Slow to realize two things about Ace Ops and Ironwood as of Volume 8 EP 7 “War”.
1) If the Ace Ops had carried the bomb into Monstra like Ironwood originally intended, then yeah the whale MIGHT end up destroyed...but Ironwood would also throwing away his most elite members, which would also gravely weaken his side, especially since Salem can just use one of her god-given save states to come back, and there’s still a fuckton of Grimm to deal with. Ironwood might end up trying to pull people from Atlas Academy to replace the Ace Ops, or he might just end up throwing them at Salem in his current mental state.
2) The above also made me realize just how much Ironwood’s mentality is driven by this subtle notion that if someone or something isn’t useful to him, opposes him for any reason, or fails him in any way shape or form, they’re to be disposed of or simply never to be used again even if the circumstances had changed.
Case in Point:
Ironwood had the robot soldiers and automated Paladins in Volume 2 and 3 with the intent of using them to fight Grimm and reduce Huntsman casualties, but because of Cinder and Watts’ virus and Torchwick, they got hacked and turned against him.
By the time of Volume 7, Ironwood has consigned them to Mantle, a place he doesn’t care for and essentially disregarded their usefulness simply because of what happened in Volume 3. No consideration of trying to strengthen their digital defenses against hacks by guys like Watts (especially egregious given that it was noted that Atlas had improved anti-hacking measures according to Watts), no improvements or using their numbers to help at least make them more useful at defending Mantle.
He just dumps them there because they failed him, and thus they’re useless in his eyes, and we only ever see the robots in small groups of 2 or 3 thus undercutting their effectiveness as cannon fodder. Additionally because of this, he doesn’t have any disposable fodder to be able to buffer up the predominantly human forces against Salem and Monstra when they attack Atlas.
Amity Tower was his big plan to unite the world against Salem by re-establishing communications to help the world understand the true threat, but the minute Salem might be on his doorstep (not taking into when she did show up), Amity stops having any value to him despite the bulk of the Volume being oriented around the idea, and he dismisses anyone who notes the potential value of Amity after the Salem bit, regardless of how much he focused on it before that point. It doesn’t even seem to cross his mind to consider using Amity for something else/as a distraction to give Atlas more preparation time, or even just to multitask and try to get as much done as possible; he just straight up abandons it.
Then there’s the stuff with Team RWBY, JNPR, and Robin Hill. He was willing to have the former two as allies until they decided to oppose him for not unjustified reasons, and then it doesn’t matter how much sense they make, how much they’ve personally dealt with Salem’s forces; he straight up decides they’re worthless obstacles and wants them out of his way no matter how much doing so cripples his own side against Salem.
Hell, prior to that, Robin Hill was noted multiple times as a potential ally who could make a lot of his plans for Amity and Salem substantially easier, but because she did not conform to being a “useful tool” to him, he disregards her value and different insights and tries to have her arrested and shunted aside, with Yang and Blake having to be the ones to extend a hand to her behind his back.
The guy has a bad tendency to only value things up until they fail him what seems to be only ONCE or twice, and if they don’t conform to what he wants or thinks it should be, they’re useless to him. And that’s exactly what he seems to be doing to the Ace Ops, even in spite of their loyalty.
It’s also kind of a parallel to Salem, in that while Salem does more or less only value someone until they stop being useful, she usually at least is willing to give a chance for them to redeem/prove that they still have value to her, and only really goes for the nuclear option to those who fail repeatedly (Lionheart).
EDIT: I know this seems super obvious and I’ve probably noted something like this in the past, but it’s something that I really noticed once I considered Ironwood’s mindset even before recent events.
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