Unfortunately both options dox me, as there is no person on earth worse at MS paint than me.
Shrike
18hr ago
Want to spruce up your online appearance? Worried the mods will ban you for having a confusing username? Would like to set yourself apart from the boring grey persona but can't afford to pay your second-most-favorite Twitter artist to create a mediocre likeness of you?
Well, good news, you too can have a passable pfp for free. That's right, we've finally found something we can all agree AI is actually pretty good at.
I think I am perhaps somewhat more demanding than the average AI image generation user (and, I assure you, for entirely different reasons than most people who are demanding of AI art) but one thing I've been impressed with is their ability to generate profile pictures. I assume this is because they were trained on a million of them. You can get them to add colored borders, if you like, or similar effects. You can even get them to use specific color hex codes. I've also gotten good results getting them to incorporate other things into their art, such as specific symbols.
Consider my pfp, which I think is a little bit appealing (and perhaps more importantly distinguishes me from several other fine members of this forum who have usernames that begin with "S' and happen to be roughly as long). Copilot did most of the work. Here's my prompt:
Please generate me an artistic pfp in the shape of a bird, specifically a loggerhead shrike.
This probably isn't news to anyone here, but there are still lots of people (including up until yesterday, me) who don't have unique pfps and I find image generation fun, so...check it out if you have five minutes and the default Motte profile picture.
Shrike
19hr ago
Congrats! That certainly is fun. May you have many more happy years.
Here's what I said to the last Motter who mentioned he was getting married, and since nothing's happened to cause me to reconsider in the 24 hours since, I still stand by it:
The advice that I always give people is that most of marriage is actually "roommate stuff." Be a good roommate, help with the dishes or laundry or whatever, keep your spouse informed of what your plans are and a lot of the other stuff will go smoothly.
I guess the other thing I would say is don't hedge, go all-in - be honest, invite honesty, be a good listener and understand that sometimes you will do best not to take things personally. And don't underestimate the value of physical intimacy as something that will keep a marriage sustained. Genuinely put the other party first, not because you are a doormat (and you may need to hold them accountable because you are seeking their good) but because you love them and want what is best for them.
God bless!
Shrike
1d ago
Au contraire - the shahed drone is itself one of these drones.
I explained very specifically why I think this is incorrect, or at least misleading.
Since I wrote a rather large comment, I will recap:
- Shahed drones are very vulnerable to gunfire, which is cheap. (I assure you the US military has lots of guns).
- The US military has now acquired and used very cheap laser-guided rockets, which are within the ballpark range of the cost of a Shahed, specifically for using against drones like the Shahed.
If you're going to discuss this stuff with me on here, please do me the courtesy of reading what I write (more or less). And if you're going to disagree with me, please do me the courtesy of explaining why, so that I can learn something new.
Shrike
1d ago
Woah woah woah woah woah, let's all be reasonable here, I've taken steps to prevent this from happening again.
(I mean I got a new pfp, not that I cut Shakes' internet cables.)
Shrike
1d ago
war is bad.
Sure, agreed.
But historically winning a war permanently is much more costly than fighting a war and then hammering out a peace that ends up being a breather. Periodic warfare is a historical norm. And the last time we decided "you know what, we're not doing that again" we (or at least our allies, if you want a narrower definition of "we") ethnically cleansed the losers and then we militarily occupied them for an indefinite period of time. And it's paid off for seventy years and counting.
So are you saying that should be our victory condition in all wars? Or do you think fighting smaller wars that kick the can down the road is acceptable ever?
You've gone from "We totally won, Iran is over, this was worth it!" to "What's the big deal if periodically bombing Iran is just something we do now?"
Are you confusing me with my twin?
Shrike
1d ago
I guess the one other thing I would say is that life can be hard and just because life can be hard when you are married doesn't mean you've screwed up your marriage or something, or that things will be that way forever. It sounds like you've found a great woman and you know it, and you're committed to her, so I'm confident that you will do what it takes. The fact that you both still feel that way is a great sign. I'm sure that in ten years you'll love her just as much (and probably appreciate her more).
Shrike
1d ago
if we are back here again in a couple of years, then what was the point?
Why is periodic warfare not an acceptable outcome here?
I'm not even particularly interested in this question because of this whole Iran War thing (IMHO it's too soon to tell, I will probably have more opinions when the dust settles but right now I think I have a lot of the exact same concerns you do about this specific conflict) but I see this very common way of thinking everywhere, as if wars are pointless unless you forever and always solve all of the problems that led them to begin. Perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration, and it's not what you said, but I think you see my point.
