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Comment by quesera | Hacker News Reader

> This is the most sustained combat that the U.S. Navy has seen since World War II — easily, no question

I have no drone in this fight, but your characterization of this quote is nonsensical.

The quote does not imply that the threats are closely comparable. It merely states that the current conflict is the "most sustained" since a past event which was obviously much more sustained.

I have stood on my roof and looked upward, and thought that it's kind of interesting that the next-highest solid object from my position is a plane, a satellite, or the moon.

I am not intending a meaningful comparison of the altitudes of houses and planes (or satellites or moons) when I do so.

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It's the stuff that immediately follows which is the actual blasphemy:

>We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the U.S. can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage.

Remember that Arleigh Burke destroyers and other ships equipped with AEGIS are supposedly the best interceptors in the world. Remember that USN CSGs are supposed to instill absolute fear and execute absolute destruction when required. Admitting that the Houthis can (and will) penetrate and defeat that is all but admitting the US Navy can't handle any more of this, that the Houthis and the financiers behind them are peer enemies if not superior.

The only thing I wasn't expecting when I originally read that was that the "substantial damage" ended up coming from the US Navy themselves. Who needs enemies with friendlies like this.

OK but that's just the "US Navy was built for major power wars" problem.

The asymmetrical combat problem is real. We saw that back in 2000 with the USS Cole.

I have no insight here obviously, but there's a reasonable theory of warfare that you must accept small losses to justify overwhelming force.

Parrying small attacks against the peace is difficult -- cops can't stop bar fights -- but if it spills out into the streets, the riot police are ready to shut down the block (if you want to save the innocents) or bomb the neighborhood into oblivion (if you do not).

The US public prefers the first approach, until they do not.

War is politics.

Basically this. There’s an asymmetry at play in a few ways - one being will to fight/engage.

At the moment, there is a lack of political will to properly give the Houthis a pounding into the sand to force them to stop chucking shit at ships.

Mainly because the American public does not want to deploy marines to Yemen and get in another pointless land war in a sandbox.

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