Concerns about US military escalation and potential UK fuel and food shortages

[dwordle]

It looks like the Americans are finding out that if you start enough wars you'll eventually start one that doesn't go your way.

Spending 10 billion US dollars per day and running out of missiles, it's fast becoming apparent that Trump did not really have a plan.

Trump talks of negotiations but it's highly likely that this isn't the case and this is a tactic to give the military the time to prepare for a ground assault.

Trump calls this a special military operation and is careful not to use the word war. War requires congressional oversight.

It's highly likely this conflict is going to get a lot worse which raises the prospect worsening produce and fuel supplies. I believe we are two weeks away from shortages.

I am late 60s and cycle everywhere, I would love to see less traffic on the roads.

if you used the train a festival type trolley would be better than a backpack

Relatively speaking, compared to the position they were in vs their attackers one month ago.

Iran builds it's own drones at a rough cost of 25k, they have a massive stockpile and can theoretically maintain their current rate of deployment indefinitely.

Conversely, the US is almost entirely out of counter-measures, with a rumoured 80% of all Iranian drones and missiles now going completely un-intercepted. Bear in mind, some of the ordinance the US has been firing at incoming missiles costs between $12m and $15m per shot, and since supplies of those are now completely exhausted and they are turning to launching Air-to-Air at a cost of 400k per shot, it's easy to see how, financially at least, Iran has already secured an overwhelming victory and a total humiliation of its would-be subjugator.

The US is clearly and openly in the build-up to some sort of ground incursion, and if they make as much of a mess of that as they have everything else so far, it'll be coffins coming back to the US and not just a massive ordinance bill. Combine that with escalating prices of oil, fuel, and food, Trump's already historically low approval, and Iran seemingly being content enough with the status quo that they are rebuffing all overtures aimed toward giving POTUS a face-saving off ramp, and in very short order this becomes an expedited Vietnam situation for the tangerine imbecile.

Oh, and since galaxy-brain has eased oil sanctions upon Iran in an effort to punish... eh... Iran, they now have more oil income returned than they did prior to this nonsense beginning. #winning

@XDownwiththissortofthingX I thought Russia was supplying Iran with drones, amongst other things ?

This is a bit silly. You either think there will be escalation in food prices/potential issues if this carries on, or you don’t (there will be).

lots of people in the uk have gardens and thus have the ability to make their position more comfortable if there are by supplementing with things they’ve grown themselves. If you can grow anything at all it will help a bit. Rhubarb and chives are two things that you literally put into the ground and do little else to and they will come back year after year (although ideally you don’t take from rhubarb for the first two years). If you like rhubarb and jade the space then planting rhubarb is a good idea anyway. It’s expensive to buy and you get a lot of bang for your buck (perhaps unfortunate phrasing in the circumstances).

personally I’m whacking extra potatoes into buckets of soil. Again very easy and it will assist. Salad leaves, courgettes, perpetual spinach, spring onions, strawberries, raspberries also all easy. I’m doing lots of tomatoes since we eat a lot and if there are food issues then anything which typically comes from overseas will be expensive or in short supply. I’m not wasting time and space this year on stuff which is tricky and temperamental like sweetcorn (and sweetcorn stores indefinitely in tins anyway).

We will eat it either way so in my mind there is no downside. I have a separate veg patch but it’s perfectly easy to mix food into your borders if you don’t.

oatmeal stores for a very long time by the way and yoghurt is easy to make if there is milk.

im not panicking in any way. But I am making the most out of what I have to make life as easy and normal as possible for my family. I’m more of a lifetime girl guide prepper than a zombie apocalypse prepper.

It is usual in democracies for elected governments to keep the electorate informed of what they are doing. And to explain themselves when they do things they expressly campaigned against on the election trail.

They supply drone components, as do several other countries around the world, but the Shahed drone range themselves have been assembled and produced indigenously inside Iran for years. Russia also has it's own plant producing them in Tartarstan. Every report I've seen suggests that Iran had a mountain of the various types ready to go before this conflict began, they are now also in receipt of more completed Shahed products from the Russian plant, and therefore, even at the rate they've been firing them off they are nowhere close to getting through their available stock.

