I was stationed on the Lincoln during the first gulf war.
Most folks have 12 hour shifts, you wake up in a triple stacked “coffin” bunk(I couldn’t roll over without my shoulders hitting the top of the bunk) and wait in line to shower, then wait in line for each meal all while performing your responsibilities. Plus repeated fire drills in full gear because if a fire isn’t put out folks die. I certainly remember losing all the scheduled liberty ports due to the war. It definitely builds up your stress levels over time to breaking point levels. I didn’t see anyone attempting to jump overboard but did see some purposely hurt themselves.
The only port large enough for a carrier (at the time) was/is Dubai but that just makes the ship a sitting duck right now. I can’t imagine going that long without a break.
This is one of the problems with starting a war with the assumption that you’ll achieve an overwhelming victory in a matter of weeks. At this point the only practical options for resupplying the Lincoln are to supply it by sea (involves tying a defenseless ship to the side of it and moving both in a straight line for a few hours) or to move it where the food is and hope it doesn’t impact their blockade plan too badly.
I sometimes see people making fun of the book “The Art of War” because it’s mostly stuff like “you can’t win a war if you aren’t able to feed your troops” that should be obvious to anybody who’s competent. Situations like this show that it’s still useful because sometimes you have leaders that need very simple concepts to be explained to them.
Also recently: "US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide" - 317 points by rbanffy 5 days ago - 563 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220339
Morale is so bad that people are trying to off themselves and they aren't even being shot at yet. I have low faith in the USN in the event of a Taiwan contingency. And I think the idea that they can force Iran to their knees with a blockade is looking sillier every day. Brutal.
> I have low faith in the USN in the event of a Taiwan contingency
Morale tends to be very different when you're acting as the reactor to some other actor on the offensive, you act (you think at least) as a defender of some larger idea of "peace". But when you instead gets sent out as the aggressor, you don't really have much to defend and hold on to, and it gets harder and harder for people to justify what they're there to do.
Say China were to invade Taiwan and there would be outright war, then a lot of people would feel differently about participating in that, compared to participating with the US acting as an aggressor against Iran for little rhyme or reason.
I've long theorized that if a hot war with China happened, the US would get beaten up very badly, at first.
Likely burning through stockpiles of weapons (obvious now), plus not do well against modern drone warfare and a China that can pump out drastically more weapons, ships, etc.
Would we likely get our act together? I don't even know anymore. But it would not go well in the beginning.
I think that psychologically not knowing when it will end is extra difficult. When I served in Afghanistan I knew pretty well how long the deployment would be so my expectations were set. If they kept adding extra months I'd imagine you start to feel like Yossarian.
I haven't served in the military, but I have been onsite in awful places at someone else's schedule and whim.
Getting extended arbitrarily is horrible. The only thing worse is when they let someone else go home early, and force you to stay for no real reason. (Not even drawing straws or similar.) That genuinely broke me. Doing this to people is cruel, full stop.
(Fortunately, for as bad as it was for me, it did at least make it impossible to ignore my mental health, and was the beginning of a long, long road of treatment.)
I've said before, and the downvotes prove it, but...
Damn, fighting for the epstein alliance and the president of peace sounds awful.
Still, Trump will soon be able to get the strait of hormuz open like it was before he attacked iran, and he'll be able to get Iran's word they won't make nukes, just like they said they wouldn't before he attacked them...which will be a better victory than spending 20 years to replace the taliban with the taliban I suppose.
What makes you think this farce of an operation will be successful in any manner that benefits the USA?
From where I'm sitting, the USA already lost, it's just a matter of how badly bruised they are when they leave the fight. The outcomes so far are:
- Depleted munitions stores, so much so that defense systems have been relocated
- US and ally bases have been successfully attacked.
- Tolls have been exercised on tankers going through the straight by Iran.
- Depleted the strategic petroleum reserves of many counties.
- The President had to flee talks due to "credible threats" from Iran. When was the last time a adversarial power was able to hit a sitting president?
- Iraq is discussing allowing pro-Iranian to operate unimpeded within their territory, allowing them to continue to strike Saudi-US assets in the region.
- A "pressure campaign" that isn't working. The USA killing Iranian citizens is just helping the IRGC stay in power.
- An inability to contain the situation has cast doubt on the USA's general military capability.
Maybe the situation sorts itself out. After all, everyone the region is losing out on sweet oil revenues the longer this goes on. So leaders get together, form a "spread the wealth, not the bombs" initiative that allows the USA to exit while saving face, and the oil pie gets sliced up a little differently.
> What makes you think this farce of an operation will be successful in any manner that benefits the USA?
It won't.
The damages are done, no one can rely on the US for defense since they ran away and hid, the US offensive capabilities in the region are fubar since Iran, despite being one of the most sanctioned nations, managed to put the US at arms length, and despite the US/Trump bravado, the US hasn't won 65 times and Iran is not begging for a ceasefire or peace deal, and everyone in the region knows it...which is the most important thing.
