Apparently they had to magdump their Patriot intercepter missiles, but why? And what about the offensive missiles? What happened?
Not a direct answer to the question but some more context.
As well as many of the factors people have already highlighted (underproduction, Ukraine, arrogance amongst the sycophants and alpha male warhawks of the Trump cabinet), asymmetric warfare has heavily limited the level of degradation that the US can do to the IRGC. Iran have planned for this for decades and built missile cities buried under granite mountains with production lines compartmentalised (e.g. so fuel and warheads can be separated in blast-proof storage facilities) and hidden within mountain saddles that helps protect them against US strikes. Iran is able to continue firing at the same speed and strength as at the start of the war, China/Russia are providing satellite intel of US military installations across the Middle East and months of Iranian attacks are really thinning out radar and interceptor batteries.
It’s also pretty clear that the US target bank is quite depleted. The US promised to strike Iran hard for every ship they fired at in Hormuz, but it was only limited to small radar/launch sites along the coast that have little strategic value. The only way for the US to escalate this is to start striking Iran civilian infrastructure (power plants, bridges, water desalination plants), but I’m sure the gulf states have big objections to that. The Houthis on their own have been fucking up Saudi oil production for the last month with small missile/drone waves.
I think the US plan is to just pretend the war isn’t happening any more. They’re no longer responding to Iran destroying ships in Hormuz and are giving no real objections to the new Iran/Oman agreement to control the strait, despite it literally blacklisting US/Israeli ships and giving Iran full power over ingoings/outgoings.
I think the US is just screwed. They burned through their natural resources and minerals early and are now paying the price for the reckless laissez faire hyper industrialization that speed rushed the US into peaking in the 1950s. Now the US is a dry desolate wasteland (literally, Lake Mead is at it’s lowest historical level ever at this moment). Hyper capitalism is basically the economic equivalent of taking performance enhancing drugs to get ahead.
I tend to think the empire in general is screwed, but try not to overstate it cause obviously it can still do a lot of damage on the way out, especially to materially weaker countries.
But like, the current trajectory seems like one in which things are going to keep snowballing. The backfiring war against Iran is probably going to be seen as a turning point by historians looking back, but there are other factors too. Like the state of the environment, as you point out. The de-industrialization/financialization of the economy that left them vulnerable to exactly the sort of countermeasures China is employing in limiting their access to certain materials. The ideological and intellectual regressions, including the nepotistic handing off of power to failsons who don’t understand the subtleties of the psychopathic, but nevertheless thoroughly plotting, neocons who came before. The fundamental overextending that empires are prone to, leaving them with too many fronts to manage in a world that is increasingly materially capable of, and ideologically interested in, moving on without them. The counterexample of a better world being possible without them, lead by China, while the empire increasingly looks old and decrepit by comparison (sometimes literally), even within its own borders; the US won’t even guarantee its citizens healthcare, the EU is unequipped to handle rising temperatures due to climate change, things like that, that illustrate how the empire is not only behind China, it’s actually decaying more than it is growing.
The empire is being led by enormously entitled people who believe that belligerence is the same as structural power and it will only keep working as long as they hold onto some amount of structural power that others built before them. But they are already squandering it, as we see in Iran, because, on multiple levels, they don’t understand how to build anymore.
Meanwhile, China, the factory of the world, understands building better than they ever did and is not wasting time in using that capability to piece together an alternative world order, where sovereignty actually means something.
Ok so first thing, my understanding is the industrial production of interceptors is done in annual batches, since the final assembly of the missile is the culmination of several long processes and supply chains. It takes something like three years to manufacture an interceptor from complete scratch. They’re not just computers strapped to a bomb, think of them more like simple supersonic jet fighters, including many of the same parts and tolerances for aircraft and that should suggest how long these things take to make. Second, the American imperialists haven’t exactly been precise in their choice of targets. They’ve been shooting decoys, they’ve been triple tapping targets, and they’ve been targeting things of minimal strategic importance like civilian infrastructure (bridges, schools, etc.)
Third, there’s an issue in supply chains for semi-conductors right now, which is kind of a global issue in computer parts rather than specifically for weapons.
I think in conclusion this stems from a complete mismatch in predicted industrial capacity and long-standing American military doctrine. America has been sending munitions to Ukkkraine and the Zionist entity for years, and then opens up another front in Iran. The past several decades of American military strategy has been more focused on rapid air-strikes and then occupation style forever wars. I don’t think there’s been much consideration of combat with an enemy who has a comparable stockpile of munitions. Furthermore Iran deliberately uses a strategy to waste American interceptors using decoy drones and things massive waves of less sophisticated munitions to waste interceptors.
Ok on that last one, here’s a way to think about it. Iran will fire a wave of 50 Shahed missiles, each costing around $20,000 ($1 million in total). A single THAAD interceptor costs upwards of $12 million. A patriot interceptor battery with a full compliment can easily cost $1 billion. That should explain some things I hope.
edit: Oh and I also forgot to mention one of the most important parts. The pentagon is currently staffed by drunken foolish pedophiles who are high on their own narcissism and don’t want to listen to the advice of the older imperialist ghouls who actually knew how to do empire. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that American literally runs out of weaponry.
