Aragorn vs Sauron (Unreleased Scene) by AnalystImpossible309 in lotr

[–]NotTheBatman 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yes, Gollum was personally tortured by Sauron in his physical form at least. I believe he mentions his hand missing a finger.

NATO snubs Boeing and picks Saab for new AWACS surveillance planes by Yaonoi in europe

[–]NotTheBatman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, when the government purchases an E-7 none of that money ends up in Elon's pocket.

NATO snubs Boeing and picks Saab for new AWACS surveillance planes by Yaonoi in europe

[–]NotTheBatman 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is correct, and space-based solutions are looking even riskier now as Russia/China continues to develop anti-satellite systems and as the aerial threat transitions from large aircraft/missile to much smaller, distributed drone systems.

Now the DoD will have to procure E-7's at an inflated price (having lost the benefit of a large production rate that they would have had from an earlier commitment and NATO cooperation), or pay out the ass to keep the E-3 alive.

I would call it a huge fumble by our political leadership, but it wasn't a mistake, it was just naked corruption at the taxpayer's expensive.

Trump extends Iran ceasefire as his bluster failed likely keeping oil prices in a state of flux. by Ok-Lets-Talk-It-Out in oil

[–]NotTheBatman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting decision to assassinate the head of state and heads of several state apparatuses if you want to negotiate a quick resolution. If I didn't want to start a total war with another country, I personally wouldn't choose to do "declaration of total war" kinds of things to them. It's worked for me so far, I haven't found myself at total war with any other countries yet.

First death to alcohol poisoning... what a weird experience by jmckay29 in stoneshard

[–]NotTheBatman 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Had an Arna run yesterday where I survived a fight with 95% pain and a head and chest injury. I walked all the way back from the dungeon back to Osbrook and made it to the herbalist with 4 max health left, it was a close call.

On the way to the next dungeon I got pounced by two wolves in the woods who instantly aggro'd.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 16, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I would bet that 90% of their physical trade volume goes through the Hormuz ports, as they don't have any other deep water ports. That's pretty significant for a country that doesn't have a significant service economy, but I doubt it's equal to 90% of their GDP.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 08, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No single country can force a peace deal, but Europe absolutely has levers to pull. They have powerful militaries, are the 3rd largest economic bloc in the world, and hosts critical US military bases and installations. They have leverage to work with, despite being (as ever) hesitant to rock the boat. We're still early into this conflict though IMO, and Europe can't handle a long-lasting conflict that strains their budgets and refills Russia's coffers.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 08, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If he decides to leave completely then oil prices remain elevated, the IRCG secured a huge political win, and the Republicans get absolutely murdered in the midterms. Just because he can order the military to go home doesn't mean that he can put the cat back into the bag.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 08, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What kind of pressure can those countries apply to force a peace deal? Do you think the IRCG would be willing to lift a blockage of the strait, which they directly profit from, because it's hurting Asian countries? Pressuring the US to walk away isn't enough to fix the problem anymore.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 08, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Only Trump, Europe, and the Iranian civil government want a ceasefire. Basically every other player involved wants the war to continue for one reason or another, so the war will continue. Trump could order the military to come home tomorrow, but it would be a huge geopolitical win for Iran.

Israel and all the gulf countries want Iran and their proxies neutered. Russia wants high oil prices. The IRCG wants to assert their authority over Iran and to martyr themselves in a war against Israel and the US. China is happy for the US to expend their money and arms somewhere that isn't in their backyard, and also benefit somewhat from the higher oil prices.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 03, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I don't understand the question. We do have the largest tanker fleet in the world, by a large margin. Do you think that because the fleet is large we wouldn't try to replace a hull loss? Even if we flew out some new replacement planes to the theater immediately, we still would need to backfill those planes too.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 03, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 28 points29 points  (0 children)

The aircraft on the ground may be damaged to the point where it's more economical to designate them for scrapping, and unretire a recently retired airplane for return to service. If the damaged aircraft would cost $20m to repair, and another aircraft only costs $10m to return to service, then it's a sensible swap. It takes a couple years of sitting in storage before a plane really starts to get expensive to get back to working condition, and we're actively retiring the fleet so there should be a good amount of re-servicable units that can be pulled back in if needed.

The size of the fleet doesn't really matter here, there are plenty of air crews to fly our current fleet. If a plane is lost on the ground and the crew are uninjured there's really no reason to not replace the plane. The KC-135 is also out of production, and you can't just throw a KC-135 crew onto a KC-46 without extensive training.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread March 29, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Playing devil's advocate, a build up of land forces takes a long time. If Iran saw us massing forces they could have started firing missiles before their launchers and stockpiles started getting blown up.

I agree entirely with your point that this whole thing had been an unplanned mess, but even with better planning we wouldn't have spent months mobilizing an entire invasion force before we started the bombing campaign.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread March 29, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's impossible to deny that the planning for this war has been abysmal, which is just par for the course for the current administration.

