> this shift in carrier-based projection of power in the era of low-cost drones

Nothing in this war has suggested carriers are obsolete. A carrier that launches drones and fields an anti-drone strike group would be amazing. We don’t have that. (And even what we do have is great in the carrier department, it’s given us air parity to superiority from way offshore.)

> America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale

We make plenty of stuff at scale. We just haven’t designed any of military around it since WWII.

> unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes

We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America.

Sorry, at the heart of this is that the Commander in Chief and Secretary of War are idiots. It's not clear how any of this situation would be any different if America had a dramatically higher production capacity.

is china helping ukraine also? The real "force multiplier" is basically the same as it was 100 years ago: fancy advanced tech works great to clear large, unoccupied spaces with no terrain costs; it still won't go into a jungle, climbmountains or fight in the streats.

Whats compounding existing reality, is how cheap it is to use commercial tech from any of these manufacturing hubs, china included, and turn it into a small but persistent offensive weapon.

So now Americas got billions of dollars worth of ammo up agains millions of dollars worth of fodder, and that won't clear the way to controlling a large, well defended plot of land.

America's leaders are drunk and high on their own propaganda, even while Ukraine has demonstrated just how useless the old, bulky and costly tech is.

Number 1 reason why I want to see the United States of America and its very loud citizens get a taste of humble pie in this self-inflicted crisis of idiocy with global ramifications.

Even when discussing a war that's obviously gone out of hand with no easy resolution in right, there's still this air, this attitude from American commenters that somehow the might and brilliance of the US military will prevail in the end and they can restore their position as leaders of the free world. Meanwhile the rest of the world has waited 50 years for this day.

Let me have a little schadenfreude with my €2.20+ litre of petrol.

> perturbed to see people talk of mass killings so casually

I'm almost perturbed to not see it discussed at all. What are the casualty estimates of blasting open the Strait?

> “…getting blown to smithereens…”

Looney Tunes language like this projects an aura of un-reality further in the article, which I like even less.

There aren't a lot of alternatives - the amount of mass killing going on right now is unusually high. People can't spend all day frothing with moral outrage at the horror of it all. If something is routine there isn't much of an alternative than to discuss it as routine.

This article is actually unusually good, I wouldn't be surprised if the site was generally anti-war. It isn't unusual for the level of analysis to be "we're the in-group, we're morally right, they're the out-group, we can't imagine they're competent, lets kill them it'll be easy". The moment people start doing serious analysis they become well-armed pacifists. As a case study; this war is part of a trend of the US hurting itself in aid of ... nothing useful for the US. The only silver lining is I don't see the Trump presidency surviving this and that might be a lesson to the next guy about trying to start fights.

The US public discourse is so dehumanized today that anyone who is not "with them" is literally not a human anymore. Even within the country itself "the leftards" are considered an obstacle which can be removed if only enough force is applied.

Sending armed agents at protesters is seen as being the same thing as sending pest control to clear out beaver dams on the creek. Nobody cares what the beavers think, they are not human, they do not have feelings. They are simply a menace to be dealth with.

Didn't you read the URL?

It's not mass killing, it's statecraft.

It's not casual, it's responsible.

"Responsible Statecraft" they call themselves.

There is no party even capable of doing it.

The Gulf coastline is almost 1000 miles long, there would have to be a gigantic occupation of an area the size of a small country, at the same time as there would be 'all out war' with Iran, which would be backed by China and to a lesser extent Russia, and whereupon an invasion would provide them with millions of determined fighters.

We're talking 'Gulf War' scale of operation against a much bigger, more capable country, and of forces willing to fight.

And the US doesn't even have anywhere to do it from.

Assuming a Gulf country would host an invasion force - extremely unlikely - there's no magical way for US to cross the Gulf with large numbers of forces, as we can't get capitol ships in there in the first place.

There's no amphibious capability at the scale necessary on the Arabian Sea.

Literally just the logistics of large scale landings is almost impossible.

That leaves the Kuwait / Iran border, and maybe something a bit wider.

And then fight through the mountains across the Gulf?

The thought is absurd, it's a 'major campaign theatre' - of which US forces were theoretically capable of fighting in two at once, but that's not pragmatic. That's 'wartime economy' kind of thing.

It's possible but unlikely that 10K marines and paratroopers are going to be able to do much, because it's very risky and likely won't accomplish much.

> the "blockade" will probably continue

The part that makes the Strait weird is no belligerent wants it entirely closed. (Maybe Israel.) Iran wants to export. And America wants exports. So you get this weird stalemate where America doesn’t want to actually blockade Iran, while Iran seems to do just enough to keep America from actually shutting the Strait.

There was an article somewhere a few days ago, where the author raised the question: Why buy tanks in a world of drone warfare. Something like that. I see this as much the same "problem". Drones can't really take or hold territory, they can only deny access to it. At some point you need people and armoured vehicles on the ground.

The US is facing the same issue in Iran. You can bomb all you like, but a bomber, like a drone, can't hold land. Iran can launch drones and missiles towards the Strait of Hormuz from the entire country, denying anyone access, but also without being able to hold it.

