undefined | Better HN

0 pointsImPostingOnHN1mo ago0 comments

You can't deny access to a coast that large with carpet bombing, especially in a mountainous terrain. It has never worked. You'd need tens to hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground to do that.

If you wanted to try it with bombs, it would take continual re-dropping of hundreds of thousands of bombs every few hours to cover (1600km * 8km) to keep people out, even assuming they have 0 shelter or cover.

0 comments

JumpCrisscross1mo ago

> can't deny access to a coast that large with carpet bombing, especially in a mountainous terrain. It has never worked. You'd need tens to hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground to do that

I think this is more an open question than “it has never worked.” Nobody has tried to area deny FPV-drone navigators. Bases on lines of sight and line channels, one could probably back out from transit paths to the places one would need to be to hit that target, and then ensure anything there is turned from psychology to biology before a critical moment. You couldn’t do this with smart munitions, and couldn’t along the entire Hormuz coast. But for critical junctures that our closest allies (minus Kuwait) need to export? The math seems feasible, if fundamentally untackled.

ImPostingOnHNOP1mo ago

> I think this is more an open question than “it has never worked.”

I don't think so – we were talking about continually carpet bombing Iran to continually deny them access to a 1600km-long coastline. That simply has never worked. Not in Iran, not elsewhere to my knowledge.

> Bases on lines of sight and line channels, one could probably back out from transit paths to the places one would need to be to hit that target

That describes pretty much anywhere in the 7000+ square kilometers we're talking about. A drone doesn't need a runway. Anywhere you can fit a large pickup truck, you can launch a Shaheed drone.

> Nobody has tried to area deny FPV-drone navigators.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Deny the area to Iran's FPV drones? If so, how? Use FPV drones to deny the area? If so, how? We're talking about continually patrolling 7,000+ square kilometers. The USA has never fielded such a system, and has no publicly known capabilities to do so.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse