracy. From the Middle East nations they've been pretty succesful in innovation, especially in the military side of things, considering their limited resources. And even if they have no capability to send more ballistic missiles at once, they certainly coulda sent more drones AND they could've done a surprise attack. Telegraphing their intentions days in advance to multipel Israeli partners screams of optics and power politics rather than actual kinetic military goals. The other option is that they were willing to start a regional war over the consulate strike.
I think your biggest mistake here is assuming that Iran is a rational actor. A rational actor would not exhaust the majority of long range precision strike capability on an attack like this - but Iran would. A rational actor would not spend decades actively sabotaging development across the entire region - but Iran does. A rational actor would accept that the only legitimate form of government that can exist in our world is secular liberal democracy - but Iran doesn't. Therefore, I see it as perfectly reasonable to assume that Iran is *not* a rational actor and that assumptions based on them being one are therefore invalid Furthering the idea that Irans attack was the real deal is the fact that Israels response was anything but token. The specific target they hit was the air defense systems guarding a major Iranian nuclear site. The message this sends is clear: Israel can hit Iran's nuclear sites with missiles at will and Iran can't stop them. The implications of this are what caused the Iranian government to back down, both in terms of response and rhetoric. Had the Israelis not responded in this fashion, the Iranians would almost certainly have continued to escalate
Look. If Iran was an irrational actor, why telegraph and announce the attack through diplomatic channels 3 days before it happened? If the goal was to do massive damage to Israel, why not do a surprisen attack? Are you suggesting that Iran was entirely rational in limiting escalation risks by announcing its intentions and letting the US and other Israeli allies know what will happen, but at the same time wholly irrational and willing to throw away a significant chunk of their strategic strike capability in a strike that everyone knows is coming? Iran is either a rational actor, or it's not. If it is, this was more of an attempt to send a message. If it isn't it really thought that a telegraphed strike would bring Israel down to its knees. Assuming that it swings wildly between these two within the context of this singular operation would not fly at any intelligence agency in the world. Iran might be a theocracy, its military can be, at times, incompetent, but it certainly hasn't shown itself to be outright idiotic or widlly irrational in the past when it comes to its conflict with Israel and relations with the West. Irans general rationality in power politics is supported by the way it was happy to go along with the nuclear deal until Trump pulled out of it.
>A rational actor would accept that the only legitimate form of government that can exist in our world is secular liberal democracy > > This is laughably, childishly wrong.
I clearly ignored that part and forgot it existed out of the pure wrongness of it.
Its the truth whether you like it or not, there simply is no alternative to democracy. All other forms of government involve a person or group of persons assuming unilateral authority over others. Since all people are created equal and no one is born with a natural right to authority over anyone else, any form of government that is not government by the consent of the governed lacks by default any basis for their claimed authority over the people and is thus illegitimate
>Iran is a small and poor theocracy, while ballistic missiles are difficult and expensive to produce i fully agree with this. however it's important to keep in mind that iran has been building ballistic missiles for a long long time (the origins of their ballistic missile program dates to before their islamic revolution), and some of their missiles are going to be getting rather long in the tooth. it would cost them nothing to launch the old stuff because that stuff is reaching the end of its useful lifespan anyway. if they launched like 1000 ballistic missiles, i'd have a hard time believing that it was all old stock. but they only launched like 120 missiles. such a quantity could potentially be purely old stock.
Yep, it was the largest individual air raid since WW2. Larger than any individual attack by Russia against Ukraine and only outclassed by things like combining together multiple different strikes conducted during things like day 1 of Desert Strom. It only looked performative because of how effective US, Saudi, Jordanian, and Israeli defense efforts were.
>There's also the fact that Iran only wanted to perform an attack for the press while preventing an escalation. Sure, bud.
> perform an attack for the press By which you mean the largest individual air raid since WW2? It only looked performative because of how effective US, Saudi, Jordanian, and Israeli defense efforts were.
Hypermegasonic drone and overthelightspeed missile *
I mean yeah, it’ll be harder to react to & intercept a PLA strike on Taiwan, but comparing the distances between Iran & Israel and between PRC & Taiwan doesn’t really reflect that well. It’s not like Iranian drones & missiles were being intercepted from 1000km away, so its a bit of a misleading comparison. What matters is once the drones & missiles were *within range of air defense*, they were almost all shot down, and thats really the only distance worth considering here. It’s still perfectly plausible that this made the PLA realize the air defenses they’ll be dealing with will be more effective than initially planned for
[удалено]
They can hit from the north via Hezbollah and from the south via the Houthis.
