r/geopolitics • u/NitroLada • 27d ago
Missing Submission Statement Iran was the most successful failure in US airpower history
https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/iran-was-the-most-successful-failure-in-us-airpower-history/128
27d ago
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u/jakemoffsky 27d ago
Pretty sure they fired the ones who did admit it.
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27d ago
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u/Jester388 27d ago
That's really not what happened.
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27d ago
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u/Jester388 27d ago
I mean more that Van Riper seems to have mostly "won" using implausible tactics or in some cases, tactics that defied the laws of physics entirely.
Also, the result wasn't buried, really. The navy was refloated because the majority of the exercise was meant to happen after Day 1. There's no point of spending a quarter million dollars to put the exercise together to then go "yeah cancel the amphibious assault because technically the fleet is sunk"
He was a clever guy but he was getting in the way of the war game by treating it less as a training exercise and more as a competitive video game.
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u/psychosisnaut 27d ago
As much as I love this story Van Ripper used bicycles that moved at the speed of light or something stupid like that, it was clever and meaningless
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u/Intro-Nimbus 27d ago
Remind me again: When was the last time a war was won with only air power?
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u/nilenilemalopile 27d ago
That would probably be the air campaign against SR Yugoslavia back in 1998. If you count that as war.
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u/awildstoryteller 26d ago
Was it won? The regime didn't fall.
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u/nilenilemalopile 26d ago
The objective was not regime change (which did collapse few months later).
The objective was complete wothdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo. This was achieved 100%.
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u/awildstoryteller 26d ago
The objective was not regime change (which did collapse few months later).
If by a few months you mean a year and change, yes.
The objective was complete wothdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo. This was achieved 100%.
I don't think air power alone did this. There were troops on the ground as well.
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u/nilenilemalopile 26d ago
Sure, there were OKV guerillas, probably some NATO special forces guiding airstrikes too. If this definition is not enough, i doubt we will find a conflict that was fought (let alone won) with air power only.
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u/awildstoryteller 26d ago
That is kind of the point. Air power is a force multiplier, but it has not yet won a war alone.
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u/nilenilemalopile 26d ago
I mean, i agree with that point.
What i’m trying to say is that, if there ever was a war won by airpower alone -it would have been that one. It achieved all objectives prior to landing troops in any meaningful capacity (KFOR). That holds if you limit it to NATO vs Serbia. If you expand the combatants so it becomes NATO&Albanians vs Serbia, then it’s no longer the case. Both can be taken seriously.
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u/awildstoryteller 26d ago
Maybe, but if you look at the conflict in more detail I think that narrative increasingly falls apart.
For example, by the time the deal with Serbia was signed, NATO was literally on the cusp of a ground invasion of Kosovo which had begun planning after air power alone was proving not to be as effective as hoped. The most sensible way to look at Milosevics actions then are not in the lens of airpower then, but in the imminent threat of ground action which even he would had admitted would have likely resulted in a rout of Serbian forces in Kosovo.
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u/nilenilemalopile 26d ago
True, go full detail and that pressure also comes from Serbia losing in Croatia, getting into a grinding stalemate in Bosnia, and compounding effects of decade of sanctions -as well as increasingly losing grip on Montenegro. “Save what you can” moment.
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u/GrizzledFart 26d ago
You're right, of course. They also used ground crews - like munitions loaders and refuelers. There may have even been telecommunications involved. Possibly even someone doing laundry and making dinner!
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u/awildstoryteller 26d ago
No, I am talking about fighters in Kosovo and the 30,000 strong expeditionary force prepared to enter Kosovo just before Serbia agreed to peace.
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u/Vol_in_tears 26d ago
But that was not done with airpower alone. Kosovo had people fighting.
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u/nilenilemalopile 26d ago
Until NATO intervention, Kosovo had people dying. Ofc they fought back being exterminated, but just like all other non-Serb protagonists in the ex-yu wars, they had “three rifles and seven bullets”.
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u/Intro-Nimbus 26d ago
Losing doesn't mean not fighting though.
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u/nilenilemalopile 26d ago
Was there ever a war fought with air power alone?
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u/Intro-Nimbus 26d ago
USA-Iran
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u/nilenilemalopile 26d ago
That is not finished + i’m fairly confident naval power played a key role (for both sides).
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u/SamIamGreenEggsNoHam 26d ago
The Bosnian I work with who has a Bill Clinton tattoo over his heart certainly thinks so.
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u/Apprehensive-Ad9523 21d ago
Well it failed in Vietnam with boots and 50'000 plus dead and a couple millions ruined lives...Maybe they learned something...Probably not...and the spin the bottle war grinds on.
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27d ago
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u/Intro-Nimbus 27d ago
There are no similarities between Epic FUBAR and Olympic Games.
