Anyone who followed Iran a little bit knew that Iran was likely to close the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy knew that US bases anywhere near Iran and the Strait would have minimum use because the US can’t stop enough Iranian drones and missiles. The Navy also knew that this would put difficult logistic pressures on supplying carriers in a conflict that wasn’t real quick. Yet, there seems to have been completely inadequate preparation for this logistics. This is because the president was convinced by the Secretary of Defense, Israel, and his own foolishness that the Strait would not be closed and the conflict would be quick. The problems we are seeing are partly due to a lack of preparation for a long conflict, even though that was a likely outcome and the president should have known this.
The Trump administration has been ordering US military men and women to commit, or be involved in, war crimes and other illegal activity. It’s difficult for a regular military person to say no to an illegal order. They are expected to follow orders, and it’s hard for them to know if an order is illegal.
Drones are changing warfare, but they are not the super weapon that they sometimes seem to be. They work best in combination with a variety of weapons. It usually takes many drones to take out a tank.
In many situations, mortars are more effective than FPV drones.
FPV drones can’t fly far, can’t see well at night, don’t work well when it’s cloudy, are vulnerable to jamming, and have light payloads. Mortars are better in these respects. You can make a drone that doesn’t have these disadvantages, but at that point, you have an attritable weapon that is much more expensive than a mortar shell.
The US does not have enough servicing ships to keep US fighting ships supplied. This was okay when the US operated near land bases, but with Iranian missiles and drones making many US bases unusable, the US has trouble keeping its ships supplied.
The US does not have enough military ships either because the ships need time for repairs and the crews need time off, so the navy actually needs an extra ship or two for every two in military operations. While two are doing operations, one is in repairs and rest. War-level operations, including blockade, are 24/7 work that degrades sailors’ capabilities without rest.
The US has been putting heavy financial pressure on Iraq to crack down on Iraqi Iranian proxies who try to stop oil from flowing through pipelines through Iraq, bypassing Hormuz.
When it comes to all things politics and religious, but especially Israel-Palestine…people are prone to black and white thinking, as well as horrible evidence cherry picking, as well as blowing up evidence to be bigger than it is, and even citing evidence
The Trump administration keeps claiming how well they have degraded Iranian capabilities, but US bases keep getting hit. Iran isn’t going to surrender due to air strikes. The best way to win the war is a full land invasion, with the massive costs that that would entail.
Secretary of Defense Hegseth has been firing top military people based on whether he thinks their politics align with his. And, he is firing well respected people with great experience.
The first day of the war the US slaughtered Iranian girls in a girls school. This was hopefully a legitimate mistake, but, the US has the obligation to acknowledge what happened and explain it to the public. Instead, Hegseth and Trump refuse to talk about it.
Hegseth may have done his job well when he was in the military, but he did not have the experience to be Secretary of Defense. He also doesn’t have the personality to be Secretary of Defense. He had problems with alcohol, with his own finances, and regularly publicly spoke like a biased reactionary partisan hack who buys into many falsehoods and exaggerations often told by Trump and his supporters.