this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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[–] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"Repairing" major aircraft isn't like fixing a dent on a sedan. A single nick in a critical zone triggers full disassembly, part-by-part inspection, and replacement. Five KC-135s took direct hits from explosives. That they aren't "dust" is irrelevant. Structural integrity is compromised. Return to service means months or more of labor, scarce parts, and diverted maintenance capacity as they are fully dismantled, inspected and then possibly repaired.

Then there's the cost exchange. Iranian ballistic missiles run roughly $1-2 million to produce. A KC-135 is ~$80 million adjusted for inflation. Five tankers is ~$400 million in assets, not counting wasted crew training during operational downtime and the repair costs. When one side trades cheap, mass-produced munitions for high-value, hard-to-replace platforms, that's clearly valuable.

And let's be real about US "competence." They lost a $1.1 billion radar to a Shahed drone. A Black Hawk and an advanced anti-drone radar taken out by FPV strikes. The Strait closed while they scrambled. An F-35 forced back for repairs after taking a hit from an old IR-tube missile. This campaign has been a comedy of errors.

Iran isn't full of military geniuses. But they're showing clear competency: splitting command into cells to blunt decapitation strikes, prioritizing radar and C4ISR first, then shifting to high-value enablers like tankers. They understand the material conditions. The US is learning, expensively once again, that overwhelming cost and complexity is a vulnerability.

Also authoritarian is meaningless pejorative.

[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In addition, MAGA replaced the best high-ranking US military officers with their "yes" people. Guess who else did that after the 1939 Polish Campaign, which led to repeated strategic failures across the board, and that is why the Allies did not make an attempt to remove him. I'm still trying to grasp how a crucial aircraft carrier can be removed from a combat theater based on a laundry room fire!?!?