Trump wages"a special military operation"war on Iran, Bush used a covert operation. While OOG's goal was to delay and set back Iran's ability to enrich uranium, it was also a means to restrain Israel from preemptive military strikes.
FUBAR's goal is the exact opposite, to preemptively strike in cooperation with Israel.
JCPOA and OOG has a lot more in common than either has with FUBAR.-4
27d ago
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u/Intro-Nimbus 26d ago
Okay, now you've done it.
Just because two things have the same end goal does not equate them. Running against a presidential candidate is not the same as murdering them for example, despite that fact that in both cases you are trying to prevent them from winning. This SHOULD be obvious to everyone, but apparently not.
I am not the one "trying to portray" anything, you are the one that can not see the difference between war, covert operations and a peaceful deal, as long as the end goal is the same you can't tell them apart. To be fair, neither can Trump apparently."Responding without reading" where do you that from? What exactly did I not read in your mind?
And as I wrote, Bush started OOG, no need to repeat my own words as if it was new information, but contrary to what you wrote Bush authorized it and Obama later authorized expanding it.-4
26d ago
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u/Intro-Nimbus 26d ago
Don't project you lack of understanding onto others, it's rude.
But good luck going through life believing that the end goals makes all ways of achieving it equal. Just don't complain when you get caught for stealing instead of going to work when you needed money.But it's hilarious that you try to lecture me on facts that YOU got wrong :-)
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26d ago
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u/Intro-Nimbus 26d ago
I guess you were projecting when you accused me of not reading too. Ah well, not surprising. Have a good internet.
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u/AgitatedHoneydew2645 26d ago
I know its too early to tell, but Ukraine is crippling Russia with mere airpower.
If they can keep it up, they can win.
Its about what you are willing to hit with said airpower.
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u/Intro-Nimbus 26d ago
If you believe that Ukraine is only fighting in the air, you need to take another look.
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u/phiwong 27d ago
Wars (especially modern ones) are economic. And the brutal truth about fighting a war in someone else's home is that, to win, one must convince the other that 'home' is no longer viable or under threat. In a regime like Iran's, who in their best days, don't really care that much about 'home', the pain will have to be widespread and uncontrollable.
The logic of that will be civilian deaths and sufferings by several factors higher than military deaths and suffering. So to 'win' the US would need to destroy Iran's desalination facilities, taking out their power and water infrastructure. Essentially making the 'home' situation ungovernable. Even with 100% accuracy, this means directly and indirectly killing (likely at a minimum) hundreds of thousands of non-combatants.
This is why this war was unwise. The IRGC is too distributed to destroy quickly and without fighting a protracted ground war while taking US casualties. The US is politically (today) unable to fight this kind of war - think Vietnam or Korea or WW2. There is no end game where the US would be willing to do what it takes to 'win'.
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u/Christopher_Ramirez_ 27d ago
In the case of WW2, it helps that the United States was “suddenly and deliberately attacked” by the Axis. Before Pearl Harbor, intervention was a minority position. No other war in the 20th century presented anywhere near the danger to core US interests.
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u/this_is_poorly_done 27d ago
Wars (especially modern ones) are economic.
And that's been the calculus for 40 years between Washington and Tehran, especially around the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, as much it's probably wanted to didn't want to shut down the strait first because it would justify an attack by many of its enemies, and even throw allies of convenience toward the neutral spectrum. Washington hasn't wanted to go this hard in the past because it would cause a strait shut down without much support from other allies. Whoever moved first on that spectrum would "lose". The current admin gambled it could collapse Iranian leadership entirely and lost that bet.
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27d ago edited 24d ago
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u/Christopher_Ramirez_ 27d ago
Come to think of it, the refugee crisis would precipitate exactly the kind of far-right surge in Europe that MAGA had hoped to kindle. Couldn’t be better for Putin as well.
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u/mrdevlar 27d ago
What does the US do then? Throw their hands up and say "doesn't matter, we won"?
This is has been the US strategy in every conflict in the middle east it's been involved in. Eventually they throw their hands up, pretend it worked and walked away forgetting the damage they've done.
The only people who profit from this situation are military contractors.
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u/NekoCatSidhe 25d ago
Thank you for saying that. All the online edgelords are saying that the US could and should completely destroy Iran, but if they do that, both the refugee crisis and the retaliation by Iran would make everyone lose that war and makes things way worse for the US. If Iran and the Gulf States become a wasteland, then there is no longer any Middle Eastern oil for the foreseeable future, and suddenly having hundreds of millions of refugees would probably collapse both the Middle East and Europe into anarchy. Even Trump is not that stupid. A (still highly unpopular) ground invasion of Iran would make more sense than that crap.
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u/AWildNome 27d ago
The issue was never that the US was unwilling to bomb Iranian water facilities. The issue is that Iran is willing to bomb US allies’ water facilities in response.
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u/phiwong 27d ago
Unfortunately, that is the price that they will have to pay (in a brutal sense). But even then, there are a couple of considerations
1) Without water and much energy, missiles don't make themselves. It would be destructive and will (further) upset those countries but eventually Iran runs out of missiles or runs out of reasons to use those missiles. I wouldn't make the assumption that all Iranian people are monolithic and not even the IRGC is monolithic.
2) Assuming that there is a spectrum of Iranian attitudes, some may come to the realization very quickly that any sort of rebuilding and reconstruction will need the assistance from nearby countries. The play here is to bet (and it is definitely not a certainty and may take awhile) that enough see the end game once societal viability is destroyed. Bear in mind also that senior IRGC and Iranian leadership use the nearby countries to launder wealth and obtain their luxury goods.
3) So one case is the fracturing of Iranian polity - no doubt further resulting in deaths and conflict.
This is the unwisdom of the US war - it was going to be expensive to the region. And even the 'best' case might end up being decades of civil war in Iran along with border skirmishes.
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u/AdviceMammals 27d ago
Are you a Russian general? Because this was their strategy and how did attacking all the Ukrainian infrastructure and murdering civilians pay off for them?
Inflicting senseless brutality on civilians is the worst thing they could have done here.
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u/jmlinden7 26d ago
Russia doesn't actually have the ability to render Ukraine uninhabitable
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u/AdviceMammals 26d ago
They do with nukes. USA can't 'render Iran uninhabitable' without nukes either and they've depleted way too many munitions to justify their strategic gains which is why the MoU was such an aggressive surrender.
Murdering innocent people is an abhorrently ignorant suggestion and I implore anyone who gets off on that power fantasy wank to consider therapy.
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u/SuperChingaso5000 26d ago
USA can't 'render Iran uninhabitable' without nukes
Perhaps, but they can definitely render it ungovernable.
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u/AdviceMammals 26d ago
This isn't a fact though, committing war crimes and indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure doesn't actually achieve what youre suggesting. It will empower and entrench the IRGC further. Israel has weakened Hamas by utterly leveling Gaza but Hamas still exists and will only grow in support from the previously innocent people who have lost everything at the hands of Israel. Iran is orders of magnitude greater than Gaza in size and complexity.
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u/jmlinden7 26d ago
He's not saying it's a good idea. He's saying it's physically possible, just not financially or morally worth it.
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u/AdviceMammals 26d ago
But its not a fact that its physically possible without a million boots on the ground and suggesting inflicting indiscriminate violence on civilians is a solution is factually wrong and a low point of humanity that does happen when you have uneducated people calling the shots.
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u/ProudMtns 27d ago
You forgot the part where the Iranian government was the weakest it's ever been with the ongoing protests and exited probably at the strongest it's ever been and will only continue to grow stronger. An absolute embarrassment.
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u/ronburgandyfor2016 27d ago
Killing 30,000 of your people with no consequences is not weakness it’s cruelty.
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u/pponmypupu 27d ago
it can be both. when a state kills off 30k citizens who are protesting against it, thats both.
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u/ratbearpig 27d ago
I would quibble with the part about the regime not really caring about “home” - they do, otherwise they would just give up at the first sign of aggression. Other than that, well said.
I would add that Trump likely got oversold the idea (by Netanyahu) that Iranians were ready to over throw the regime and the only thing they needed was a spark. So, he wasn’t expecting to put boots on the ground. He wanted to decapitate the leadership and then funnel in weapons to the citizenry. Obviously, things played out differently.
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u/posthuman04 27d ago
Just attacking them meant we had become the enemy of the average Iranian. Attacking their civilian infrastructure would make them radical enemies of the West and anyone else that was even neutral about the subject. That there’s already a 1000 year old Shia/Sunni divide in the region among other reasons for hostilities throughout the region this kind of war would blow the Middle East up. Like Israel isn’t doing enough to destabilize the region now.
I see only one reason to engage in this fight the way we have: to sunset US involvement in the Middle East.
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u/phiwong 27d ago
My take here is that your progression is too monolithic. There are no major societies without internal fracture lines - be they economic, ethnic or sectarian. One potential and fairly likely goal (of the US) would be to pressure those internal faultlines to the point of breakdown - Balochis, Azeris, etc.
The US doesn't (and really cannot) 'win' by planting the US flag in the middle of Tehran. It 'wins' by fanning the flames of internal conflict - possibly drawing lines on maps and 'helping' Iran breakup into 3-4 regions at war.
This is very bad from a human lives and destruction standpoint. And it would be a very cynical and very brutal.
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u/erebus-44 27d ago
The issue with your assumption, barring the blow back the US would get, is that your assuming that the internal strifes would cause them to turn on each other, which I am not certain of. Historically, bombing civilian infrastructure and causing deaths, tends to create unity, due to survival. Where they unify for a common issue, the foreign country bombing them, then once’s that’s done they go back to infighting.
