2026 Iran War Strategy and Analysis

[GZDRefugee]

The United States still possesses a massive nuclear arsenal, especially given that the person in the White House is notoriously unpredictable.

While the US military isn't as formidable as it once was, it's still a force to be reckoned with; underestimating it would be irresponsible.

Steady, methodical development is sufficient; there's no need for such pointless risks.

兵者，国之大事，死生之地，存亡之道，不可不察也！

The very first sentence of Sun Tzu's Art of War makes this very clear.

Those who don't study Chinese may find it difficult to truly grasp the weight of this statement.

The PLA itself puts more water in Clausewitz than Sun Tzu these days. Mao is the only military theorist held in higher regard than Clausewitz and that was because he distilled Clausewitz's principles so that even peasants could understand them.

Are you aware that the PLA demands aggressive intelligence gathering down to the company level? That current tactical doctrine demands persistent offensive action (even if outnumbered) because a defender is at an information disadvantage due to making no effort to see behind the enemy's lines?

At the strategic level, the PLA is obsessed with seizing, maintaining and regaining the initiative, emphasizing bold, proactive and pre-emptive action. The PLA's primary objective is to find, fix and destroy the enemy in decisive battles of annihilation rather than positional defense. I dare say that this is the actually the opposite of Sun Tzu's teachings.

On the other hand, political leadership is risk averse to the point of paralysis. This is one of my long-standing gripes with the CPC. I personally prefer proactive action but would defer to caution as long as political posturing and military doctrine is CONSISTENT. As it stands, the mismatch between the politicians and the military will cause significant suffering and unnecessary casualties.

 

[plawolf]

Still I very much want the PLARF to fill the other 800 silos in the NW of China as its been reported that approximately 100 of them has been loaded with DF31-AG series ICBM's-even single wahead versions would be acceptable but the reported 3 warhead MIRV'ed version would be much more satisfactory and give China a powerful 2700 warhead count ,mounted in modern missiles based in modern hardened siloes.

Why? 500-1000 warheads already kills the US many times over. Doubling or tripling the warhead throw numbers doesn’t really add much to the table once you have achieved MAD.

What would be infinitely more valuable would be to invest the resources needed for those additional hundreds of ICBMs to make thousands more H19 and better ABM interceptors, because every enemy ICBM intercepted is 1-12 less nuke going off on Chinese soil.

That is not to say those additional silos shouldn’t ever be filled. As the U.S. increase its own ABM capabilities, additional missiles could and should be added to the silos to maintain MAD, but the top priority is adding more ABM. More ICBMs for silos should only be built if existing production capacity for ABM interceptors are already maxed out and there is spare bottleneck resources like high strength carbon fibre and solid rocket fuel etc to allow ICBM production without detracting from ABM production.

This is getting a little off topic, but ABM might be one of the planned core missions for the containership arsenal ships and 054B FFG fleets.

Rather than take up valuable VLS on DDGs and CGs for ABM as the USN does, it would make much more sense to use container ships for that mission. You would be able to rapidly spin up massive deployable ABM interceptor numbers (both endo and exo atmospherics on the same ship), with wide geographical distribution of these ABM focused arsenal ships, with 054Bs acting as escorts and mobile reserves while your principle fleet and even more conventionally loaded arsenal container ships pushes out further to engage enemy principle fleet strengths and push them way back so your ABM fleet can operate in relative safety such that 054Bs would be sufficient to deal with anything that slips past the main fleets.

 

[Anlsvrthng]

Why? 500-1000 warheads already kills the US many times over. Doubling or tripling the warhead throw numbers doesn’t really add much to the table once you have achieved MAD.

What would be infinitely more valuable would be to invest the resources needed for those additional hundreds of ICBMs to make thousands more H19 and better ABM interceptors, because every enemy ICBM intercepted is 1-12 less nuke going off on Chinese soil.

That is not to say those additional silos shouldn’t ever be filled. As the U.S. increase its own ABM capabilities, additional missiles could and should be added to the silos to maintain MAD, but the top priority is adding more ABM. More ICBMs for silos should only be built if existing production capacity for ABM interceptors are already maxed out and there is spare bottleneck resources like high strength carbon fibre and solid rocket fuel etc to allow ICBM production without detracting from ABM production.

