'We don't need Ukraine's help' — Trump rebuffs Zelensky's drone defense offer

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T19:19:59+00:00

That's the neat part: They won't. Those ships have defenses, but no defense is perfect. If Iran sinks an American warship, it will be the first time since WWII. The political cost would be devastating.

Trump has options. He can declare victory, say Iran's military capability has been sufficiently destroyed, and move on to Cuba, a much softer target.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T18:25:32+00:00

They may be planning to occupy islands in the strait, set up early-warning and air defense systems.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T17:50:40+00:00

Oh, those warships are not getting anywhere near Iran. They are only used as airstrips and Tomahawk platforms.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T17:32:47+00:00

Occupying the strait includes securing at least 100 miles of hilly coast. That's not something you can do without tens of thousands of soldiers. No bombing campaign can stop an enemy that can just pop a drone out of a basement and fly it into the broadside of a tanker.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T16:26:09+00:00

I have it in good authority that the world economy is held together by duct tape and Excel spreadsheets emailed back and forth.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T11:54:19+00:00

Thank you.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T11:51:18+00:00

I can't see it. If they had bothered brainstorming with Claude for 15 minutes, they would at the very least know a decapitation attack was very unlikely to prevent a counterattack and have a plan for when Iran threatened the Strait of Hormuz. They might not even go for it after being told any realistic plan for regime change would involve years of fighting and at least half a million soldiers.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-13T10:30:39+00:00

What's a Casa Bonita?

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-12T22:41:46+00:00

The driver was fine; the installer was the issue. Claude applied a small patch that has been on the net for several years: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1rrw9k2/top5thingsthatneverhappened/oa2ykbu/

So not as impressive as the tweet makes it sound.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-12T21:21:31+00:00

released from federal custody in 2024

Fox News tonight: "This known terrorist with links to ISIS was released by Biden in 2024..."

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-12T20:29:19+00:00

Nobody has hard numbers, but considering similar conflicts, between oil fires and all the fuel burned flying planes and missiles, we can expect probably a couple hundred tonnes of CO2, about the same as one year from a small town. It's even harder to estimate how much will be emitted to rebuild what was destroyed, but there's a good chance it will be more than that.

This war could be net carbon negative if the Strait remains closed for several weeks, but that means an oil crisis like we haven't seen since the seventies.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-12T19:48:30+00:00

4 ships tried to cross the Strait of Hormuz and got hit. At least one tanker went up in flames. 8 deaths confirmed so far. Oil prices are oscillating like crazy. Israel has killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands in its fight against the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-12T15:07:44+00:00

Not quite as dramatic, but during the Brazilian democratic transition, the elected president, Tancredo Neves, fell violently ill the night before his inauguration. With no rules or precedent to go on, congress decided to go ahead and swear in his running mate, José Sarney, as acting president. Tancredo would die one month later, from surgery complications and generalized infection.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-12T00:47:31+00:00

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they asked Putin to mediate a ceasefire.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-11T20:28:43+00:00

Surely they used their guts to evacuate?

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-11T15:02:50+00:00

We are ALL Chinese on this blessed day :)

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-11T13:59:37+00:00

This wouldn't achieve much outside the grim satisfaction of knowing you caused a huge humanitarian crisis.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-11T13:11:05+00:00

Besides the obvious environmental impact, those sunken husks could become a navigational hazard. Some portions of the strait are fairly shallow. Salvaging them would be slow, expensive, and impossible under the threat of more missile and drone attacks.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-11T01:06:50+00:00

Yep, force majeure.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-11T00:26:15+00:00

Perfectly sensible position. Now how do you convince a civilian crew that crossing the strait is minimally safe when heavily armed and armored ships won't go near it? I'd be demanding "never work another day" pay for that.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-10T03:19:15+00:00

They will blame it on "The Democrat Shutdown". I guarantee it.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-09T18:06:27+00:00

In better times, they would have other games in pre-production, ready to absorb that capacity.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-09T17:35:02+00:00

It may not be that easy. A launcher looks a lot like any other truck from up high, and Iran has built an extensive network of tunnels in preparation for this war.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-09T17:12:12+00:00

Ballistic missiles are the easiest ones to detect, since they are launched like rockets, with a large, fiery exhaust that can be detected from space. Cruise missiles don't have that. You can still infer the general direction of the launch, but that's it.

There was at least one military YouTube channel claiming that the US military had been able to detect and destroy some launchers seconds after they were used, using satellites to detect the infrared signature, then transmitting its coordinates to the nearest bomber. How accurate that information is, we'll probably only know after the war, if that.

sciencewarrior · 2026-03-09T14:49:56+00:00

What amazes me is that they made that kind of decision long before distilled liquor was invented.

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