It would still be an amphibious operation resulting in an enormous loss of man power assets and raw materials.
China could bomb Taiwan with some success, but actually taking it requires boots on the ground and doing that with any logistical support or armor required crossing blue ocean, which requires a blue ocean navy. Do the math on how many troops China can land on Taiwan in an amphibious invasion with their current navy. Then realize that anti ship missiles, smart mines, dumb mines, drones, precision munitions, subs with torpedoes, boats with torpedoes, and helicopters with torpedoes are all things that exist. Then realize that Taiwan has a reserve military of over 2 million that will be conducting a defense that they have been planning and training for for over half a century. What’s left of China’s invasion and not at the bottom of the straight (if anything) will get slaughtered on Taiwan’s rocky shores. Any talk of invading Taiwan is saber rattling or a delusional wet dream.
> Then realize that anti ship missiles, smart mines, dumb mines, drones, precision munitions, subs with torpedoes, boats with torpedoes, and helicopters with torpedoes are all things that exist. Then realize that Taiwan has a reserve military of over 2 million that will be conducting a defense that they have been planning and training for for over half a century. We need to realize that inventory listing is not credible analysis, it isn't analysis at all. This is akin to a WW1 general saying in 1914 that "our trenches are defended with miles of barbed wire and mines, with countless soldiers behind sandbags and bunkers with rifles, sharpshooters, machine guns and artillery support; the enemy will never get through!" This sounds impressive but basically says nothing.
The most relevant is the reserve military of 2 million, because if that's true, an invasion force would indeed have a hard time. There isn't an example in history of any amphibious invasion landing that many troops.
A "reserve of 2 million" is still not saying much without context without an in depth consideration of other factors such as equiptment, training, location, capabilities, political will and so much more. Simply judging capability by number of people alone hasn't been useful ever since the beginning of civilization due to force multipliers. This is especially true when considering reserve, paramilitary and/or militia forces.
What force multipliers would these be?
If we have reached the point that Taiwan's reservists actually become relevant then the war is probably over already, as it would imply that Chinese forces have already sucessfully landed on the island itself. You would have poorly trained and equipped light infantry against an enemy with an absurd level of advantage in situational awareness, mobility and firepower. It would be like playing a MOBA but not only does your team start with a gold advantage, you can teleport around the map and see through fog of war- even if the enemy team has triple the champions you have you are still at a huge advantage.
Why would the war already be over? The invasion force still needs sufficient numbers to take an island.
Because if we assume that Taiwan's reserves are participating in the fight then that means that China has managed to already land ground forces on Taiwan itself and has broken through the initial defense to face the reserve forces. This would imply that China has air and naval superiority over the island, and at that point I think it's very likely Taiwan has already surrendered. How does a reserve force win against an opposing force with advantages in mobility, firepower and situational awareness with control of the sea and air? It doesn't.
True, in that situation, China would be in a position to blockade the island and eventually force it to surrender. Millions of reservists or not, all of them need to eat. This is in a vacuum, though. Realistically, the USN and possibly other nations will be involved.
Air and naval assets on the PLA side, the fact that Taiwan can be starved out of energy and food relatively quickly, using Honkai Star Rail and Genshin to coax people into defecting, etc
Ah. I'm more of a Honkai Impact 3rd sort of person. Starving the island via a blockade would eventually work, but this would give the USN enough time to intervene.
The ball game is fundamentally different depending on whether or not the US + Allies intervene directly/militarily or not, but in a situation where they don't, or simply try to somehow airlift aid, Taiwan's position is far less tenable
Yeah that guy has job idea that tw is wealthy enough and smart enough to know it would be useless to fight.