Because they went in without a plan, or even a goal really, the US administration denied itself, and everyone else, access to the strait. The military leadership probably knew this. If not they could have asked Ukraine if this was a sound idea, given their knowledge and experience with Iranian drone technology.

The US no longer uses its army for defense. Nobody in their immediate region dares attack them, they're too powerful ("Godzilla", in the words of John Mearsheimer). All the wars that the US has fought since WWII are nothing to do with defense. Just look at the Wikipedia article on "power projection":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection

The leader image is ... a US aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz). That's what the US uses its military power for, to influence events in lands far, far away from its territory.

But, now, tell me which one of the many wars that the US has fought in after WWII did not end in disaster. Afghanistan? Iraq? Korea?

There was a meme doing the rounds the other day: "Name a character who can defeat Captain America". The answer being "Captain Vietnam". The US has faced humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat while bringing death and destruction and immeasurable misery to millions around the world.

That is what HN users seem to have an "anti" sentiment for. If you watch the news you'll be able to tell that this goes far beyond HN. The whole of US society seems to be extremely tired with those "forever wars", those senseless excursions to faraway lands, that not only do not secure US interests but turn world opinion more and more against the US. Even the US' closest allies now fear the US: vide Greenland. Anyone with more than a video game or comic book understanding of how the real world works would do well to be concerned.

Edit: also from EU, btw. Greek but living in the UK.

To be fair, it was bright Chinese minds at ByteDance which worked on getting US teenagers addicted to TikTok videos.

I prefer having those minds focused on optimizing ad serving than on optimizing school bombings.

This has definitely nothing to do with the subject at hand.

US Forces and Defence Complex have most of the talent they need.

Even with prevailing capabilities in many areas, it's not possible to do most things. Armies are not 'magic' - we're lulled into a false sense of understanding of capabilities by focusing to much on 'special forces' and other kinds of operations.

What makes you think what the US, most probably at the behest of occupiers of Palestine, is going to do wonders for sentiment of the general public towards the US military industry? The anti-military sentiment is justified and will probably grow as more people wake up to the terrorising and dual faced nature of the US.

Would those "brightest minds" want to work for the current US government? Even if they did out of patriotism to the country, the Trump administration would have pushed them out by now and replaced with yes-men.

The brightest minds were systematically bullied out of position, called DEI hires or accused of random crimes.

They might not have been the best, but lets not pretend we're sending our brightest minds herw.

What are you talking about? Better missiles dont stop Iran from closing a tiny waterway in their border.

US weapons are pretty damn good for the most part. But trade protection is just not something fancy advanced weapons can solve.

Military planners have known this for a long time.

If anything, if you were serious you would say that the US didnt pay enough tradesmen and technician to build enough of the needed weapons.

> im from eu

Yeah, the ultimate place of military preparedness.

> Where does the Strait begin and end?

Practically speaking, the Musandam Peninsula [1]. Open that to the sea and you make everyone except Iraq and Kuwait happy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musandam_Peninsula

at a range where short-range anti-ship missiles can reach ships from Iranian territory.

[flagged]

I have seen the same from other sources

https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/

> This is the second sudden bombing campaign the country has suffered in as many years – they do not want there to be a third next year and a fourth the year after that. But promises not to bomb them don’t mean a whole lot: establishing deterrence here means inflicting quite a lot of pain. In practice, if Iran wants future presidents not to repeat this war, the precedent they want to set is "attacking Iran is a presidency-ending mistake." And to do that, well, they need to end a presidency or at least make clear they could have done.

Can they do that: yes, keep Hormuz shut until much closer to November, and "the economic and political fallout will be too big."

Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.

My Iranian ex colleague shares very interesting opinion. They trained during his army time to blow everything in the region up. So if things escalate badly the oil and gas importing countries will stay with a fraction of needed oil and gas for years. There is no backup infrastructure anywhere in the world. It will take years to rebuild the infrastructure. It will destroy world’s economy better than nukes.

Since 1979, every US president has known that the US can send a couple of aircraft carriers and bomb the shit out of Iran.

And yet none did. Because they listened to their security chiefs and advisors who would tell them, Iran is a highly complex multiethnic geographically complex country. If you can contain it with diplomacy, that’s preferable.

When listening to “experts” becomes taboo, there will be consequences.

The inhabitants of the Iranian plateau have been the subject of the ire of the military superpower of their era quite a few times. Alexander the Great conquered them and set their capital and their sacred books on fire and yet a mere 70 years later his Hellenic dynasty was gone. They were conquered by the Arabs and were forced to give up their religion but somehow, unlike Egypt and Syria/Lebanon and many other ancient places, these guys somehow kept their language and distinct culture intact. They were decimated (maybe even worse ) by Genghis Khan and followed quickly by Tamerlane and yet, it was their Turco-Mongol rulers who ended up adopting their language and culture.

The inhabitants of this land have deep memory of knowing how to suffer, to endure and to survive. It wasn’t that long ago that from Constantinople to New Delhi, the language of the Imperial Court was Persian.

Hey, don't knock what works!