What are the factors influencing the US Navy's position here? Not enough small/cheap ships for this work? Too hard to defend against guerilla speedboat attacks?
While Iran still has fire control, these ships can be hit by shore-launched anti-shipping missiles, one way drones of even old fashioned shelling. Their "navy" was never even a factor.
Too risky, and doesn't make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. Iran uses cheap and disposable weapons that are also effective. If you think about how much a single US ship costs, and the political price of US service members dying, I think the picture becomes clear.
This isn't a military decision but more a public opinion one. Should an American ship take a hit, have casualties, become disabled, etc it would put immense pressure on the administration to settle/end the war, even though on a military objective level it makes a lot of sense. This is a reality of the instant informational world we live in.
Its like the issue with the Vietnam war. You need 100% perfect security, or its not worth it. If you are only 98% successful, you arent going to have oil tankers or any cargo ships even attempting it. A single failure every 2 months was a massive waste of resources.
Imagine the optics of a single destroyer/cruiser being on fire. It would shatter the myth of American naval power (some are arguing that this war already did that, which I tend to agree with).
No minetrawlers, the four US had were scheduled to be scrapped earlier this year. So if there's even a single mine you're playing russian roulette with hundreds of people on board
Probably heaps of various anti ship missiles that have been squirreled away with ranges reaching from few nautical miles to few hundred, just for this exact scenario, please keep in mind that you only need one missile to get through to cause dozens if not hundreds of fatalities.
Unmanned naval drones of various kind, not exactly ultra-high tech in this day and age.
And then there's the guerrilla speedboat attacks which means more missiles
Did I mention that one ship has possibly hundreds of people on board? The political system of the US probably cannot tolerate a military mass casualty event of that scale and spectacle. It's therefore just too risky to get anywhere nearby with a ship so all US navy can do is just lob missiles from as far away as possible, while hoping that this whole mess ends before US runs out of standoff weapons. And between Ukraine, Yemen and now this, the armament stocks aren't probably looking too good considering the meager production numbers.
It seems like Iran has a lot of options for attacking ships. So far theyve used speedboats to attack tankers in Iraqi waters and they used "unknown projectiles" to attack ships in the strait. The ships are on fire and crew have died with the remaining rescued by Oman's and Iraq's navies. I don't know what a us navy ship is going to do as an escort other than be a sponge for incoming projectiles.
> It seems like Iran has a lot of options for attacking ships.
I wonder if the recent USV shipping attacks came Iraqi militias. Maybe Iran set them up with some drone boats like how they send them missiles/drones to hit US bases with. Meanwhile the US was focused on surveilling the Iranian coast. I wouldn't be surprised if Iraq remains the hardest part of maintaining security in the region.
There's at least missile, gun, laser and electromagnetic countermeasures for air threats. It has been a mainstream subject for long, for example against aircraft and missiles. But also lots of startups also in this space, especially against cheap drones or UAV:s.
Ukraine sunk half of the Russian Black sea fleet, the other half is hiding in safe ports and still get hit occasionally. Remember when there were talks about grain corridors? There are no more such talks because Ukraine actually managed to deny Russia the control of the Black sea and the Bosphorus straits are held by the Turks anyway.
It's just a different world now. Large powerful ships aren't that useful anymore, USA and Israel destroyed some of the largest and the most advanced Iranian ships in the first day of the war they started and yet can't sail their own ships in the region either.
At least they're thinking cautiously about it in some ways and not completely forgetting lessons learned w/ Gen Paul Van Riper in the Millennium Challenge (2002). Worth a read. The sim had the USA lose even with superior weapons.
Fear keeping our naval power in check is ironic given the "peace through strength" mantra. Turns out Iran has always held the long tactical advantage. How long does it take to build a desert road to the other side of the ocean? I think we're going to find out.
My thoughts. The escorts serve little benefit to the US given the risk. US doesn’t “need” the Persian gulf exports as much as other countries (who could run their own minesweeping operations). Iran mining Hormuz is a feature not a bug for US effort in a “proxy war” against Iran (hint: it’s all about China)
What I worry about is the shot in the arm Russian finances are about to get due to oil revenue at a point they seemed to weaken strategically. Not to mention pressure to weaken oil sanctions.
This seems in-line with modern US military doctrine.
The US generally only wages wars of aggression against a nation as well-organized and well-armed as Iran when it can do them at arm's length with remote weapons and air superiority. Since the US has a volunteer army, actual risk to soldiers for something not perceived by the public as an existential threat jeopardizes future fighting efficacy.
The US public will tolerate missiles launched in its name; it is far less likely to tolerate video of entire Navy ships going down or sailors (not) coming home in body bags by the shipload for a cause that the administration didn't even try to sell them on as necessary.
They do not seem to have a plan for Hormuz at all. Realistically, it takes Russia to supply 10 high precision drones per day to keep up the fear with pinprick operations. This can go on forever.