The US had allegedly burned through their entire stock of THAAD interceptors, hence why more and more targets appear to be taking hits from ballistic missiles, and Israel's Iron Dome ammunition is supposedly also severely depleted, which is why the US is apparently looking at using combat aircraft to go drone-hunting with air-to-air missiles.

If you factor in the total destruction caused, then I have no doubt that in dollar value terms Iran is taking a hammering, but they are also hitting Israel pretty hard, hitting US targets inside various States around the middle-east, and hitting those States' own infrastructure targets to boot. Iran has just taken out a couple of the US's main electronics support aircraft, literally blew them to bits while sitting on the apron, they only have 8 or so available to begin with so this really hurts, and they have also lost a couple of their fleet of KC-135 tankers. The imbalance is that Iran is able to cause billions of dollars of damage relatively easily and comparatively cheaply, whereas the US and Israel are having to spend billions to keep up their attacks, spend billions to defend against cheap Iranian drones (and that ammunition is exhausted), and also tote up the cost of reparations which will no doubt be expected by the 3rd party States whose infrastructures are being damaged due to US presence on their soil.

There will also be an enormous reluctance in future for those States to consider US basing rights and suchlike going forward, because Iran has proven the US can not be relied upon to protect them even when it is fighting an opponent it hypothetically totally overmatches. The cost of this conflict can't really be measured in simple terms of "damage done" because the cost of imparting that damage is not symmetrical, neither is the cost of remaining in this fight, and the longer this goes on it's the US and the rest of the planet which is going to feel the pinch, not so much Iran.

Trump has broken the golden rule #1 of running any Western-style Democracy. You never, ever instigate a fight with anyone who has any ability to fight back whatsoever, because anything other than a total and complete roll-over victory soon becomes an economic and political nightmare. Trump was said to be puzzled why, on only day 2 of this conflict, Iran simply hadn't capitulated and begged for terms, which tells you all you need to know about just how foolish the man is, and how little he understands about what he's dragged his nation into.

Pete Hegseth talks about how they don’t have to follow the rules of war and that their hands are untied is worrying. How can that be read as anything other than war crimes are fine?
I hope it’s just talk and nothing has changed about engagement with the Iranian population but it can obviously have an effect to hear that from the head.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

Agree with your previous..

Every report I've seen suggests that Iran had a mountain of the various types ready to go before this conflict began, they are now also in receipt of more completed Shahed products from the Russian plant,

I've heard the same, Iran has been a producer of it's own ballistic missiles for years there have been reports they had nearly two thousand stockpiled at the start of the conflict.

As far as Shaheds go I think it gets forgotten they originated in Iran, the Russians have bought thousands for use against Ukraine, now to some extent the supply chain has been reversed.

Iran isn't some backwards third world country that has to buy anything complicated in because the natives aren't capable of R&D and then production of complex items, but I wonder if POTUS ever realised that?

I think in the UK it will be less about actual food shortages and more about some food prices going up as well as possibly fuel restrictions along with price rises.

I'm a prepper and have gradually increased my stocks over the past weeks so I have a bigger buffer.

Fertiliser shortage will be a problem for this country and may result in less harvest later down the line. At least we're heading into warmer, lighter weather which is good.

Despite what Trump says I don't believe this war will be over very soon. He's opened a can of worms. Iran have miles of underground roads and missile storage under their mountains, it's crazy. Impossible to bomb. I feel very sad for the Iranian people who were hoping for regime change but I do think now that won't happen.

Everyone in Trump's administration is concerning in their own way, but Hegseth is genuinely terrifying because I don't think his patter is a front for anything in the way that a lot of MAGA rhetoric is really just there to perpetuate the grift, I think Hegseth genuinely believes the whole end-of-times "crapture" stuff he comes away with, which begs the question just how much influence does he have on Trump, and how far would he be willing to take advantage of the sundowning geriatric.

And yes, he did indeed pretty much come across as suggesting they regard all sorts of war crimes and crimes against humanity as being inconsequential if its a means to an end. I guess that's what ultimately happens when every single time you bomb and blow up parts of a sovereign State you claim it's somehow a "defensive" action. People just see through it and realise you have nothing but contempt for international law in any case, so the next step is to just openly admit that because it's already clear there will never be any consequences for the US or Israel no matter how frequently or flagrantly they transgress.