Declaring victory on tiktok/truth social/Internet is not a victory, especially when ordinary Americans bills are increasing.
Clearly, Taiwan has wasted a lot of effort relying on the US for defensive aid, and China now sees that clearly. So does South Korea.
Bridges are burnt.
The best trump can hope for is it going back to the way things were before he started bombing for peace but Iran has made it clear that is not going to happen.
If I was Iran, I'd focus all of my attention now on air defence, and then do whatever-the-fuck-I-want.
> When was the last time a adversarial power was able to hit a sitting president?
Any time they've wanted to. That's the conclusion that I've come to after that dweeb clipped his ear with a bullet.
I would have thought that after Hinckley getting so close to Reagan with a handgun that this kind of thing wouldn't be possible but now I have no doubt any Squeaky Fromme from any country could pull off a presidential assassination if they wanted to.
The reason it hasn't happened yet isn't because the Secret Service valiantly defending the president, it's because the American people are by and large complacent or satisfied with his presidency, foreign citizens are too disinterested, and foreign governments / intelligence agencies view the outcome of his presidency as beneficial to their self interests.
It's kinda perverse but if you stop and think about it in the age of drones Donald Trump remaining president is the biggest act of democracy ever. We all just sort of allow this to happen even though it's becoming more and more trivial by he day to assassinate him.
> Trump will soon be able to get the strait of hormuz open like it was before he attacked iran, and he'll be able to get Iran's word they won't make nukes, just like they said they wouldn't before he attacked them...
Absolutely disgusting treatment under any circumstances, but even worse on what arguably was/is a mission of "spectacle" to distract from Epstein revelations, and an insanely miscalculated "walk in the park" one-day assault, like Putin tried.
And the two at the top (bottom) of this don't seem to care one iota.
Sure frame it as bad news. The real story is that Kennedy doesn't have to worry about precious American body fluids being compromised by foreign UHT milk. (I don't think you could have synergy like that before DOGE.)
I was stationed on the Lincoln during the first gulf war. Most folks have 12 hour shifts, you wake up in a triple stacked “coffin” bunk(I couldn’t roll over without my shoulders hitting the top of the bunk) and wait in line to shower, then wait in line for each meal all while performing your responsibilities. Plus repeated fire drills in full gear because if a fire isn’t put out folks die. I certainly remember losing all the scheduled liberty ports due to the war. It definitely builds up your stress levels over time to breaking point levels. I didn’t see anyone attempting to jump overboard but did see some purposely hurt themselves.
The only port large enough for a carrier (at the time) was/is Dubai but that just makes the ship a sitting duck right now. I can’t imagine going that long without a break.
This is one of the problems with starting a war with the assumption that you’ll achieve an overwhelming victory in a matter of weeks. At this point the only practical options for resupplying the Lincoln are to supply it by sea (involves tying a defenseless ship to the side of it and moving both in a straight line for a few hours) or to move it where the food is and hope it doesn’t impact their blockade plan too badly.
I sometimes see people making fun of the book “The Art of War” because it’s mostly stuff like “you can’t win a war if you aren’t able to feed your troops” that should be obvious to anybody who’s competent. Situations like this show that it’s still useful because sometimes you have leaders that need very simple concepts to be explained to them.
They need to read some Clausewitz even more badly.
No matter how powerful your military is, you can't win a war unless you have a political objective that is possible to achieve via the war.
[dead]
They need it but they won’t listen anyway.
How is it defenseless if there’s an aircraft carrier next to it and a carrier group and n number of submarines surrounding it?
Also recently: "US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide" - 317 points by rbanffy 5 days ago - 563 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220339
Morale is so bad that people are trying to off themselves and they aren't even being shot at yet. I have low faith in the USN in the event of a Taiwan contingency. And I think the idea that they can force Iran to their knees with a blockade is looking sillier every day. Brutal.
> I have low faith in the USN in the event of a Taiwan contingency
Morale tends to be very different when you're acting as the reactor to some other actor on the offensive, you act (you think at least) as a defender of some larger idea of "peace". But when you instead gets sent out as the aggressor, you don't really have much to defend and hold on to, and it gets harder and harder for people to justify what they're there to do.
Say China were to invade Taiwan and there would be outright war, then a lot of people would feel differently about participating in that, compared to participating with the US acting as an aggressor against Iran for little rhyme or reason.
I've long theorized that if a hot war with China happened, the US would get beaten up very badly, at first.
Likely burning through stockpiles of weapons (obvious now), plus not do well against modern drone warfare and a China that can pump out drastically more weapons, ships, etc.
Would we likely get our act together? I don't even know anymore. But it would not go well in the beginning.
At this pace, there will be no "Taiwan contingency." At least one that the US is going to get involved with kinetically.
