:D
I’m so tired of all this winning
I for one, am thoroughly enjoying all this winning. Very impressive
Real David and Goliath moment.
So many people get David and Goliath wrong though.
David wasn’t some scrawny little kid. He was fuckin huge. He grew up fighting bears and lions with his bare hands, and was extremely well trained with his sling.
And after he killed Goliath, he wielded his sword and wore his armor, which were extremely heavy. Goliaths armor is directly stated to weigh 5,000 shekels which would be around 127lbs. The spear Goliath wielded had a tip that weighed 15 pounds alone.
Yeah, sure, okay.
But also this is all mythology from the Bronze Age. So talking about Goliath’s kit feels a bit like discussing the potency of hydra venom or the height of the World Tree.
Lol.
10 The disciples came up and asked, “Why do you tell stories?”
11-15 He replied, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening…
Nothing was meant to be taken literally. Ever. But you know how people who get power can be. 😋
Goliath(copy/paste): he was six cubits and a span tall…the armor weighing five thousand copper shekels…On his legs were copper shields and between his shoulders, a copper guard…The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam and his spearhead weighed six hundred iron shekels; the shield bearer walked in front of him…Dovid was the youngest…Shaul said to Dovid, “You cannot go to fight this Philistine, for you are a lad, while he has been a warrior from his childhood…” Shaul dressed Dovid in his own battle garments, and put a copper helmet on his head and dressed him in armor…Dovid girded his sword over his battle garments. But he did not want to go out [in Shaul’s battle garments], for he was not accustomed [to them]; so Dovid said to Shaul, “I am unable to walk with these, for I am not accustomed [to them],” and Dovid removed them from himself…He took his staff in his hand and picked out five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd’s bag, in his pouch, and his sling was in his hand; he then approached the Philistine…Dovid reached into the bag, took a stone from there and slung it, and struck the Philistine in the forehead; the stone penetrated his forehead, and he fell face down upon the ground…Thus Dovid overpowered the Philistine with the sling and stone; he smote the Philistine and killed him, though there was no sword in Dovid’s hand…
https://www.sefaria.org/I_Samuel.17.5?ven=english|The_Metsudah_Tanach_series,_Lakewood,_N.J&lang=bi. I don’t know. Pretty impressive tale, regardless, imo.
What is the conversion rate from copper shekels to Stanley nikels?
Dunno. Brief search found this: https://testamentpress.com/ancient-money-calculator.html but it’s a horrible website and doesn’t have that time frame or specific currency.
Important to note, Saul put his own battle garments on David.
Saul is noted as being extremely physically imposing and larger than any other man in the kingdom. And his armor fit David.
Nowhere does the storyOk earlier in the book say that. And it’s not pertinent, anyway.1st Samuel 9:2
Kish had a son named Saul, as handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and he was a head taller than anyone else.
It’s pertinent because Saul was anointed by Samuel specifically to be the physically imposing king on the battlefield against the Philistines to rival men like Goliath.
But he pussied out and didn’t fight for Israel when it came down to it, and sent David out instead. David is what Saul was anointed to be. A large, physically imposing man, anointed by God to be the king of all the tribes of Israel.
11-15 He replied, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening…
Nothing was meant to be taken literally. Ever. But you know how people who get power can be. 😋
And how many American tax dollars and rare earth metals go into each one of these?
Each MQ-9 Reaper costs around $14.5 million USD¹. This includes parts currently under 100% economic sanctions that are only sourced in China, so the real cost to replace is almost definitely higher at this point. Rare Earth Metals ain’t the expensive or rare part.
As a fun experiment why don’t we see what took down these drones that cost as much as a brand new elementary school and all teacher salaries for a year;
Each Shahed drone costs $15,000-$50,000 depending on the model these killed at least two.
Each S-400 9M96E Missile costs around $300,000. These are the short range missiles that would be used by Iran’s air defense for the low flying Reapers.
Misgah recoilless rifle ($150,000-$1,000,000) (This is confirmed at least 1 reaper down.
The Russian Verba system (~$200k per missile)
So basically the max cost on Iran’s side is $30 million USD, though realistically this is likely closer to $10-15 million USD.
The max cost on the US side is approximately 45 elementary schools or around $450 million USD.
Or in other words, this is why Americans are so much more poor on average than Iranians and other “third world” or “developing nation” citizens. Did you know fewer than 2/3ds of Americans own their own home? That’s fucking unheard of in Iran. There’d be actual riots and not US led ones overnight if it ever got that bad.
¹There are no official numbers except bundled (staff, weapons resupply, support cost, actual cost of vehicle) fact sheet propaganda numbers.
Would you rather that money go towards feeding school children?
Good point. It could be worse! We could have happy children!
You didn’t see this happening to this extent in Afghanistan or Iraq, and you still can see how those turned out. Anyone who says Iran has exhausted its SAM capabilities is either stupid or lying.
I’d argue that Iran is fundamentally different from every other war the US has waged since WW2 because it’s the first time the US decided to directly take on an opponent that can match them technologically. What happened here is that technology has advanced past the point where US military doctrine makes sense. It simply doesn’t account for stuff like cheap drones, or IR based AA systems which Iran has. Iran also has access to Russian and Chinese satellite data and advanced missiles that US is unable to intercept. On top of that, Iran is fighting on their home turf while the US has a logistics nightmare of ferrying weapons, troops, and other supplies across the ocean.
And what makes this war different is the fact that the US was actually visibly defeated in head to head combat. It’s not like Vietnam or Afghanistan where they razed the country to the ground and abused these people for years on end until they got bored and left. This time around, Iran was able to respond decisively with their own weapons and destroy US based, aircraft, it was able to track down and attack US troops hiding in hotels across the Gulf states. This has simply never happened before.
Vietnam is probably a good war to compare to Iran. I’d argue they did defeat the US, and their anti-air was a huge part of that. US lost thousands of aircraft in that war, and something similar with Iran would end with like results.
The difference is that the US completely dominated Vietnam in terms of technology and firepower. They razed the whole country to the ground, and poisoned much of the land there. People are still born with birth defects today thanks to the atrocities the US committed against Vietnam. The US was defeated in the end, but it came at a huge cost for the Vietnamese.
The key difference is that Iran has the technology to hit the US in the rear. Iran can attack bases, airfields, radars, and so on. The US has no safe staging area against Iran. So, I don’t think the type of war the US ran against Vietnam is even possible here.
On top of that, Iran has the US by the balls economically because they control traffic through Hormuz. Trump already blurted out how they only have 4 weeks of oil left.
Great summary of Iran’s retaliation!
Hot
Wait sense the start?
Expected significantly more
These are low performance high endurance aircraft, not fighters
These are only the ones the US has admitted to losing.
Its an unmanned aircraft used in roles such as this
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1riby9m/030126_ground_pov_of_a_mq9_reaper_sending_a/
By expected significantly more i meant pretty much all of them
The type of drones is vulnerable to stuff like interceptor drones (source)
Let alone anything other then a manpad