This is getting a little off topic, but ABM might be one of the planned core missions for the containership arsenal ships and 054B FFG fleets.

Rather than take up valuable VLS on DDGs and CGs for ABM as the USN does, it would make much more sense to use container ships for that mission. You would be able to rapidly spin up massive deployable ABM interceptor numbers (both endo and exo atmospherics on the same ship), with wide geographical distribution of these ABM focused arsenal ships, with 054Bs acting as escorts and mobile reserves while your principle fleet and even more conventionally loaded arsenal container ships pushes out further to engage enemy principle fleet strengths and push them way back so your ABM fleet can operate in relative safety such that 054Bs would be sufficient to deal with anything that slips past the main fleets.

Pointless to spend money on ABM systems.

Mid flight interception works only with the current gen on warheads, most likelly the Oreshnik style warheads used on new Russian ICBMs, and mnext gen USA ones.

Means the ICBM already has six submunition and dispensing decoys over the USA or Russia, so mid flight interception is impossible.

 

[Ringsword]

Why? 500-1000 warheads already kills the US many times over. Doubling or tripling the warhead throw numbers doesn’t really add much to the table once you have achieved MAD.

What would be infinitely more valuable would be to invest the resources needed for those additional hundreds of ICBMs to make thousands more H19 and better ABM interceptors, because every enemy ICBM intercepted is 1-12 less nuke going off on Chinese soil.

That is not to say those additional silos shouldn’t ever be filled. As the U.S. increase its own ABM capabilities, additional missiles could and should be added to the silos to maintain MAD, but the top priority is adding more ABM. More ICBMs for silos should only be built if existing production capacity for ABM interceptors are already maxed out and there is spare bottleneck resources like high strength carbon fibre and solid rocket fuel etc to allow ICBM production without detracting from ABM production.

This is getting a little off topic, but ABM might be one of the planned core missions for the containership arsenal ships and 054B FFG fleets.

Rather than take up valuable VLS on DDGs and CGs for ABM as the USN does, it would make much more sense to use container ships for that mission. You would be able to rapidly spin up massive deployable ABM interceptor numbers (both endo and exo atmospherics on the same ship), with wide geographical distribution of these ABM focused arsenal ships, with 054Bs acting as escorts and mobile reserves while your principle fleet and even more conventionally loaded arsenal container ships pushes out further to engage enemy principle fleet strengths and push them way back so your ABM fleet can operate in relative safety such that 054Bs would be sufficient to deal with anything that slips past the main fleets.

I do agree with most of your posting but unlike the US/USSR Cold War doctrines of which I still have many books from Herman Kahn to Brezhinski to Kissinger the part about ABM systems is most cogent and this era of USA/China cold war is very much a derivative of Reagan's Star Wars proposal (Golden Dome etc) and wonderfully China could be the one nation with scientific,technical.industrial means along with the national political will /determination to actually achieve it-now IIRC the American ABM system was put around Grand Forks ND to ostensibly protect the 150 Minuteman siloes there and the Soviet ABM system ("Galosh") was to protect Moscow -these 2 systems are obviously antiquated but now the idea of robust nation wide-coverage BMD/ABM systems are being revived/sought vigourously and the concept of a balanced defence/offence is the goal but very few nations can achieve it-China foremost imho-but in any TW-AR event or China /west confrontation first /foremost is a large enough Nuclear Triad to never be beaten down/threatened down by USA/others with nuclear blackmail -the StarWars type ABM/BMD is a great bonus.-spear/shield indeed.

 

[GZDRefugee]

Why? 500-1000 warheads already kills the US many times over. Doubling or tripling the warhead throw numbers doesn’t really add much to the table once you have achieved MAD.

What would be infinitely more valuable would be to invest the resources needed for those additional hundreds of ICBMs to make thousands more H19 and better ABM interceptors, because every enemy ICBM intercepted is 1-12 less nuke going off on Chinese soil.