Iran will fire a wave of 50 Shahed missiles, each costing around $20,000 ($1 million in total). A single THAAD interceptor costs upwards of $12 million. A patriot interceptor battery with a full compliment can easily cost $1 billion.
Just to drive this point home even further, $20,000 is the estimate to build a single Shahed-136 drone if it were built in the USA. I’ve seen estimates that it might be as little as 10% of that in actuality.
Unlikely just the engine costs like 12k.
They had also been supplying Ukraine for a while
Money well spent. /s
Well, the profits stayed in the pockets of billionaries, so the system worked as intend in this case.
The USA does still produce a lot of weapons but they also sell a lot to NATO countries and then of course Israel and Ukraine.
Lockheed and Raytheon don’t make money from full warehouses
Mao was right when he called them a paper tiger - they project strength but in reality all the factories that would have produced the war time missiles now exist in China.
And China’s control of rare earth processing is adding a further bite. Even as it tries, on paper, to boost manufacturing capabilities, it will be limited by material reality.
According weapons expert Theodore Postal, interception rates are an abysmal 3% so depletion of interceptors outside of the entity is unlikely to have much impact anyway, and even inside unless Hamas starts firing rockets again. What’s more interesting is the empire’s depleting supply of standoff munitions. If this happens, they could probably take the Russian approach of attaching glide fins to old, dumb bombs.
As for what happened? Neoliberal de-industrialization goes burrr.
THEY SOLD OUT THE WEAPONS INDUSTRY?! 😭
Also, yikes, 3%? Did all of the good ones go to Isreal or what?
The weapons industry is fine, what got hollowed out were other aspects of American industry. A single missile needs aluminum, semiconductors chips, circuitry, and not to mention propellant and the actual explosives like RDX and Octol. And in that regard, the rare earth metals come from China, the chips from Taiwan (which is legally a region of the PRC btw), the propellant from China or India. Almost none of the heavy industry or extraction necessary to produce munitions is done domestically in America. The factories in America do things like testing and final assembly.
Ok so the 3% thing might be referring to the actual rate of interception, as in, only 3% of incoming fire is intercepted. I haven’t looked at the source that Iamassu is quoting. The numbers I usually see is that interceptors work 50 to 75% of the time. Also interceptors are rationed. You don’t shoot the same number of interceptors as your enemy shoots missiles, since your interceptors are way, way more expensive. You try to intercept a small number of them that might hit important targets, so maybe that’s where the 3% comes from? I could easily see a reality where for every 100 missiles/drones that Iran shoots, the Zionists or Americans only shoot 3 interceptors in response.
Ok so the 3% thing might be referring to the actual rate of interception, as in, only 3% of incoming fire is intercepted. I haven’t looked at the source that Iamassu is quoting. The numbers I usually see is that interceptors work 50 to 75% of the time.
I believe this is mostly correct. The 3% is the overall rate of interception so this would include missiles launched where no attempt to intercept was made. When referring to the success rate per interceptor, 50 to 75% is probably still too high. Professor Postal also claims that for each missile, 2 or 3 interceptors are needed to even have a chance at interception.
I unfortunately can’t find his work in text format anywhere, but he’s been making the rounds on the alt-media platforms. The one I saw was his recent interview with Glenn Diesen.
Professor Postal also claims that for each missile, 2 or 3 interceptors are needed to even have a chance at interception.
I believe that this is accurate, because I’ve seen footage of this happening a few times. One incoming missile, 2 or 3 interceptors shot to intercept it. Even then, I’ve seen video of some missiles dodging all the interceptors and landing.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The numbers I usually see is that interceptors work 50 to 75% of the time.
I don’t know where you’re seeing those numbers but they’re not really based on reality.
And as for the 3%, it looks at available footage and looks at how many were intercepted in available footage, but I’m not sure if it counts every video or only videos with AA working. Either way the numbers are pretty low and anything above 15-20% interception in cases where AA is present looks impossible from the video evidence I have seen, and since AA isn’t always present, overall interception rate would be much lower. Although that’s for terminal interception, as high altitude inteception rates might be better, but there’s less evidence either way of it.
You don’t shoot the same number of interceptors as your enemy shoots missiles
Yes, but it’s actually because the empire’s doctrine works around two interceptor per incoming missile that might hit something reasonably expensive for maximum wealth transfer. And considering the ammount and quality of hits we see coming from Iranian missiles I would expect that every 100 Iranian missiles coming down the empire would have to use at least 160+ interceptors if it followed it’s own doctrine, but although we will sometimes see the number of interceptors outnumber the number of Iranian missiles even 3 or 4 to 1 when there are few Iranian missiles, the ratio is lower than 1 to 1 for larger barrages.
And that’s without getting into the thing about multiple warhead missiles that can release 50+ or 80+ warheads, I forgot exactly how many, at a target from very high up, before interceptors were launched, meaning the empire would need at least 100/150+ interceptors in such cases.
You try to intercept a small number of them that might hit important targets
A huge percentage of Iranian missiles seem to hit important targets, so that doesn’t really matter here.
I could easily see a reality where for every 100 missiles/drones that Iran shoots, the Zionists or Americans only shoot 3 interceptors in response.
That’s one of the furthest things from reality I’ve heard in months.
I don’t think even the Ukraine regime would be saying numbers that far from the truth. wow…
Likely a mixture of overconfidence and giving the MIC more money from selling missiles.