The winners are Russia and Trump's LNG fracking friends. The losers are the EU, who had their pipeline blown up and now had their Qatari suppliers blown up. But EU politicians sit still and leave it all to Trump and Putin.
Don't you need an escort from a neutral country? Being escorted by a party to the conflict is just putting your non-military, non-target really close to a military, legitimate target?
Yeah, they didn't expect iran to fuck everything up and now the dudes that sell oil in dollars because of security guarantees and their ships are being bombarded and running out of air defenses.
I’m honestly shocked by the support for the Islamic regime of Iran (I refuse to call it Iran since it and the IRGC and the Basij does not represent the Iranian people who showed us this January in their millions that they don’t support it) on this platform. Honestly, any sick human being who supports them, well they are either deeply ignorant or deeply evil and inhumane. I am awaiting the response comments from tens of Iranian bots and hundreds of idiots who ignored the Iranians demanding help in this January
Gaza was already a demonstration of what will be done to you and your people if you "unconditionally surrender" to Israel/US. Genocide is what you'll get. And please do keep in mind that Israel is no stranger to lying about it's neighbours as was seen with Saddam Hussein and the mythical weapons of mass destruction back in 2002-2003.
The modern US Navy lacks the number of ships it once had. And the destroyers it has in the area are already doing too many other jobs like defending carriers from unmanned drone vessels, firing million dollar missiles at 50k drones, and shooting Tomahawks to blow up little girls at school.
I am certain this entire misadventure was war gamed in Israel by AI. What is certain that regardless of what happens to IRI, United States of America will no longer have a welcome home in Middle East. GCC countries are also toast - gone is tourism, global air travel hubs, and techno hubs of the Arabs. Someone must have been rather jealous.
None of what has happened to date was even remotely unforeseeable. It really took a special kind of stupid (that would be the commander in chief of our military) to get drawn in to this fiasco.
We really need to get rid of dual citizens in corridors of power and influence in this nation. ASAP.
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[ 7.7 ms ] story [ 50.8 ms ] threadAlso, it exposes the ships to easy attack in a constrained body of water
Also, the ships would need to exit the gulf and travel a long distance to re-arm their defensive weapons, requiring even more ships.
Its like the issue with the Vietnam war. You need 100% perfect security, or its not worth it. If you are only 98% successful, you arent going to have oil tankers or any cargo ships even attempting it. A single failure every 2 months was a massive waste of resources.
No minetrawlers, the four US had were scheduled to be scrapped earlier this year. So if there's even a single mine you're playing russian roulette with hundreds of people on board
Probably heaps of various anti ship missiles that have been squirreled away with ranges reaching from few nautical miles to few hundred, just for this exact scenario, please keep in mind that you only need one missile to get through to cause dozens if not hundreds of fatalities.
Unmanned naval drones of various kind, not exactly ultra-high tech in this day and age.
And then there's the guerrilla speedboat attacks which means more missiles
Did I mention that one ship has possibly hundreds of people on board? The political system of the US probably cannot tolerate a military mass casualty event of that scale and spectacle. It's therefore just too risky to get anywhere nearby with a ship so all US navy can do is just lob missiles from as far away as possible, while hoping that this whole mess ends before US runs out of standoff weapons. And between Ukraine, Yemen and now this, the armament stocks aren't probably looking too good considering the meager production numbers.
I wonder if the recent USV shipping attacks came Iraqi militias. Maybe Iran set them up with some drone boats like how they send them missiles/drones to hit US bases with. Meanwhile the US was focused on surveilling the Iranian coast. I wouldn't be surprised if Iraq remains the hardest part of maintaining security in the region.
It's just a different world now. Large powerful ships aren't that useful anymore, USA and Israel destroyed some of the largest and the most advanced Iranian ships in the first day of the war they started and yet can't sail their own ships in the region either.
The US generally only wages wars of aggression against a nation as well-organized and well-armed as Iran when it can do them at arm's length with remote weapons and air superiority. Since the US has a volunteer army, actual risk to soldiers for something not perceived by the public as an existential threat jeopardizes future fighting efficacy.
The US public will tolerate missiles launched in its name; it is far less likely to tolerate video of entire Navy ships going down or sailors (not) coming home in body bags by the shipload for a cause that the administration didn't even try to sell them on as necessary.
The winners are Russia and Trump's LNG fracking friends. The losers are the EU, who had their pipeline blown up and now had their Qatari suppliers blown up. But EU politicians sit still and leave it all to Trump and Putin.
It's like we never learnt from Iraq, Syria, Libya.
None of what has happened to date was even remotely unforeseeable. It really took a special kind of stupid (that would be the commander in chief of our military) to get drawn in to this fiasco.
We really need to get rid of dual citizens in corridors of power and influence in this nation. ASAP.