Does any country's navy, including ours, have the ability to convoy tankers through Hormuz?
Obviously, Trump has not yet used any USN assets to do so.
Because it's politically to our advantage?
Or because Arleigh Burkes are simply not designed to fight off swarms of drones?
If I understand correctly, Arleigh Burkes each have one Vulcan Phalanx, which is intended to shoot down a cruise missile or two, now and then, but not swarms of drones.
Compare that to USN warships intended to fight off Japanese kamikazes; they were porcupines with 20mm, 40mm and 5" mounts.
There were antiaircraft cruisers whose sole job was to shoot down kamikazes.
And still USN made plans to remove itself from Okinawa, like it did from Guadalcanal, because it looked like the kamikazes would sink everything.
I don't see how the feckless Europeans can do any better.
The drones, missiles and shore batteries have to be completely eliminated before any commercial ships can have escorts to deal with mines, small boats and even mini subs.
I think that means you agree that USN is defenseless against aerial drone swarms [never mind sea drones that Ukraine used to great effect against the Russian Black Sea fleet].
The USN is hardly 'defenseless' against drone swarms. No western navy is truly 'defenseless'. The Ukrainians have recently admitted that their sea drones are not nearly as effective as they were at the start when this was a 'new' idea. Although even then it wasn't really 'new' as the Cole had been bombed by a kamikaze boat ages ago.
Nearly every western navy mounts pairs of electro-optical or radar (in the case of the US) controlled guns on major combatants for dealing with boat-swarms. The problem is that this is for defending THE SHIP. It does not a flippin' thing for an escorted tanker.
A convoy effort through the Strait of Hormuz would see the tankers lined up in a long row, with escorts at the ends or possibly in the middle. This is very unlike the USN experience in WW2 or even today where you can surround the high-value ship. The tanker in this scenario remains open to being shot, whether the escorts are there or not simply because the strait is not wide enough for the sort of 'surround the target' effort needed to protect the tankers.
Defenseless - no. But neither is optimized for fighting such threats. The USN anti-drone capabilities are rather limited, and there aren't much of specialized cheap munitions (like Coyote/Roadrunner anti-drones).
Motivate the Iranian people to clean their own house.
Iran just issued a list of purely civilian targets they are threatening - power and desalinization plants, among others. Well, Iran has such targets as well: We do not normally attack purely civilian targets but our true allies, who are threatened, just might. And the Iranian people may object to not having water, in the dark.....
Or they can start fighting their government. The choice is theirs.
By bombing and killing them, and demonstrating that you are worse than their own government? Sorry to disappoint you, but this usually cause peoples to gather around their government, not against it.
Right? The first thing we (or Israel) did was blow up a bunch of kids. And now the Big Plan is for us to keep blowing up more kids until the parents of the kids we killed overthrow the people fighting us and become our friends 😁
Ok, I've tried to engage with your points in calmness and good faith, but this is actually offensively retarded horseshit. Would it kill you to actually study history for one iota?
"By bombing and killing them, and demonstrating that you are worse than their own government?"
I realize things like "actually studying the past" is kind of gauche, but keep in mind: Saddam Hussein bombed Iran on a scale even we could not dream of. He didn't just use bombers and fighter bombers but also SCUDs. He killed dozens of thousands of Iranian civilians in the process, probably hundreds of thousands, and helped contribute to the regime surviving by ACTUALLY demonstrating that for Shiite Iranians he was worse than their own government.
*AND YET HE STILL MANAGED TO GET AT LEAST 50,000 IRANIAN COMBATANTS TO FIGHT ALONGSIDE HIM, AND PERHAPS 2-3 TIMES THAT TO OPERATE ON HIS SIDE UNDERGROUND OR IN EXILE.*
Let that sink in. Actually get that data point through your overly thick cranial walls and study groups like the MEK.
And if you think US and Israeli bombings have been ANYTHING as indiscriminate or brutal or alienating as Saddam's were, you're simply ignorant. The regime had to cancel SEVEERAL rallies back when we killed Q Solemani precisely because they would spontaneously erupt into celebrations at the death of the man who was basically a Persian Himmler or Dzerzhinsky. We have multiple accounts of defections, desertions, and celebrations on Iran now as we bombed things like the Assembly of Experts.
Which isn't surprising when you realize the Iranian regime routinely kills, tortures, and rapes hundreds of thousands of its own people for crimes like "not wearing the veil", 'being an unaccompanied woman", or "protesting." Indeed rape and then murder is an institutional part of the regime's repression, as it is meant to deny victims the very prospect of going to heaven.
(This is also what made retarded claims like Cucker Tardlson's "Unconditional Surrender means foreign troops get to rape your women" stuff self-defeating, because in addition to being literal blood libel it shows he neither knew or cared how prolific that is already being done by the regime's enforcers itself.)
Now does this mean it will actually work? No. But we aren't seeing anything like the popular backlash against us like the Iraqis triggered (and again, EVEN LITERALLY SADDAM HUSSEIN'S IRAQ MANAGED TO ATTRACT DOZENS OF THOUSANDS OF ARMED IRANIAN COLLABORATORS TO THEIR SIDE IN SPITE OF IRAQI ATROCITEIS.)
"Sorry to disappoint you, but this usually cause peoples to gather around their government, not against it."
Sorry to disappoint you for knowing history and why that happens.
Targeted killings of unpopular, hated leaders and instruments of repression tends to encourage people to pull away from the government, not towards it. This is something Saddam never understood, but we seem to.
We did not have IRQ and IRN capabilities completely degraded during the tanker war yet managed to start convoying. What we did have in the late 80's was a numerous Navy. Wouldn't it be nice to have those fifty OHPs about now?
Well, the Italian destroyers carry three 3-inch guns with guided ammo, so in terms of drone defense each of them probably superior to a full squadron of Arleigh Burke's (American 5-inch gun is far less suitable for small target than OTO Melara 3-inch one, and American still didn't have any 5-inch guided munition). Italian destroyers demonstrated themselves rather good in Red Sea, so arguably they are best suited for Hormuz-like operations. Problem is, Italy is not interested much.
“ Does any country's navy, including ours, have the ability to convoy tankers through Hormuz?
Obviously, Trump has not yet used any USN assets to do so.”
Mostly because
A: There are better things to be using USN ships and attention for at this stage, mostly destroying the Iranian Navy, Air Force, and rocketry while hunting VIPs,
And
B: The tankers are largely convoying themselves out so long as they are able or willing to eat the insurance premiums and a certain amount of risk while turning off transponders. It’s not a great solution, but it shows that this is not like the Nazi high water mark in the Kanalkampf where most unescorted ships would not make it out.
The biggest obstacle to ending the “closure” of the strait seems to be economic and will related, not military. The Mullahcracy could rarely shut the strait to foreign shipping even with a much stronger situation in the 1980s and inadvertent help from crossfire with its Iraqi enemy. It is going to be even less capable now.
The big issue is drones and how much ramp up ability the regime still has for Shaheed Spam.
I don’t see why we should even care if ships can enter or leave the Persian gulf. We have enough energy of our own. Let the countries who depend upon the gulf for oil worry about keeping it open.
Our only objective should be to rid the world of the Islamic Republic. I will be very disappointed in the President if he settles for anything less. General Eisenhower did not stop at the Rhine. Admiral Cooper should not stop at Kharg Island.
Unfortunately, we can't do that. Oil is fungible, and Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil being blocked will result in us feeling some of the squeeze as prices rise.
They haven’t been so far. Most traffic through the straits today goes in defiance of Iranian threats even if there may be under the table dealing. The offer of free passage for expelling US and Israeli diplomats is something even Iran’s closest allies have refused to do. And if anything Iran has been going after China and India to try and pressure them to Pressure us, hence the number of PRC ships stuck as they wait their turn for an opportunity to sneak through.
While that might be emotionally satisfying, it's also stupid, because, again, thanks to the way the world oil market works it also hurts us, and if we want to pursue this war to the necessary conclusion we need to keep domestic disruption to a bare minimum.
Decouple the US market from the world market. We seem to have enough oil for our use with plenty of margin. Certainly have plenty of natural gas.
Ban exports or treat them like military exports, require a license.
We don't sell to the world, except on special arrangement, we don't buy from the world. Everybody sorts their needs from there. And defends them as well.