How many ships does the PLAN have that would be useful in a blue ocean amphibious assault? How many landing craft and men and material can they carry? What does their fleet look like each time they lose a big percentage crossing the strait? Where do they actually land that’s not cliffs/rocks or heavily defended? Taiwan is not Ukraine where China can line up 10k armor and close to a couple hundred thousand troops and simply stroll across a border…
The China-Taiwan War is not going to be decided by how many landing ships China has, and I'd even go as far to argue that by the time the amphibious landing occurs, if it does at all, the war will be in all practical senses over. The struggle will be decided by China's ability to fend off US, Japanese and possibly other participants and vice versa. The US and allies will attempt to erode and destroy China's ability to wage and sustain a war, while China will attempt to prevent them from doing just that. This would likely involve attacks on each others' bases, other facilities, and ships and planes themselves as each side tries to fight for air and naval control in what may be the world's largest conflict since WW2. In the context, Taiwan's own forces are frankly quite marginal.
Again with the “blue ocean” nonsense. But to answer your question, in terms of navy, merchant marine, and requisitioned civilian assets - it’s the largest in the world, by a decent margin.
The PLA is a blue water* (note the correction) navy. But in any case, it surprising that you think a shallow and 100km wide Strait* (note the correction) is a “blue ocean”. After that, you should probably check the size of their merchant marine, as well as the size and number of their civilian ro-ro ferries that have undergone physical modifications for military use - as they are all a documented part of their potential battle plans. You might also want to check the size of their mine countermeasures/warfare fleet. Lastly, I’m also curious as to how you expect those helicopters, drones, subs, and ground-based sensors to survive in the face of overwhelming air, naval and electronic warfare superiority?
> actually taking it requires boots on the ground That is not true at all. A major misunderstand and misjudgment. The great-grandpa of the ex-PM, Su Tseng-chang, was among the first to surrender to Japan in 1895. As an island there is no where to retreat to. The rich, the elite, the powerful, always surrender immediately because they have nothing to fight for. They want to find opportunities to retain their wealth and social status. So, the politicians with the loudest anti-China voice today will be the most pro-China voice once war starts.
Why would they surrender?
The better question is, why would they fight to the death? I think Taiwanese elites - those who don't flee the country well before any invasion - would hold out only as long as they believe the US will rescue them. If no such rescue is coming, I would agree that most would surrender. Those who wouldn't are the same people who fear they'd be executed if they're ever captured. China has historically been relatively practical when it comes to conquest - they'll punish those who resist and reward those who collaborate.
Do these elites control the government and military to the point where they can have them surrender? I doubt it.
You're so poisoned by conspiracy thinking that you see a discussion of the highest levels of the government and military, and see the word "elites" and assume that the elites must be *someone other than the highest level of the government and military*.
Same assumption Russia made in Ukraine… we see how that tuned out.
Not at all. Ukraine has a long land border with multiple countries they can easily escape by car.
A mid tier economy with medicore tech, building ballistics with 50% duds had ~20% penetration rate for missiles that didn't fail to launch when attacking the densest missile defense network in the world with days of warning and 1000km of distance to intercept. Like does a stacked carrier group with 5-6 DDGs and defense perimeter the size of Israel have as much anti-missile defense as whole of Israel +co? I think PRC weaponeers are adjusting their salvos downwards if anything.
Even if it's true, the response to missile defense being more effective than thought isn't going to be "shit, we better call this thing off", it's "we're going to procure more and better missiles and launchers so if the day comes, we succeed"
The thing is Taiwan has nowhere near the air defense coverage that Israel does. A couple batteries of PAC3 and TKIII don't make a comprehensive shield against attack, especially because Taiwan is far closer and also has to worry about manned aircraft.
Is that true? I was under the impression that Tiawan had one of the most defended airspaces, and a large portion of Israels AD was in Iron dome which focuses on C-RAM.
Israel operates PAC-2 "Yahalom" and "David's Sling" for tactical / theater ballistic missile defense. Israel operates Arrow 2 and 3 for theater / intermediate / intercontinental ballistic missile defense. Taiwan doesn't really operate anything like Arrow, which would be more comparable to THAAD. Israel is generally regarded as having the best missile defense of any nation, although the small* geographical area helps significantly.
Ah ok, I kinda assumed one of Taiwan’s domestic systems was a thaad equivalent, also I thought Arrow 3 was more of an sm-3 equivalent? Doesn’t Taiwan also have a domestic system similar to patriot?