I think 'pride cometh before a fall' will apply to Hegseth in the near future. Trump's weak spot is his ego and his belief he's always right and his way will prevail. He surrounds himself with people who prop up his ego, rather than challenge his ideas and plans. Eventually he'll fall too. Leaving the world with a big mess to clear up.

We have a wood burner, a large garden, husband has gardening knowledge, I can if needs be work remotely, we have stocks of gas for campervan so I think we would survive but it’s one almighty fuck up from America. Not just this war but voting that idiot in in the first place (twice!).

She's offered some ideas to supplement food stocks. If you need ideas about how to store grains or find alternatives when food gets low, there's plenty of places you could actively look. If you're not a prepper or don't like the idea of trying to build a little extra resilience to your food supply, then don't. I could complain that she didn't give me the recipe for petrol either.

@notimagain

Iran isn't some backwards third world country that has to buy anything complicated in because the natives aren't capable of R&D and then production of complex items, but I wonder if POTUS ever realised that?

I doubt he could have pointed to Iran on a globe before this started, and even now I'd have my doubts, so no, I don't think he'll have realised much at all about the place before he embarked on this misadventure.

Remember, this is the man who tore up the previous Nuclear deal with Iran, which was apparently working well and was actually achieving all the things he claims Iran needs to be subject to, simply because it was negotiated by a previous President he wishes to discredit and erase.

I recall at the end of Trump's previous term Whitehouse staff said that they spent most of their time desperately trying to keep official papers away from the President, because the less he was aware of, the less he could interfere with and turn to shit. This time around, Trump has utterly surrounded himself with toadies, sycophants, MAGA cultists, and people who are even less qualified and more ill-informed than he is, but not only that, he has systematically removed and destroyed all the people who impeded him the last time around, and most of the checks and balances against his excesses. So this time we're getting pure, unadulterated Trump lunacy, egged-on by people who are even more off-the-charts crazy than he is, but we also know he's very easily led, vain, hubristic, thin-skinned, and can be provoked into hilariously infantile CAPITAL LETTERS outbursts by something as trifling as a minor celebrity mocking him on a comedy show, and yet this is the man who is supposed to be on top of the nuance of getting involved in a shooting war with Iran?

Nah.

He clearly understands the basics of insider-trading, market manipulation, venality, and self-enrichment, but I'm not certain that's entirely his own doing either, more likely someone else pulling the strings and he's just signing off on it.

He got Iceland and Ireland muddled up in a speech last week so he’s hardly going to know anything about Iran!

As long as you’re okay eh.

This was the plan from the start. Trump didn't open a can of worms he opened the can because he knew that by doing so he could use this an excuse to escalate this conflict into something bigger.

This is about oil and it's never been about nuclear weapons.

Israel and the Trump administration are ultimately the most corrupt criminal regime this world has seen since the second world war. They are behaving like pirates and criminals... taking oil, kidnapping heads of States, killing leaders . This is nothing else but terrorism.

We shouldn't fear this war but we should fear what comes next. A world ruled by this level of greed and corruption will lead to.a dangerous future. Trump and Israel are using AI and autonomy for military use.... people will be snuffed out without anyone making a decision. The world needs rules and we can't live the way it's going.

The poorest are ultimately going to suffer extreme poverty as a result of this. Children will bare the largest share of suffering as medical and food supplies go to those that can afford it. For us it might not be life and death but for people already in extreme poverty it will be very blunt.

Trump will take the oil, but it won't be anyone other than billionaires who benefit.

Re stockpiles of weapons.

It's not that simplistic.

The US has the technology to track back the origin of where every fired weapon has come from to source. This means they can find and locate stockpiles in minutes - during the Iraq war they didn't have this capability and Iraq were simply able to move weapons and the US couldn't track back to source.

But Iran also learnt from this and they decentralised their capabilities. If they did this well they'd have large numbers of small stockpiles which they'd 'keep clean' and not use immediately and would spread out when they released each new batch.