Texas is burning off NG, because there are not enough pipelines to LNG ports, and the blue states of the NE refuse to buy American NG via new pipelines
Actually, oil is not fungible. The characteristics of oil differ from location to location. There are many different crude oils and they contain vastly different chemical compounds in vastly different amounts. Refineries are very specialised; and a plant which can process oil from one location may not be able to refine oil from a different place.
Well, the French pimp-smacking around some of their former colonial subjects is a good start to getting the band back together.
And to be fair, it isn't like the US legislature does any better at providing proper naval strength. (Yes, an escort frigate for the 21st century is a mini-Burke, and appropriately expensive....)
Won't happen. The Euros haven't been serious about maritime affairs since the end of the Cold War, and they're letting their understandable annoyance at Trump's blustering over Greenland and the obviously underplanned Iran war serve as excuses to not face up to the consequences of decades of neglect.
Not that we're that much better, mind you, but at least we understand that keeping the trade lanes open sometimes requires using your firepower on those who would close them.
"This latest Iranian crisis will not last much longer"
???
Iran can build a new anti-ship missile somewhere waaaaaay out in the east, put in a container on a truck, drive it to the coast and fire it at some vessel....over and over and over and over...for DECADES; as proven by their proxies elsewhere. doesn't matter if that even hits anything they might aim it at....the continuing threat is ALL.
But that anti-ship missile requires computer chips, aluminum for the shell or at least carbon fiber, and rocket or jet fuel. None of those things are sourced in Iran. They all come from over seas and have to be built in a factory within pretty easy reach of anything in the US inventory. A lot of Iran's infrastructure (rocket-fuel mixing machinery) was imported and now is destroyed. Iran is not Jason from Friday the 13th where it is unkillable/undefeatable.
Russia can't afford it. Their crap is being blown up by the Ukrainians on a near nightly basis. China can't afford to be seen flying in help in the middle of the conflict. Nor does China want to risk a planeload of Chinese getting smashed because they're flying in contested airspace. The reality is that if China was going to help, they would already have helped. They can't or won't because of the reasons above.
Your belief in Ukrainean propaganda is now too tedious to be even amusing. The same Ukrainean sources admits Russia produce more cruise missiles per month now than USA per year.
That's laughable. I diss Ukrainian propaganda on their drone warfare on the regular. The reality is that there are independent confirmation of strikes against Russian infrastructure. There is independent confirmation of Russia requesting return of materials given to other states as military aid. These things are matters of record in open source forums.
I do not denigrate the resilience of the Russian state, but even the US had to basically tell the Europeans that we can't give them certain weapon systems because we needed them for ourselves. Every country has its limits. Russia is in what it feels is an existential war right now. If you think they're going to divert supplies to Iran in the face of that, it is YOU who is tedious.
“ Your belief in Ukrainean propaganda is now too tedious to be even amusing.”
Firstly: Ukrainian, not “Ukrainean.” If you want to complain about others at least get the names right.
Secondly: We also have pro-Kremlin, anti-Ukrainian sources like Rybar mentioning this as well as general declines in the quantity of Russian artillery fire. While their economy has gone full military production. There’s a reason they sought to contract out production on drones and missiles to third parties like Iran, because they suffer.
“The same Ukrainean sources admits Russia produce more cruise missiles per month now than USA per year.”
Right, because Russia has been a nation introduced to rocketry back in the 1300s and has used it as a significant part of its military doctrine for 500 years, especially now with its other major arms suffering.
In contrast the US’s main formative experience with it was in the War of 1812 and to have focused on getting serious about rocketry in the late 1800s, so about a 150 years, and especially the last 70. And it has never, ever, ever been as key a part of our combined arms focus as it has been for Russia.
Ditto Ukraine.
Your point?
We have been spoiling up rocket production like we have everything else. It will take time for us to git gud but we also have a lot more capacity to do so than an economically and demographically gutted Russia and Ukraine. While also being able to supplement our rocketry with Air Force and Navy go Brrrt. If you can smash an enemy with a concrete “bomb” you don’t need to build a rocket or missile, and a lot of times the Kremlin has been reliant upon using missiles or rockets to service targets we’d just dumb bomb because Russia has never obtained air superiority over its great power rivals in its history, unless you are incredibly generous in calculating the last two years or so of WWII and ignoring the Western Allied Air Force’s that actually did that.