I am wary of this thinking because it seems to me it was part of what drove GWOT-era maximalism. Now, maybe that's true! But it seems like an unconsidered assumption and I am interested in why it exists and if it is defensible.
Shrike
1d ago
especially with drones that cost significantly less to manufacture than the interceptor missiles used to shoot them down
Such drones do not exist, and frankly never really existed.
First off, small drones like DJ quadcopters are a non-factor here (outside of sneak attacks) because they can't travel far enough. So we're looking at cruise missiles (which is what a Shahed really is). The smaller variants (like the 131) aren't serviceable for our purpose because they can't reach, so we're looking at a 136 with long range. Now we can either rely on remote control via satcom (which is going to be vulnerable to jamming) or we can turn them loose with a missile seekerhead.
I don't consider myself exactly an expert in how easy it would be to jam them, but I think possibly it's "really freakin' easy" because GPS jamming doesn't seem to be very hard and even just GPS jamming will likely make cuing a Shahed onto a target difficult because the operator will get lost. Of course, if we're okay accepting the payload penalty and cost increase, we can try to harden, possibly unsuccessfully, against this.
Or you can put an antiship missile seekerhead on it. But you're going to need a sophisticated seekerhead because if you just have a cheap one that says "kill big thing" you're just going to kill 10,000 radar reflectors or get decoyed by ECM. So now you've put the seekhead from a high-performance missile into a platform that has great range but very poor terminal characteristics (by which I mean they are slow and probably not particularly difficult to shoot down).
And you have another problem, which is that your warhead is not that big - 100 pounds, I think Russia put a 200 pound warhead on theirs, presumably at the expense of range. This is not very big for hitting a ship. The Exocet has a warhead of 350 pounds (and is supersonic), the Harpoon is subsonic and has a nearly 500 pound warhead. The Naval Strike Missile has a 260 pound warhead, which is closer in size, but it relies on being able to pick the point of impact on a target. So in order to replicate this with a Shahed, we're adding an artificial intelligence capability (or hoping that our operator is pretty nimble and good at figuring out the weak point on a massive container ship).
Either way, you've basically made an antiship missile, because you've spent the time and money hardening it against defenses and making it smart. But it doesn't have the terminal performance that helps antiship missiles survive CIWS, so you've made a crappy one. You've just spent, oh, let's say 25% of the cost of a real antiship missile and now you've gotten immediately shot down by a crappy gun someone strapped to the deck of a cargo vessel because Shaheds are actually really easy to shoot down (if you get on Twitter you can watch the Ukrainians shoot them down with like everything except one of those joke guns that, when fired, pops a little flag out and says BANG! This is why I say that "drones cheaper than missiles used to shoot them down" have never really existed, any of the cheap drones can be shot down cheaply by air defenses from the Second World War and much more easily with modern kit.)
The main problem with shooting down Shaheds with guns is that the universe of spaces that can be hit with Shaheds is usually bigger than the universe of spaces that can be defended with guns, and the engagement geometry of hitting low-flying Shaheds with point defense can be tricky. In some ways it is much easier to defend ships because
- A ship is a nice little point, you don't have to try to figure out where the enemy is going to hit you, and
- The ocean is flat. You do have to deal with radar clutter from the ocean surface and possibly waves tossing the boat about, though.
On top of that, the US military very quickly adapted cheap ($20,000 - $30,000, likely competitive with the Shahed, possibly much cheaper now that we've adapted the Shahed into an anti-shipping role) laser-guided rocket that is very good at shooting down Shaheds. I'm sure the Japanese can strap these onto F-2s (and probably lots of other aircraft, including trainers) to quickly cover large amounts of airspace and intercept the Shaheds before they arrive. And they have a larger and, I think, better AWACS force than Russia (about two dozen AWACS aircraft, including modern E-2s with an AESA array). It is hard to detect low-flying drones against ground clutter, but the E-2 is basically going to be one of the best platforms for finding the little buggers.
Finally, to circle back to the thing I mentioned with regard to terminal performance, the slow speed of the Shahed is a huge problem for interdicting ships. A ballistic missile will cross from China to the Pacific in what, 15 minutes? A ship going 20 knots will go 5nm in that time. A Shahed travels at about 115 miles per hour. You're looking at like an eight hour flight time, during which the ship will have traveled more than a hundred miles. Even if you're trying to hit a stationary vessel at dock, a RO-RO or self-discharger can disgorge a lot of material, and then depart or relocate in half that time.