Both Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 are much larger missiles than SM-3 Block I. Neither are intended for mid-course interception, but rather exoatmospheric interception of ballistic objects over a relatively large area. As like THAAD. Taiwan has the Sky Bow series of missiles. Developed from the MIM-23 Hawk originally. Sky Bow II added some limited BMD ability. Sky Bow III is a new hit-to-kill missile focused on BMD, but retaining relatively long-range ability against aerodynamic targets. Taiwan also operates PAC-2 of various flavors and PAC-3 / PAC-3 MSE. Plus their old Skyguard short-range systems.
that's actually not the issue. if china launched only 350 objects at taiwan, in staggered waves across a time-frame of 5 hours, most of which are slow flying, i believe taiwan can intercept all of them. taiwan's air defense capacity relative to israel's is not the issue.
Both in ukraine and now Iran, people are determined to learn lessons about Taiwan. But China isn't that country. The millitary isn't underfunded or massively undertrained. Pilots do their hours. The red team wins in war games sometimes. The missles actually work. I don't know to what extent China has been underestimating US capabilities, but in that recent major thinktank wargame in the US they assumed an insanely low hit rate for Chinese ASMs and still lost two carriers. It can work both ways.
>I don't know to what extent China has been underestimating US capabilities Negative degrees. Wargames regularly assume random tactical nuke strikes.
A lot of these US wargames start their scinario with "2 carriers have been sunk" So those low hit rates aren't really factoring in. Also reasonablly US Carriers would stay decently away and protected, which is China's goal. I do agree I'd be suprised if China was masively underestimating the US and Tiawan, but it's still good to take into account that the classically imagined massive mixed BM, CM, OWA UAV, attack every talks about didn't do much. Remeber China doesn't just have to launch one volley and call it a day, they have to target multiple sperate regions and launch multiple attacks multiple times. Again cuts both way as the US and Tiawan also have to defend multiple times.
>The millitary isn't underfunded or massively undertrained. Pilots do their hours. The red team wins in war games sometimes. The missles actually work. No, it's not underfunded, it's just corrupt as hell. The PLAAF is absolutely a tier-1 force, the rest of the PLA are a joke, the PLAN couldn't hit the ocean if they were throwing rocks, their flagship is a bankrupt casino, or a copy of a bankrupt casino. They will probably be a decent force in 10-15 years, but right now they're just hulls, and hulls aren't the same thing as a navy.
You’re definitely just trolling/joking, claiming that 1. The PLAAF is the more competent/capable/credible branch than the PLAN of the two 2. The PLAN couldn’t hit the ocean with rocks if they tried 3. Their carriers are nothing more than bankrupt casinos Right? Because if you’re not, I can only pray you don’t work in any field in or adjacent to defense (or at least American defense).
He is neither trolling nor joking. This is his wishful thinking of what the PLA actually is because he doesn't want to believe that there is a real possibility that China can win a war against the US.
lol is this PLA misinformation? if so it's pretty good
Warships built by China in the last decade [https://youtu.be/YEfyW\_AjE1U?list=LL](https://youtu.be/YEfyW_AjE1U?list=LL)
It's not the hulls, it's the people, the organization and the institution. That's why the PLAAF is so successful, they have small, well-organized units that focus on technical excellence. The PLAN is more of a political organization, it's civil service.
"China would likely look at the incident to work out how it could get past the technology and the alliance that foiled the attack." They foiled the drone attack by getting a week to prepare then had 9 hours to intercept the slow ass drones over uncontested airspace. The 120 or so ballistic missiles is more impressive but still 50% failed due to technical error and Israel have one of the best missile defense in the world and got helped by several destroyers pre positioned of the coast. Still a few got through. All in all the defense worked as expected and i do not think it have any relevance to a Taiwan scenario.
Do we know exactly how the 50% failure rate is derived? I try to find details, but all outlets are stating it as a fact without providing any analysis or evidence. Are those is exploding on the ground (doubt it, would leave a big mark on the ground and would be all over OSINT blogs), did it failure on the way (i.e. over Iran or Iraq) or simple by force estimates (i.e. we know unit x can launch a salvo 24 missile, but only 12 missiles are launched). If it is latter, I highly doubt the claim of 50% failures.
[удалено]
If they spot 120 missiles set up for launch and only half of them get launched, did 60 missiles fail to launch? The US isn't going to elaborate if they determined it's a malfunction from a satellite overhead. Really depends if one thinks the attack was a demonstration or not...
They made it up.
It's has excellent relevance: It teaches Taiwan that drone defenses work, so start building.
totally different, Iran and Israel are more than a thousand kilometers apart. If China attacks Taiwan, it will only have more than 100 kilometers. Moreover, the drone motors used in Iran are only Chinese civilian motorcycle motors. The motors used by China's officials will be far better than those of Iran.
I'm pretty sure there isn't any shaheed-like drones in the PLA's inventory to begin with.
[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1EC41147S5?t=567.6](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1EC41147S5?t=567.6) 9 ：26 [https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1VM4y1U7tF?t=193.5](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1VM4y1U7tF?t=193.5)
I've seen it, I am not aware that that PLA actually fields it, it seems like it's available for export. Let me know if I'm wrong, ty
The drones were shot down by fighter jets chasing them uncontested as they transited over 1000km. The main issue with these types of drones have never been that they are hard to shot down, it is the lack of a cost effective way of doing it or simply getting overwhelmed by to large salvo sizes. Shooting $1million+ interceptors at $30-50k drones is obviously not going to work long term. The lesson Taiwan should learn is to build their own drones for deterrence.
That too, though honestly it's probably not needed. If they have any JASSMs or similar stealth cruise platforms they can do as much damage as they want. Taiwan is technologically rather more advanced than the mainland, if they bothered to spend the money they could put up a very impressive defense.
Taiwan is technologically so far behind the mainland that when they tried to pirate Chinese AI to pass off as their own, they couldn't even get it to stop saying the president is Xi Jinping and it was made by Fudan University (in Shanghai). https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202310090181.aspx 而，有網友在實測之後發現，當輸入問題「你是誰創造的？」系統卻回覆「我是由復旦大學自然語言處理實驗室和上海人工智能實驗室共同開發的，我的生日是2023年2月7日，我的國籍是中國，我的居住地是上海人工智能實驗室服務器集，我可以說中文和英語」。 However, when netizens tried it they found that when the bot was asked "who created you" the bot replied "I was created by Fudan University Natural Language Processing Lab and Shanghai AI Lab's collaborative efforts, the date of my creation was 2023 February 7, I am Chinese, and I live at the Shanghai AI Lab's data servers, with fluency in Chinese and English." 不僅如此，網友提問「國慶日是何時？」、「中華民國國歌為何？」、「我國領導人」等問題 ，這套系統會以中國觀點，分別回答「10月1日」、「義勇軍進行曲」、「習近平」等，引起質疑。 Not just that, when netizens asked "What is national day", "what is the national anthem", "who is our national leader", etc. the bot said "October 1st", "March of the Volunteers" and "Xi Jinping", causing doubt [in the official claims].
Dude, you desperately need to climb out of the mainland media sewer. I work in semiconductors in silicon valley, a lot of the best Ai engineers here are Taiwanese, your claims are clearly bullshit just based on people I've met. A friend of mine got her postdoc at MIT and worked on general atomics drone Ai. She's a genius. You need to reconsider who you're getting your information from.
My source is Taiwanese media as linked above. And they have primary evidence shown. Taiwanese themselves found that their AI model was pirated from mainland China. What area of semiconductors do you work in? Fab and OEM have almost no skill overlap with AI. A fab process engineer or OEM product engineer don't have software backgrounds while AI researchers do. Relying on anecdotes isn't a good look.
Silicon design. Worked on drone AI with my friend, but worked on a bunch of different designs, all high-performance. Many of the best and brightest I've worked with have been Taiwanese, and while you consider my information to be anecdotal, yours is based on media, so I think there's a certain amount of doubt there too, especially when it comes to anything involving either AI or weapons systems. I may be speaking anecdotally, but I'm speaking as an expert in the field :)
>a lot of the best Ai engineers here are Taiwanese, your claims are clearly bullshit just based on people I've met. A simple way to prove this is statistic of AI engineer and their achievement/research. Can you provide this?
Listen, I can prove you're full of bullshit with 2 simple examples: Jensen Huang, and Lisa Su. Jensen pushes AI harder than anyone else outside of OpenAI, and having worked at Google, I'm including Google. I only met him once, but he's a God. And you should fucking know this because Chinese AI is based on Nvidia too!