Not to make light of it but deployments are hard!
I think that psychologically not knowing when it will end is extra difficult. When I served in Afghanistan I knew pretty well how long the deployment would be so my expectations were set. If they kept adding extra months I'd imagine you start to feel like Yossarian.
I haven't served in the military, but I have been onsite in awful places at someone else's schedule and whim.
Getting extended arbitrarily is horrible. The only thing worse is when they let someone else go home early, and force you to stay for no real reason. (Not even drawing straws or similar.) That genuinely broke me. Doing this to people is cruel, full stop.
(Fortunately, for as bad as it was for me, it did at least make it impossible to ignore my mental health, and was the beginning of a long, long road of treatment.)
Also people need to reintegrate into normal society. That can be pretty hard if you spent 3 years in a combat zone.
I've said before, and the downvotes prove it, but...
Damn, fighting for the epstein alliance and the president of peace sounds awful. Still, Trump will soon be able to get the strait of hormuz open like it was before he attacked iran, and he'll be able to get Iran's word they won't make nukes, just like they said they wouldn't before he attacked them...which will be a better victory than spending 20 years to replace the taliban with the taliban I suppose.
Fucking idiots.
What makes you think this farce of an operation will be successful in any manner that benefits the USA?
From where I'm sitting, the USA already lost, it's just a matter of how badly bruised they are when they leave the fight. The outcomes so far are:
- Depleted munitions stores, so much so that defense systems have been relocated
- US and ally bases have been successfully attacked. - Tolls have been exercised on tankers going through the straight by Iran.
- Depleted the strategic petroleum reserves of many counties.
- The President had to flee talks due to "credible threats" from Iran. When was the last time a adversarial power was able to hit a sitting president?
- Iraq is discussing allowing pro-Iranian to operate unimpeded within their territory, allowing them to continue to strike Saudi-US assets in the region.
- A "pressure campaign" that isn't working. The USA killing Iranian citizens is just helping the IRGC stay in power.
- An inability to contain the situation has cast doubt on the USA's general military capability.
Maybe the situation sorts itself out. After all, everyone the region is losing out on sweet oil revenues the longer this goes on. So leaders get together, form a "spread the wealth, not the bombs" initiative that allows the USA to exit while saving face, and the oil pie gets sliced up a little differently.
> What makes you think this farce of an operation will be successful in any manner that benefits the USA?
It won't.
The damages are done, no one can rely on the US for defense since they ran away and hid, the US offensive capabilities in the region are fubar since Iran, despite being one of the most sanctioned nations, managed to put the US at arms length, and despite the US/Trump bravado, the US hasn't won 65 times and Iran is not begging for a ceasefire or peace deal, and everyone in the region knows it...which is the most important thing.
Declaring victory on tiktok/truth social/Internet is not a victory, especially when ordinary Americans bills are increasing.
Clearly, Taiwan has wasted a lot of effort relying on the US for defensive aid, and China now sees that clearly. So does South Korea.
Bridges are burnt.
The best trump can hope for is it going back to the way things were before he started bombing for peace but Iran has made it clear that is not going to happen.
If I was Iran, I'd focus all of my attention now on air defence, and then do whatever-the-fuck-I-want.
> When was the last time a adversarial power was able to hit a sitting president?
Any time they've wanted to. That's the conclusion that I've come to after that dweeb clipped his ear with a bullet.
I would have thought that after Hinckley getting so close to Reagan with a handgun that this kind of thing wouldn't be possible but now I have no doubt any Squeaky Fromme from any country could pull off a presidential assassination if they wanted to.
The reason it hasn't happened yet isn't because the Secret Service valiantly defending the president, it's because the American people are by and large complacent or satisfied with his presidency, foreign citizens are too disinterested, and foreign governments / intelligence agencies view the outcome of his presidency as beneficial to their self interests.
It's kinda perverse but if you stop and think about it in the age of drones Donald Trump remaining president is the biggest act of democracy ever. We all just sort of allow this to happen even though it's becoming more and more trivial by he day to assassinate him.
> Trump will soon be able to get the strait of hormuz open like it was before he attacked iran, and he'll be able to get Iran's word they won't make nukes, just like they said they wouldn't before he attacked them...
Lol beautiful.
Like in Vietnam and fragging their commanding officers.
50/50 whether they will get a shipment testosterone shots.
Absolutely disgusting treatment under any circumstances, but even worse on what arguably was/is a mission of "spectacle" to distract from Epstein revelations, and an insanely miscalculated "walk in the park" one-day assault, like Putin tried.
And the two at the top (bottom) of this don't seem to care one iota.
A national disgrace.
Sure frame it as bad news. The real story is that Kennedy doesn't have to worry about precious American body fluids being compromised by foreign UHT milk. (I don't think you could have synergy like that before DOGE.)