None of this is to deny your point about insurance, although it is likely that insurance would go completely insane just by declaring the area a no-go zone; the Japanese government would likely have to requisition/purchase shipping or subsidize insurance. Similarly, it's undoubtedly true that China is a major industrial power. I am far from convinced that this would be a good way to wage an anti-shipping campaign, but China has a ton of industry, so even if it is the worst possible way to wage an anti-shipping campaign, they might be able to make it work!
It's also not to deny that the Shahed is a good weapon. It is! Particularly against fixed ground targets, and particularly when you can launch large numbers of them and overwhelm air defenses, and most particularly if you can use them as part of a strategy rather than a substitute for one. But if you try to turn it into a reliable antiship missile against distant, well-defended targets you're either introducing cost creep per weapon or you are accepting much less lethality and reliability, which means more missiles per target, which means higher cost again. (If you're inclined to doubt me on this consider that, from what I can tell, the Houthis did not manage to do any serious damage with drones; the ships they sank were hit with a ballistic missiles or USVs.)
My basic point here is that there's a reason that Shaheds have supplemented more conventional weapons systems like ballistic and antiship missiles, rather than replacing them. And similarly that war is hard.
I'm not familiar with the concept of "perfect sphere world"
I just mean a world where everything is nice and mathematical, instead of having to deal with messy geopolitics.
If the US puts together a force capable of challenging China, they have to abandon Europe, Israel and the Middle East
If the US fleet and the Chinese fleet fought on an infinite featureless plain the US fleet would win. Everybody knows this. The question everyone is asking is if the United States can prevent China from seizing an island about a hundred miles away from their own territory when the US can bring maybe a third of its fleet to bear and the Chinese have every single advantage of geography. It's possible that the answer is "no" but the fact that that is the question should tell you a lot about the relative power of the two countries. I think it's a war the US could lose but I think the people who tell you it's a war the Chinese would easily win are, well, overly-optimistic.
Shrike
2d ago
How would China interdict traffic to their rear?
There are a few ways. Here's how I see it:
-
Ballistic missiles. Japan has a limited number of ASBMs and would need to guide them via satellite, unless they pushed back Japan's air defense coverage quite a ways and got radar aircraft operating over, say, the sea of Japan. Even then I am not sure if radar would be able to reliably ID ships versus, let's say, very large radar reflectors towed by small boats (not something you want to launch missiles at). Imaging satellites and SAR satellites are nice for this, as long as it doesn't rain or nobody lasers them/jams them to blind them or shoots them down (Japan has SM-3s). So basically, China using its limited stockpile of ballistic missiles on transiting cargo vessels would be possible but annoying, and Japan has hard-kill (Standards, to shoot down the missiles and/or targeting satellites) and plausibly soft-kill (radar jammers and decoys, lasers, cyber, etc.) to interfere with the kill chain. China would also plausibly run out of missiles before Japan ran out of ships.
-
Submarines. Chinese submarines would need to either take a long detour or pass through the (Japanese-controlled) island chain to break out into the ocean and intercept convoys. And Chinese submarines aren't supposed to be the quietest – I would still assume they are pretty troublesome, though. One issue with submarines, generally, though is that they are louder when they are faster. So lurking in chokepoints is ideal. But it's hard to lurk in chokepoints right next to enemy territory. Japan can rigorously patrol an area around their ports, and Japan has a lot of ports and Chinese submarines would not necessarily know which ones were slated to receive cargo. I think submarines could be effective once they got on station, but it's not risk-free.
(This is why it's very annoying to be e.g. China fighting a joint coalition of the US, Australia, Japan etc. – if the US decides to blockade Malacca, you've got to sail out there and fight them. Whereas if you want to blockade Japan or Taiwan, you've also got to sail out there and fight them.)
-
Surface ships/carrier aircraft. This has the same problem as the submarines except for instead of being sneaky and underwater you are not so sneaky and very much above the water. It would be nice if China could get a carrier battle group out in the Pacific to interdict trade (setting aside the diplomatic implications of course) but again you're either detouring around Taiwan or you are forcing your way through the island chain in the face of Japanese shore batteries, airstrikes, submarines etc. You would be wary of doing this for the same reason that the US is wary of parking a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf right now. And this is all really annoying because, again, any path you take to get out into the Japanese rear with a carrier battle group passes under the nose of Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, etc. not to mention US spy satellites. In a world of perfect spheres where it's just Japan versus China this might not matter but in the real world with information-sharing (and Twitter posting) this might mean Japan screws up your entire day with a submarine. And even if they don't then you might still need to defeat their (large) navy, possibly supported by shore-based aviation, in a surface battle.