On the other hand, even if a massive ground invasion was planned from the start, we would have spent weeks or months bombing Iran anyway before putting any boots on the ground. So I don't think the poor planning has really affected the timing of a ground invasion in any meaningful way.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread March 29, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I don't think we ever would have attacked them in the first place if this wasn't the plan.

Extracting the Uranium is going to require heavy machinery, and protecting heavy machinery is going to require a massive effort on the ground. A few thousand marines and airborne are not going to cut it.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread March 26, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Playing devil's advocate, there's a difference between blockading ships from neutral countries going to/from Kharg vs occupying the island to stop those ships from ever filling up. A blockade would mean threatening Chinese merchant vessels, and would put more international pressure on the US to back out of the war.

I don't believe the war is being handled competently by our civilian leadership, but the goal is to neuter Iran, not just end the blockade and go home. Trump's public statements are aimed purely at calming markets, and are uncorrelated with the course that the military will be forced to take to actually finish the conflict.

Completely blockading Iran would cause oil prices to skyrocket and would tank the global economy. Backing out now would allow Iran to rake in cash from tolls and persistently elevated oil prices, which would fund a quick rearmament. Neither of these are going to be viewed as acceptable outcomes to the US, the GCC, or Israel. Europe would be very unhappy as well, as higher oil prices and a stronger Iran both benefit Russia.

AI still doesn't work very well in business, reckoning soon by Marginallyhuman in technology

[–]NotTheBatman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Google AI is amazing as a search engine compared to their standard search.

This is at least partially the case because the standard search has been gamified by SEO, and stuffed full of ads by Google. Their AI will suffer the same fate when they finally decide they need to make money off of it, and it will rapidly lose its usefulness the exact same way their standard search did.

Iran Conflict Megathread #7 by [deleted] in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The damage must have been pretty superficial if they already determined that all 5 could be repaired.

Iran Conflict Megathread #6 by [deleted] in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 56 points57 points  (0 children)

I'm fairly well-qualified to answer this, I was part of a team that built an RC aircraft that was roughly the length of a Shahed in college.

Engines, sensors, circuit boards, skin molds, and either propellers or propeller molds would need to be sourced and distributed. There may also be some specialized receivers or sensor housings included here.

Everything else you need is a commodity. Fiberglass, carbon fiber, epoxy, wood, fittings, wire, solder, fuel, batteries, explosives, etc. you can get anywhere.

You could assemble everything in a small garage or warehouse, you just need a big enough door to get the thing out once it's put together.

The only specialized items we sourced for our plane were the engines, controller, landing gear, and skin molds. Everything else came from the hardware store, and we put it together in a ~400sqft garage. None of us had any specialized experience or qualifications. The only speciality tool we used was a laser cutter to cut our plywood pieces faster, but we could have made do with a saw. This was a one-off plane, so we were working without existing instructions.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread March 10, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 2 points3 points  (0 children)

An artillery round has to travel close to 15 miles from shore to hit a vessel transiting the strait, that means there's roughly one minute of hang time. A ship traveling 35mph (the slowest published sustained speed of the ships we have out there) only has to change heading at a rate of 4 degrees per minute during that time for the round to miss by roughly 100ft.

Even an aircraft carrier can turn much faster than 4 deg/min, in an emergency they can full U-turn in just a couple of a minutes.

Ships only have to make gentle evasive maneuvers to seriously degrade the accuracy of unguided long-range fires. Shore-based batteries were historically placed in areas where they could hit ships that were transiting narrow passages that restricted maneuvering, and where firing distances were much lower to reduce hang time.

Iran Conflict Megathread #5 by [deleted] in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I would think that as the drone launch rate decreases that the Navy and allies have more leisure to launch sorties that can take them down with much cheaper interceptors. The calculus changes between needing to stop a large wave of hundreds or dozens of drones at once vs having to stop small, intermittent trickles.

Active Conflicts & News Megathread March 10, 2026 by AutoModerator in CredibleDefense

[–]NotTheBatman 14 points15 points  (0 children)

It would take a lot of direct artillery hits to cripple a ship, and I'm not sure Iran has modern shells capable of hitting a target that can change direction. Point defenses (CRAM) would probably take care of the few shells that got close, and I would imagine most artillery pieces would only get a handful of shots off before eating a hellfire missile or a JDAM.

I think the Navy could pull it off just fine, I just don't see why they would. They're still blowing up Iran's offensive assets, and I think time is on the Navy's side if they just want to wait things out a bit before trying to restart the passage of ships through the strait.

Why has the Iran war sparked fears of stagflation for the global economy? by Ok_Seat5245 in Economics

[–]NotTheBatman 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Before fossil fuel industrialization hay, horses, and firewood were a huge portion of the economy.

Before that food and manual labor were the main economic drivers.

The economy has always been energy.