This isn't without its own problems. These sites all still can look similar and be picked up by AI tech. So the US will be identifying many.

It means in terms of attrition the US will take longer to grind Iran down but Iran will struggle to replace what it has because factories will be particularly identifiable and new parts will be hard to come by. Remember - if it's hard for anyone else to get stuff out the area it's going to be hard to also get it into Iran too. Their main ally Russia already has supply issues with drones too. Tactically Russia has to decide between supplying its own war or distributing via Iran in the hope that it improves the situation for Russia by relaxing sanctions elsewhere.

Realistically whilst the US may have all but run out of defence missiles - and has turned to cheap Ukrainian anti drone tech, Iran also will have far fewer drones and missiles than you might think. It just doesn't need many to be disruptive for a long period and that's all it needs to do - pose a significant risk because shipping is highly risk adverse because of the cost.

So I don't believe Iran has huge stockpiles of weapons left. But it also doesn't need to. It just has to have a few to demonstrate it retains a significant potential risk to shipping.

And that's where the US have a real problem - they effectively have to get rid of everything and that's a much more difficult prospect whereas Iran just had to maintain a level of disruption.

The bigger issues in the short term are going to be a couple of humanitarian crisis.

There are a large number of ships trapped in the strait which are being prevented from docking. They are rapidly running out of food and water for the thousands of men on board. This isn't getting a huge amount of attention. Yet.

The other is the slow humanitarian crisis in Iran. Prior to the war Tehran had a water crisis due to low rainfall and reservoirs being exceptionally low. With the additional infrastructure issues from the bombings Tehran isn't somewhere I'd want to be heading into Summer - the US may well have stopped bombing but this problem isn't going away. As soon as that really starts to kick in, you will start to see large numbers of people moving and trying to cross borders.

So whilst we are thinking about fuel - and I think for the most part the UK, EU and US will be able to mitigate on that (the bigger issue will be with other products imported from South East Asia), I think theres plenty of other things which will blow up in the USs face.

🤣

"It looks like the Americans are finding out that if you start enough wars you'll eventually start one that doesn't go your way."

Well Vietnam,Iraq and Afghanistan weren't exactly great successes either. This is what happens if you leave military strategy to a bloke who barely made it to platoon commander and a draft dodger.

AI tech and specifically using AI for generating target sets is rumoured to have been one of the reasons why the girls school got hot on day one...so treat any claims about AI targetting witj caution.

I'd be very wary of underestimating.muntions left in the Iranian stockpile (launchers might be a bigger issue),.especially Shaheds...it's the stockpile of western interceptors that's probably.more critical.

Selfishly at the moment I'm mainly worried about my summer holiday abroad. I'm getting early 2020 vibes about holiday plans!

The US has the technology to track back the origin of where every fired weapon has come from to source. This means they can find and locate stockpiles in minutes - during the Iraq war they didn't have this capability and Iraq were simply able to move weapons and the US couldn't track back to source

Not quite.

The Shahed suicide drone is launched in multiples from a mobile parent vehicle. This can be a flatbed, curtainside, or even a shipping container on a carrier, so the drones themselves don't actually have to be directly loaded, they can be racked inside the container and the container itself loaded on to the vehicle, so you are never launching directly from a stockpile location anyway.

They have practically no heat signature at launch so satellite struggles to identify launches in real-time, and they are small enough that sats struggle to track them. Detection is usually acoustic or radar, meaning the drones are already in the air and the parent vehicle long gone.

So then you have to try and trace and track a pretty mundane looking commercial vehicle, and hope that if you can follow them they might show you where a suspected stockpile is. What if it's not actually a drone stockpile, and instead, it's just one or two shipping containers in the countryside somewhere? What's the cost of a lost commercial truck here and there compared to the cost of launching a sortie to destroy that, and if you are lucky, perhaps blow up another 10-20 drones?

I can easily imagine the dream team of Trump and Hegseth salivating over the size of their respective manhoods as they decide to launch a small nuclear weapon. It would be bigly fun.

Meanwhile, any illusions about the US preparedness for this boys own adventure should be dispelled when you read stuff like this

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-03-28/pentagon-exploratory-call-premade-bunkers-middle-east-21201414.html