-
Airstrikes from shore. If this is Perfect Sphere World, the North Koreans and Russians aren't helping you out, which means their airspace is closed to you (this might also prevent you from using your SRBM arsenal against Japan without coming off as very rude as well, incidentally), so instead of fighting over the Sea of Japan you're basically flying out from Shanghai or Qingdao to try to interdict shipping in Tokyo or Sendai.
You will have trouble doing this with bombs from tactical aircraft. The J-16 is a big bird, the J-20, too, but Tokyo - Shanghai is about a 1000 miles and that's if you fly right over Japan and its associated air defenses. The J-16 probably has a combat radius of, like, 600nm miles (it will depend a bit on payload; anti-ship missiles are pretty heavy) - although in theory you could refuel it. Google suggests the J-20 has somewhere in the ballpark of twice that, so you might could fly a J-20 around and bomb ships in Tokyo harbor without flying right over the entirety of Japan, but you're still going to be right on top of Japanese air defenses and fighter/interceptors, who will be operating well within their operational range (whereas you will not be). That matters a lot since your aircraft will have much less time for combat engagements and will be putting in a lot more hours to fly fewer sorties, whereas the JASDF will be able to put up more, shorter sorties – in effect they will be fighting more efficiently. You asked about their air defense – they have more than 300 fighter aircraft (and two aircraft carriers) plus ground-based defenses and their own navy, which as we said might be running convoy duty. So actually carrying out attacks will not be trivial.
You also have your strategic bomber force. You can send bomber raids, escorting them with the J-20s and J-16s, and try to intercept the cargo convoys with antiship missiles – again, though, you have to find them, and that means either turning on the old radar (which can tell everyone that you are there and invite them to shoot you in the face) or find them with EO/IR sensors (which is fine but probably also means you're running the gauntlet of getting spotted by their EO/IR sensors). This is another pretty decent way of overcoming defended convoys as long as you're comfortable with the risk of operating under the threat of Japanese fighter coverage.
I think in Sphere World the Chinese can probably win this. Of course in Sphere World China could probably just nuke Japan, but setting that aside, we're just going to try to destroy as many Japanese fighters on the ground with ballistic missiles as we can and then throw every airplane we have into SEAD/DEAD/CAP until we grind them down and then we are going to do bomber raids out in the Pacific against their fleets until they are sunk and then we will just bomb every ship approaching Japan unopposed. We can combine this with amphibious attacks on the island chain and then, once we've punched a hole in that, send our CBG into the Pacific and screen for their submarines with a dozen frigates. A few ships might get through this but it would probably succeed in shutting down the bulk of trade in a relatively short time.
Now, if this plan seems familiar, it's because it would be similar to the US air campaign against Iran (complete with possibly invading islands and such), except that the US air force is better and larger than that of the Chinese, and the Japanese air force and air defenses navy are better and newer and more numerous than those of the Iranians. In non-sphere world, even if the US was for some reason not going to defend Japan, if China was trying to do it without facing unacceptably high losses you can see how they might actually choke on it. If The Big One happens I think China is going to be extremely busy with the naval target set and might not bother to launch a dedicated anti-shipping campaign (although the mere threat of one might be effective enough in many cases).
But possibly I am missing some obvious options here.
Shrike
2d ago
Ha! I would not say that there's not a qualitative difference but I think being spouses is much easier if you are also friends.
Shrike
2d ago
Congratulations!
The advice that I always give people is that most of marriage is actually "roommate stuff." Be a good roommate, help with the dishes or laundry or whatever, keep your spouse informed of what your plans are and a lot of the other stuff will go smoothly.
I guess the other thing I would say is don't hedge, go all-in - be honest, invite honesty, be a good listener and understand that sometimes you will do best not to take things personally. And don't underestimate the value of physical intimacy as something that will keep a marriage sustained. Genuinely put the other party first, not because you are a doormat (and you may need to hold them accountable because you are seeking their good) but because you love them and want what is best for them.
I've been married for about a decade and I've been very happy. My wife and I have stuck to the above and neither of us have "felt" any sort of post-honeymoon come down. If anything we've grown and gotten better as a team. And I think you can do the same.
God bless!
Shrike
2d ago
Good point! Have we tried AI-powered blockchain oil bonds? I don't think the Iranian ballistic missiles will be any match for that.
