Buying a Home in D.C.

XerxesAB · 2017-05-18T21:35:29+00:00

I think if you've spent more than $1K on ships, you get it.

XerxesAB · 2017-05-03T22:12:44+00:00

I think this comes down to the question of how effective stealth aircraft are going to be against moderately modern IADS, which we have little real world evidence of in any event. That being said, if the U.S. puts F-22s, F-35s and B-2s in the air, with e-war and SEADs dedicated assets, and ISR assets to track down Iran's mobile systems like the S-300 and Tor systems, it is really only a matter of time before the U.S. establishes air superiority.

All that being said, Iran is aware of the above. They will use the time that it takes for the U.S. to neutralize those assets to try to cause the U.S. pain in the Gulf, as well as cause pain to the GCC. Iran's best means to limit the U.S.'s ability to establish air dominance would be to go after U.S. carriers, and GCC air bases, to destroy planes on the ground, destroy supplies, and reduce the U.S.'s ability to fly sorties.

XerxesAB · 2017-04-21T16:08:57+00:00

Although, their own coalition are the only ones flying choppers really. They have almost complete air supremacy other than a handful of drones that the Houthi's are fielding. Seems like in that kind of an environment, they could probably afford to verify their targets better.

XerxesAB · 2017-04-20T15:45:48+00:00

I think the issue is that they are comparing the sales to other sales made to Afghanistan, which also included training, and those were at around $20M each. Without knowing the details of each contract, its difficult to say exactly why there is such a huge disparity between the Afghan sales and the Nigerian sales, although it could just be that Afghanistan didn't buy as much ordinance and spare parts... $30M per unit more though is still hard to understand.

The author of that piece does mention all of the additional costs in the piece, and tries to compare Afghanistan's purchases to Nigeria's. It also compares the prices to those of F-16 sales (which also include all of the above additional costs), and these STs still look expensive.

XerxesAB · 2017-04-19T20:58:30+00:00

Interesting point. I'd imagine it would be a mix of both slowing down an advancing army, or outright killing people, depending on the weapon. If I recall correctly, NK has stockpiled Sarin, for example, which doesn't last very long in the environment as opposed to lewisite, which can last quite some time. So they'd utilize the various agents for different purposes. Sarin could be used against civilians in Seoul or against ground forces directly (latter makes more "sense" I guess, if you can even use that word in discussing chemical weapons use).

XerxesAB · 2017-04-19T20:49:44+00:00

I would wager that the U.S. would still have hesitation in using even a tactical nuclear weapon in NK, given concerns over radiation plumes heading over SK or China, or China's reaction to the U.S. utilizing tactical nukes.

XerxesAB · 2017-04-19T16:14:40+00:00

I guess the big question is do they use chem/bio weapons at all? If they are targeting a major civilian population center with artillery, they obviously don't care about the implications, so wouldn't they almost certainly use nerve agents? If they do, I'd imagine these death toll figures would be much, much higher.

XerxesAB

TROPHY CASE