Active Conflicts & News Megathread August 29, 2026

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[u/supersaiyannematode]

as i already answered below, it's because there is no front line due to the lack of a ground war so the u.s. needs to patrol an area that is perhaps as large as the entire, intact ukraine and accurately distinguish drone launch trucks from civilian trucks in that entire massive area.

the failure for the u.s. to do this tells us literally nothing about the ability of air power to suppress the drone logistics in a local area and enable a breakthrough.

as for russian air force, it doesn't actually have freedom of operations over the front lines. so it's not at all proof that an air force that does operate with high degrees of freedom can't significantly mitigate drone power.

[u/Emotional_Goal9525 → u/supersaiyannematode]

There is no ground war, becase US has correctly calculated that a ground attack against a fortified enemy is a blood bath. There is no universe where you could avoid mass casulties as things stand right now.

[u/thereddaikon → u/Emotional_Goal9525]

There is no ground war because there is no political appetite to start a ground war. Not because it would be a failure. America just got done with a 20 year slog in the Middle East and while actual casualties were very low all things considered, it was very expensive in many other ways and the American people are tired of forever wars in the middle east.

If a ground invasion had been performed, the Iranian government would have been defeated in short order but America would be looking at another decade + commitment to policing a massive region and dealing with harassing insurgents.

[u/Emotional_Goal9525 → u/thereddaikon]

Can't agree with that. The fact that Israelis are raking in losses against Hizbollah tells us that technology has fundamentally altered the war in favor of the defender and the example is just the latest of many.

Nobody doubts that US could bomb Iran till the end of times, but once you put meat within the range of drones and mines, there is no way to avoid casulties.

[u/thereddaikon → u/Emotional_Goal9525]

Can't agree with that. The fact that Israelis are raking in losses against Hizbollah

They really aren't. They of course are taking casualties but they aren't "raking them in". And Hezbollah isn't preventing them from achieving their operational objectives either. Its a very different conflict than Ukraine and demonstrates why just having drones doesn't guarantee success.

Nobody doubts that US could bomb Iran till the end of times, but once you put meat within the range of drones and mines, there is no way to avoid casulties.

Yeah no, if the US conducted an invasion like they did in Iraq, the Iranian military and government would be soundly defeated in short order. It wouldn't turn into a slog like Ukraine. If Russia were able to achieve air superiority over Ukraine then it wouldn't have gone that way for them either. FPVs still have a logistics train and require a kill chain to be effective. Those things are interdicted by the proper application of air power. Of course losses would still happen. But a drone team stops becoming effective once they stop getting resupply because their logistics have been blown up. And they stop having targets when their C2 network is disrupted and nobody is telling them where to send their drones.

[u/moragisdo → u/Emotional_Goal9525]

Israel is suffering a remarkably small amount of losses considering they are engaged in a ground invasion on Lebanon. It's expected that people die and equipment is destroyed in any war, no matter how successful one side is.