Comment by demosito666

This is all fine and well, but misses one little detail: drones. In the past conflicts US troops were more or less unreachable for the enemy unless they were advancing on the ground in a challenging terrain like dense jungles or mountains, where an enemy could ambush them. Other then that, US had air superiority, overwhelming firepower and excellent reconnaissance.

After the war in Ukraine things are very different. US troops are not safe as long as they are reachable by an FPV done, i.e., the enemy has to only make it ~20km to US positions. Given the area and terrain in Iran this will be happening all the time. So any troops positioned on Iran's territory will be under constant attacks by FPV drones. This means heavy casualties.

But even if the US forces will manage to clear the FPVs, this is still not enough, because there are dozens of other types of winged long range drones, the most famous being of course Shahed. They are less precise and not so deadly for the troops. They are also much easier to intercept. But that means that you effectively can't set up a safe stationary base, because it will be attacked by hundreds of drones from hundreds of miles away 24x7. There is not enough interceptors to stop that.

This means that a new approach will have to be used by US armed forces which they never tried before. This guarantees heavy losses on the initial stage which will raise a real political shitstorm back home. It looks like the current administration doesn't particularly care about that, but chances are they will not be able to contain the consequences.