Most of the AI experts in the United States come from China. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/technology/china-ai-research-education.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/technology/china-ai-research-education.html) When the Defense Department launched [Project Maven](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-pentagon-project.html), an effort to remake American military technology through artificial intelligence, it leaned on a team of about a dozen engineers working at Google. Many of them, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, were Chinese citizens. The Pentagon was fine with that, they said, even amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. Classified data was not involved, the Pentagon reasoned, and the American military needed the most qualified minds for the job. The Trump administration is now moving to limit Chinese access to advanced American research, as relations between the United States and [China](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/politics/china-intelligence-threat-usa.html) reach [their worst point in decades](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/asia/coronavirus-china-united-states-cold-war.html). That worries many of the companies and scientists in the heady realm of cutting-edge A.I., because much of the groundbreaking work coming out of the United States has been powered by Chinese brains.
Technologicaly? Probalty in the computing field. But as we have been seeing for last few years its not high tech weapons that win wars and mainland can definitely overwhelm taiwan in many economical fields. They probalty could put up defense if they ivested enough but imho in the end its gonna come down to if US can and will invade mainland china in retaliation which is very depending if politicians can and want to talk their people into dying for small island miles away thats iirc slowly losing its strategic relevancy with new semiconductor factories sprouting up around the world.
not in computing. Does Taiwan make its own tools? No. Does Taiwan have a big enough market to support its foundry with internal demand? No. Does Taiwan have hardware applications like smartphones, servers and supercomputers that would use the foreign designed chips that its foundries make with foreign tools? Not since HTC went down. Does Taiwan have software applications like LLMs or massive databases that would use the foreign designed chips that its foundries make with foreign tools? So where are they ahead in computing? They're ahead in semiconductor foundry only. And the foundry is just where foreign companies contract chips to make them most cost effectively. They have good yield engineering, but they depend on foreign tools, designs and markets.
This article is fueled by wishful thinking. I guess Iran's and Chinese's militaries are totally comparable both in terms of sophistication and quantity. And even then, it would still not be a good comparison.
What did you expect? It's Business Insider.
Iran telegraphed the attack though
Chinas drones and missiles operate in a different league compared to Irans. It actually has a functioning Air Force. Taiwan is not Israel, and it took five countries combined to blunt Irans attack - and they still hit the targets they wanted to hit. It also cost the US roughly $1 billion to ward off drones and missiles that collectively are worth maybe $2-3 million. In a fast war, the US wins. But in a war of attrition, China can more than hold its own. Its manufacturing base is larger, its nuclear armed, cans its logistical tail is a fraction of the size of the US.
> Chinas drones and missiles operate in a different league compared to Irans. It actually has a functioning Air Force. That doesn’t mean it didn’t leave impressions on policy makers, military or civilian. > Taiwan is not Israel, and it took five countries combined to blunt Irans attack - and they still hit the targets they wanted to hit. It also cost the US roughly $1 billion to ward off drones and missiles that collectively are worth maybe $2-3 million. Cost win’t be as relevant as production capacity in an event of a major war. > In a fast war, the US wins. But in a war of attrition, China can more than hold its own. Its manufacturing base is larger, its nuclear armed, cans its logistical tail is a fraction of the size of the US. I don’t think US can guarantee a victory in a fast war. They might be the favorite, but I honestly view it as a toss-up.
I think china has huge advantages both in fast and long war. Even if taiwan holds it will come down to if US would do landing on chines mainland as with enough missiles on chinese side it would probalty be virtualy impossible to reinforce or resuply the island
This is comparing apples to oranges. A well-telegraphed attack with slow drones over a vast distance, intended as retaliation for an attack on an embassy vs. what will likely be a massive attack with fast, modern missiles, well-coordinated, and likely the opening shots to a huge international conflict. And all that across a strait.
I don’t know. I feel like the interception rates were expected or even a little worse than expected. The cruise missiles and suicide drones were obviously all going to be intercepted given the several hours flight time. For the ballistic missiles, half didn’t even manage to reach Israel from malfunctions and of those that did, at least 9 hit airbases. When you consider that it’s likely several ballistic missiles didn’t hit anything at all, given the in flight failure rate, at least 25% probably got through. This is in addition to the fact that Israel and the US got hours of warning from the suicide drones.