Not saying it is easy or perfect but this is absurdly one dimensional.
And do we know WHEN those items were shipped? Again, China's not sending rocket-fuel by plane into an active war zone. They ain't shipping it by ship either. Russia isn't sending drones by plane into an active warzone where Israeli and US Planes are constantly flying. Is that a possibility for the future after the war? Sure. Right now? Nope.
We have aerial supremacy. If something goes up with the Iranian regime’s iconography, it becomes a legitimate military target and gets blown up.
If it goes up in a Russian or PRC sigil we might - might - display enough restraint to let it land and then try to blow up the cargoes later. And then we slap a No Fly Zone label so that nobody else gets similar bright ideas.
And this is ignoring how both the PRC and especially Russia are different munitions and equipment shortfalls of their own and need their own stuff.
Firstly: being willing and able to shoot down Russian or Chinese planes that FAFO too hard has been a valuable tool that generally gets good results. Erdogan's turkey being case in point. I would not rule it out, though it would be risky. Trump already showed a willingness to bomb VVS planes based in Syria after a warning in his first term, and I doubt he is more amiable towards Putin or Xi now.
Secondly: That's why I mentioned waiting for such a plane to drop off its cargo and then wait for it to get off. And imposing a No Fly Zone over Iran to try and head this off.
It's definitely not 100% probability even for me, but I really really don't think there's evidence it is a 0% as the Syria Red Line bombings show.
Mate, we use dozens of thousands of drones on the regular and are spooling up production for more including our own answer to disposable one shots like Shaheeds. Take a guess how many Mullahs you think Iran still has, let alone Ayatollahs.
“ Iran can build a new anti-ship missile somewhere waaaaaay out in the east, put in a container on a truck, drive it to the coast and fire it at some vessel....over and over and over and over...for DECADES; as proven by their proxies elsewhere.”
I think you are missing a few crucial components. Namely that their proxies were reliant upon an intact supply line and political leadership back to an unbombed, not blockaded Iran, as well as periodic ceasefires for rearmament. The Saudis have show a decent idea of what a regime that gives few farqs can do to an Iranian proxy with consistent pressure, and the Israelis have made good inroads into hurting Hezbollah’s rocketry. The key thing is to resist urges to let the enemy regroup.
Also the Eastern areas are now in a border war with the Taliban and various anti-Pakistani/anti-Mullah groups.
We've all seen people like this at work, or in the service.....They show up after the work is done, and then slap themselves on the back for their good deeds.
And now that the majority of the work is done, they will suck up US resources, get in the way and should anything actually risky be happening will have to phone home to get permission to actually do anything, including defend themselves - while demanding the US protect them,
The US should set up a toll booth in the Strait, and charge a toll for every barrel that leaves.
Well, this is exactly why I slagged the Euros in one of your other threads. These are fundamentally unserious people living off of past glories. They have mismanaged their nations and have no idea how to get out of the death spiral because that would require and admission of failure.
You look at the Brits who squandered a valuable frigate (HMS Richmond is going to be scrapped because she failed inspection) on a glorified PR tour to the far east so the various ministers could have a photo-op with their Japanese counterparts. It's ridiculous.
"This brittle military stance is the byproduct of three and a half decades of underinvestment in their defense in general, and their naval power in particular."
I think you will find that the underinvestment started in the late 1960s (1968 in the case of France) and their capacities -- like ours -- coasted on momentum for a few decades thereafter.
Doug: Yes, and that's the problem. The EU behaves as if it is a supra-national government and the European members defer to the EU and hide behind it for all-things global, even when it comes to what should be domestic security issues and defense issues, despite the fact that the EU has no security and defense apparatus. The EU has eroded the very concept of national sovereignity.
The EU is just the US with stronger states rights. NATO was its defense arrangement at the insistence of the US. That is now changing. The EU has made for the most peaceful period of Europe in its history. NATO and the EU have meant we have not needed to be involved in their conflicts since WWII.
NATO is a conundrum. You have Canada and the Western European deadbeats who have been free-riding for decades. Then you have the Eastern members who are spending more than 2% gdp as required.