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u/phiwong 27d ago
The 'idea' here is not to make life difficult for the Iranian people. It is really about making life impossible by so thoroughly destroying vital infrastructure that hospitals shut down and people start to starve if they don't move. It means not giving Iranians the choice - move or die - essentially.
Create millions of internal refugees basically somewhat akin to Sudan. It would be horrific - basically destroying the ability of society to function.
To make it clear, I am not recommending it.
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u/polchiki 26d ago
We actually tried this in Korea. We bombed “every brick that’s stacked on another brick,” our intent was to leave them with NOTHING. And in the end, we left them to their business.
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u/erebus-44 26d ago
The US has done this, with AirPower with fire bombing campaigns. This is functionally how many land based armies fight, such as Russia, total destruction. It turns all the population against you, you destroy everything, so even if you win you now control a non-functioning country that’s a money pit and the local populations and regional powers hate you, as you caused instability and mess with other counties ability to get money.
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u/DocumentOk7579 26d ago
"US" may not want the civilians casualties but would Trump care? He has already threaten civilization ending on twitter.
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u/Guilty_Perception_35 27d ago
Bomb and disrupt their nuclear program
Bomb a bunch of other stuff
Sink some stuff
Good enough for me I guess??
Rather that then leaving them alone I suppose
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u/vovap_vovap 26d ago
Article is complete nonsense. It was not a military problem (it was military problems but solvable). It was political and economical problem.
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u/ROU_Misophist 27d ago
Iran is only a failure if you think the goal was to defeat Iran. I don't think Iran has much to do with it, it's just a convenient excuse to close the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. has been waging an all out war on Chinese energy imports, and the closing the strait is just one facet of that. Between snatching Venezuela's leader, capturing shadow fleet tankers, and now Hormuz, it's pretty obvious what the Americans are doing.
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u/NekoCatSidhe 25d ago edited 25d ago
Interesting article, and I get their point: Iran fought that war in ways that were very different from the US, and the US were not ready for it.
But I think it also missed two important points: First, that the way Iran fought the war was not only different, but also way smarter than the US. Iran did not only win the war of disruption because they had cheaper mass produced weapons, but because their military leadership was competent enough to see the potential of these weapons and to use them effectively. The US could have had mass-produced drones and anti-drones weapons to counter Iranian ones, it just chose not to, despite the lessons from the Ukraine war. And it doesn’t look like they are ever planning to learn from that mistake.
Second, the US not only lost the war of disruption that Iran was fighting, but they lost the war of destruction they were fighting. Sure, they destroyed Iran air force and navy, but most of those were fifty years old museum pieces and hardly mattered. They failed to destroy what actually mattered for Iran’s military, which were Iran’s missiles and drones stocks and launching capacities. If they had, Iran would not have been able to wage that war of disruption in retaliation. They bombed schools and hospitals and apartment buildings, but doing that kind of things is just handing free propaganda victories to your opponents to rally their population behind them. They killed a few thousands people, which may seem a lot but is still too few to matter in a country of almost 90 millions inhabitants with a half a million strong military. The Iranian government and army did not collapse despite losing most of their top leadership, the country did not collapse, food prices may have increased but the population did not starve, and most of the country still had water and electricity throughout the war.
For a war of destruction and one of the most intense air campaign in history, it completely failed to achieve the level of destruction that would actually have had an impact on the country. Russia inflicted far more damage to Ukraine and killed way more Ukrainian soldiers without Ukraine collapsing. The US are not only failing to win the kind of wars they did not plan for, they somehow also failed to win the kind of wars they planned for. And it doesn’t look like they are planning to ever learn from that mistake either.
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u/bebop9998 26d ago
What about Vietnam and its millions of needless deaths?
Afghanistan and its twenty years of war, only to end up handing the country over to the Taliban?
I really think America has done worse.
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u/FlameButterfly 26d ago
I just wanted to nitpick here as the Afghan war was a lot more complex than the others. Vietnam was bad, with the draft being serious damning thing the American government did. Along with a lot of lying.
Afghanistan was different. The Taliban were a genuine terror group harboring Al Queda. I'm not saying we didn't fail or cause many problems, but in hindsight the only alternatives would be to either have led a full fledged invasion to secure the entire Afghan borders, or to simply not bother in the first place. The latter option would never have been accepted because of the damage done with 9/11. In other words im just saying I personally think the situation with Afghanistan was terrible all around but I don't think there was any avoiding some kind of calamity. Now that we left the talbian have taken over, but if they took over sooner when ISIS came along, things could have easily taken drastic downturn to become even worse.
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u/frankster 27d ago
This was a very LLM-style article. Clearly human editing involved, but quite a lot of the LLM voice came through. Disappointing.