Even if the peace holds the whole thing feels like a definite L for the following reasons:
Materiel
- a huge amount of expensive and long lead time to replace missiles/interceptors expended
- a $300,000,000 radar station destroyed
- like 30 Reaper drones (approximately 1/5 of the total)
- 1 AWACs destroyed and 3-5 others heavily damaged (we only have about 20 of them
- tons of damage to infrastructure in the area (like refineries, ports, chemical plants)
Geopolitical
- primacy of American military power shown to be truly questionable (I consider this as the biggest part of the L; can't decide if it's an unforced error or it was bound to happen under any administration)
- Iran now knows it can leverage its drones and missiles to influence the region and world; they don't even need a nuke anymore to project power
I guess if there is a silver lining it's that the conflict has exposed how unprepared some of our doctrines and orders of battle are when dealing against an adversary that needs to operate on a more asymmetric level. But also it feels like that should be already known after years of monitoring the Ukrainian conflict.
Materiel - a huge amount of expensive and long lead time to replace missiles/interceptors expended - a $300,000,000 radar station destroyed - like 30 Reaper drones (approximately 1/5 of the total) - 1 AWACs destroyed and 3-5 others heavily damaged (we only have about 20 of them - tons of damage to infrastructure in the area (like refineries, ports, chemical plants)
Geopolitical - primacy of American military power shown to be truly questionable (I consider this as the biggest part of the L; can't decide if it's an unforced error or it was bound to happen under any administration) - Iran now knows it can leverage its drones and missiles to influence the region and world; they don't even need a nuke anymore to project power
I guess if there is a silver lining it's that the conflict has exposed how unprepared some of our doctrines and orders of battle are when dealing against an adversary that needs to operate on a more asymmetric level. But also it feels like that should be already known after years of monitoring the Ukrainian conflict.