Shrike
2d ago
The actual play here instead of building air defenses is to put the pipeline inside of another, larger, armored pipeline. This larger pipeline is then disguised as one of those big HVAC hoses, making it much harder for Iran to figure out where to aim their ballistic missiles.
But that's actually just a decoy pipeline: the real pipeline doesn't exist because you've replaced the outdated concept of "selling oil" with the new, information-age technology. Now you can simply sell bonds assuring the buyer that they own the oil, which is safely in the ground in Saudi Arabia.
As an added bonus, this is tremendous for the environment.
Shrike
3d ago
Yes, it's absolutely true that Japan versus China wouldn't be much of a contest.
But note that part of the Chinese situation is that they are locked "behind the first island chain" which creates chokepoints. Japan doesn't have the same weakness because their back is to the Pacific.
Shrike
3d ago
Japan could probably mine the SCS pretty easily with their fleet of submarines, which might close it to international traffic based on the risk profiles we've seen.
They have a pretty large submarine fleet incidentally, nearly as many AIP submarines as China does, and a competitive production rate.
Shrike
3d ago
The NSA probably, from time to time, has discussions with the devs of the relevant software on the subject of when to patch unknown-to-the-public vulnerabilities.
Of course, to your point about their work with the DOW, it's quite likely that Anthropic is well aware of this because they are one of the relevant organizations.
But if not, the thought of them turning loose MYTHOS and it immediately turning around and blowing up the NSA's zero-day horde is extremely funny. And since apparently this was automated and allegedly submitted a large number of such patches, it seems pretty plausible this in fact occurred.
Shrike
3d ago
Shrike
3d ago
the whole military industrial complex rot that infests the US military doesn't really exist over tere.
I don't think this is quite true.
It does not follow, of course, that just because the China MIC has serious corruption issues that their stuff doesn't work. But I think imagining the Chinese as blessedly serious and entirely above all the petty squabbles in the US of A is grass-is-greener thinking.
Shrike
3d ago
I have not seen any evidence at all that American bombers can operate over Iran without resorting to standoff ammunition (or well, getting shut down).
Shrike
4d ago
There’s the video of a helicopter crashing down
The only video I have seen shows a helicopter trailing smoke. Please link to a video of a helicopter crashing.
the propellers in one photo are bent as if they crashed while in use
My understanding is that the propellers in question are composite blades, which would have snapped in a crash. They melted due to fire.
Iranian news showed a skull in the wreckage
This was likely the wreckage of a car and Fars pulled the image and said they were going to investigate its authenticity.
The US government can certainly cover things up (although it's hard to cover up the deaths of servicemembers) but your post is not a good reason to believe they are doing so in this case.
Shrike
4d ago
therefore a single mission with US planes in Iranian airspace resulting in the downing over 5+ manned aircraft demonstrates "localized air superiority"?
This is all incorrect, or at least very sloppy. It was a single operation but it was not a single mission in the sense that it was not a single CSAR mission; there were at least three (one to recover the pilot, one to recover the WSO, one to recover the team that went to recover the WSO) and each one of those single missions involved multiple airframes.
Similarly, 1 manned aircraft was "downed" by Iranian air defenses during this operation. Three or four were abandoned on the ground and destroyed in US airstrikes.
Finally, I provided you with other evidence that US aircraft were over Iranian airspace in other options, dropping mines and JDAMs. I don't know that that is enough to establish that US aircraft are over Iranian soil "constantly" any more than pictures of Russian birds are but it does suggest that they are over parts of Iranian soil consistently.
You think this is a contradiction? Uh, okay. Well that's enough of that.
I mean – you wanted video footage, you got video footage? Either way, I think it demonstrates localized air superiority (if we grant that air superiority includes superiority over ground assets and not just the enemy air force; see my digression above!) that they were able to do it and succeed in their mission, yes.
I think it would be better to use the real definition of air superiority, but you've been avoiding that. I'd be happy to find another working definition we can agree on. Or for you to present a historical analogue (including in Ukraine) where air superiority has been achieved in a war with another comparable power that shows the present operations of the US in an unflattering light (you've mentioned the Russian war in Ukraine but the Russians lost aircraft constantly in the first month of the war and even Hostomel, which I honestly think was very impressive and almost worked, still resulted in more Russian manned aircraft losses to air defenses than this rescue operation).
I don't use mobile, but you are correct that the images on here are mostly hard to make out unless you go to the person's page.
Which is okay. All I really need is have an unusual blur of color.
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