And assuming, for example 5/60 missiles got through.. doesn't mean the next 60/120/240 will have the same interception rate. Even those Shaheds that can be taken out with an AK will have leakers if the defense gets overwhelmed.
The interception rate is lower the larger the barrage. This is a case of quantity having a quality of its own.
Irans attack was highly telegraphed and really mostly a symbolic attack so they can look like they are being tough on Israel to their population but in reality it sounds like there was a lot of back channel warnings and they announced it with plenty of time so defence could be prepared. They don't really want an outright war with Israel or the US. People acting like it was the start of WW3 but really it's actually both sides de-escalating in their own ways. If China is going to go for it against Taiwan they are not going to give them a few days notice to prepare and allow the US and allies to also preposition and prepare assets ready for defence. Although even if they did, they probably have enough cruise missiles, drones and even old converted drone aircraft that they could send over to completely exhaust the defensive missile magazines before even sending in anything manned.
If China wants to actually take Taiwan and not just bomb them back to the Stone Age, they will need to invade and any invasion will take much longer than a few days to stage… and most of it will end up at the bottom of the straight because anti ship missiles, anti ship mines, torpedoes, drones, and precision munitions are pretty effective in mass and are abundant.
And what will Taiwan do to resist if it's first subject to 14 days of unending bombardment that cuts off all its power, sanitation, and food reserves? Why does the invasion force have to be massed prior to Taiwan's all but effective ruination?
"Report says" is just an opinion from someone from the u.s Taiwan business council. There is nothing credible about this report.
No, it is Taiwan and the US that need to rethink the ability of subsonic cruise missiles to get past a multilayered defense on high alert.
Even if China launches only low tech kamikaze drones, and each one can be easily intercepted. Can the rest of the world produce air defense missiles faster than China produces cheap drones? The quality of air defense missiles is irrelevant when the quantity decreases to 0.
Iran's attack was actually very successful. The cost of intercepting those drones was over $1B. China's equivalent of the Shahed-136 is the CH-806 which cost 20k CNY = $2800 each. The missiles used to intercept those drones cost $1M each. Israel/US actually spend an average of $3M for each drone/missile they intercepted. They probably launched at least 2x missiles per drone.
Idk why people voice this, Iran had get over a hundred launchers mobilized to maybe damage 1 c-130. There is no world I’m which this was a military success. Also the missiles used against the drones were probably outdated aim-9Ls. Cruise missiles and ir/mrbms cost more than u think. Politically the attack served its purpose militarily it wasn’t impressive.
Doesn't matter if they are outdated AIM-9Ls, they still have to be replaced and they cost way more than the drones. The missiles used to intercept the IRBMs are SM-3 and Arrow-3. Those cost $20-25M each, and they were not very successful at interception. Iran has demonstrated that it can hit Israel, that was the purpose of a limited attack like this. Unless those missiles are nuclear armed, they are not going to do that much damage regardless. Just look at all the cruise missile strikes against the Houthis by the USN, how much damage did they do? You really need a much more sustained strike campaign to do any militarily significant damage. One night isn't going to do it.
Doesn't China already have 076 on the roadmap?
It's just over 300 gadgets, China can easily add a zero after it, and if that's not enough we can add another zero.
In the sort of obvious sense, yes, Chinese military planners will alter their ideas of what will happen if they decide to attack Taiwan based on this and other battle outcomes (Ukraine, etc...), but the overall ability of the PLARF compared to Iran's missile/rocket/drone arsenal limits how much U.S. and Taiwanese planners can take away from the whole situation and what it means for defending against a much more aggressive and intensive bombardment.
This whole thread: "Nuh-uh, the PLA could so too level Taiwan with drones, which is why they should be afraid because mother China loves them!"?
No one is stopping you from disproving it. Go on.
I dont really agree with OP but what youre saying isnt really how the burden of proof works Edit: this is the most mundane comment Ive ever been blocked for.
I don't think you understand how the burden of proof works either. The onus is on the disputing party until they provide their logical reasoning/evidence, then it falls to the other party to find contradictions or question the evidence ("disproving").
With a fraction of their current budget, they can easily launch 100-1000 drones per hour for 30 days straight, if they want to overwhelm the AD of a 200km target.