That is not to say those additional silos shouldn’t ever be filled. As the U.S. increase its own ABM capabilities, additional missiles could and should be added to the silos to maintain MAD, but the top priority is adding more ABM. More ICBMs for silos should only be built if existing production capacity for ABM interceptors are already maxed out and there is spare bottleneck resources like high strength carbon fibre and solid rocket fuel etc to allow ICBM production without detracting from ABM production.

This is getting a little off topic, but ABM might be one of the planned core missions for the containership arsenal ships and 054B FFG fleets.

Rather than take up valuable VLS on DDGs and CGs for ABM as the USN does, it would make much more sense to use container ships for that mission. You would be able to rapidly spin up massive deployable ABM interceptor numbers (both endo and exo atmospherics on the same ship), with wide geographical distribution of these ABM focused arsenal ships, with 054Bs acting as escorts and mobile reserves while your principle fleet and even more conventionally loaded arsenal container ships pushes out further to engage enemy principle fleet strengths and push them way back so your ABM fleet can operate in relative safety such that 054Bs would be sufficient to deal with anything that slips past the main fleets.

Defensive weapons only delay the inevitable. You get the other guy to stop shooting at you by blowing up their shit. China needs to invest in ways to project power to the CONUS so that it can credibly destroy American ability and will to fight. You cannot preserve your forces unless the enemy is dead.

 

[iewgnem]

Newsflash, everyone knows about the 40-130 band in which oil is priced every 10 days by the NDRC.

The issue you're not understanding is that this is not a simple point of price.

If this ends in 2 weeks or 2 months then yes you're right, CNPC/Sinopec eats the losses and we move on.

But as I've said clearly the US does not need oil from the middle east regardless of what price it is. Yes it will suck to suck for people with long commutes but they will have gas at the pumps and life goes on. If shitty policies from the White House was enough to politically eliminate Trump boy do I have a laundry list of lunacy for the 25th Amendment.

Quick math is China imports about 5mln/d which required Hormuz, some of that can be offset via Yanbu (search it up if you don't know what this is) but net/net you are looking at a daily gap of about 4mln barrels. Chinese SPR is about 1.2bln barrels which gives us 300 days.

If you've read news or done research you'll know Japan has 200 days or so of SPR and Korea a lot less, which is why I used skeleton @ bottom of pool meme earlier. But my point is if this lasts til midterms the Chinese SPR will be pretty low - have you considered that this is what the 5D Chessmasters want? Draining the Chinese SPR that was for Taiwan scenario.

And as I also pointed out earlier, there are lots of obvious solutions on a 3-5 year time horizon, but the problem is a 6-12 month problem if this drags on.

Buddy I suggest you figure out how much oil US imports from the ME and what kind of oil US refineries is setup to process before pretending to know anything about how the real world works, it's getting embarrassing

The world doesn't work in shekel per goy logic, there's a reason people who think like that never could keep a country together for more than 80 years.

 

[abenomics12345]

Buddy I suggest you figure out how much oil US imports from the ME and what kind of oil US refineries is setup to process before pretending to know anything about how the real world works, it's getting embarrassing

Gulf coast heavy sour refineries requires *checks note* Arabian light sweet? You're the one embarrassing yourself.

 

[iewgnem]

Gulf coast heavy sour refineries requires *checks note* Arabian light sweet? You're the one embarrassing yourself.

Buddy, does your notes also tell you 70% of US refining capacity is heavy while shale oil is light? lol
Oh and while you're at it, look up if ME oil is mostly light or heavy.

 

[iewgnem]

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

I mean if they don't really blockade China that works too. I'll be perfectly happy to correct myself and say "do nothing win" if this turns out sustainable

That'll "work too" huh? Welcome to a small taste of how the real world works buddy.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

Gulf coast heavy sour refineries requires *checks note* Arabian light sweet? You're the one embarrassing yourself.

But US primarily produces light sweet crude from shale, while most of heavy sour crude is imported (from KSA, Canada, and Mexico). So while two of the sources of US heavy sour crude are not impacted directly by Strait of Hormuz, they are still traded at market prices, even if they do come from neighboring countries (for now, as logical next steps for Trump to further increase US control over global energy supplies would be to go after those two countries).