"The EU has made for the most peaceful period of Europe in its history."
Not even a little bit true.
NATO has made for the most peaceful period of European history. Euros stopped fighting each other because of an external threat and external leadership from the US.
The EU integrated the economies of Europe. It opened trade, labor and cultural exchange. The relationship between Germany, France, and Britain is fundamentally different. This has endured since the collapse of the USSR.
As usual, the CDR is correct. But what's of more concern, is that by not being able to send a fully-capable task force to assist either in the eastern Med or outside the Persian Gulf, the European nations are demonstrating NATO is hollowed out. Imagine, the most famous navy in history, the Royal Navy can't even deploy a single combatant with guns! Lord Nelson is spinning in his grave! Let along harass an enemy like a pirate - think Francis Drake. The US has its own problems. The most expensive aircraft carrier ever built can't make its toilets function! Anyway, as to escorting tankers, of course, the US Navy won't do it. Not just because a lot of the escorts would be frigates, which we don't have anymore. But because the new type of saturation attack (actually quite old type of attack, think Prince of Wales and Repulse vs Japanese navy torpedo bombers) will quickly expend all shipboard munitions, making any navy ship a target on the way out of the combat zone. Think, the last line of defense, a CIWS Phalanx shooting six thousand rounds a minute, will empty out after six bursts! And even loading up the deck with small arms, which we don't do anymore, will be too slow to respond. So, what do you do when 100 drones come at you? Answer, stay out of the box!
We know and the euros know that they have essentially castrated their own fleets. I hope that we do not let up and finish the job on the Ayatollahs and IRGC savages. Anything short of that will be a mission fail IMHO regardless of how much shit the euros and anyone else talks. What happened to "Unconditional surrender"? The world knows any "deal" will be based on a stack of haji lies. Like it or not we have all the tools there now...we going to rinse and repeat in 2 yrs 5 yrs 10yes?
A treaty is no good. Also Trump will only be around for another three years. There is no guarantee that he will be succeeded by Rubio or Vance. Imagine if Newscum become POTUS. The mullahs would be able to resume their nuclear program with impunity.
I'm assuming you get the point of all this. We don't much need any of it and if we did, it wouldn't matter because it's not there.
This is all a wake up call for our allies and also exposes our shortcomings as well. Maybe we will now reverse the decades long decline impacting our own Navy.
None of it is a reason to allow a nuclear armed Iran or their continued support of global terror. We have to take the cards we're dealt.
Does any country's navy, including ours, have the ability to convoy tankers through Hormuz?
Obviously, Trump has not yet used any USN assets to do so.
Because it's politically to our advantage?
Or because Arleigh Burkes are simply not designed to fight off swarms of drones?
If I understand correctly, Arleigh Burkes each have one Vulcan Phalanx, which is intended to shoot down a cruise missile or two, now and then, but not swarms of drones.
Compare that to USN warships intended to fight off Japanese kamikazes; they were porcupines with 20mm, 40mm and 5" mounts.
There were antiaircraft cruisers whose sole job was to shoot down kamikazes.
And still USN made plans to remove itself from Okinawa, like it did from Guadalcanal, because it looked like the kamikazes would sink everything.
I don't see how the feckless Europeans can do any better.
The drones, missiles and shore batteries have to be completely eliminated before any commercial ships can have escorts to deal with mines, small boats and even mini subs.
I think that means you agree that USN is defenseless against aerial drone swarms [never mind sea drones that Ukraine used to great effect against the Russian Black Sea fleet].
Not quite defenseless.
Let’s just say there are a lot of threats that must neutralized.
The best thing to do is end the Islamic Republic altogether.
The USN is hardly 'defenseless' against drone swarms. No western navy is truly 'defenseless'. The Ukrainians have recently admitted that their sea drones are not nearly as effective as they were at the start when this was a 'new' idea. Although even then it wasn't really 'new' as the Cole had been bombed by a kamikaze boat ages ago.
Nearly every western navy mounts pairs of electro-optical or radar (in the case of the US) controlled guns on major combatants for dealing with boat-swarms. The problem is that this is for defending THE SHIP. It does not a flippin' thing for an escorted tanker.
A convoy effort through the Strait of Hormuz would see the tankers lined up in a long row, with escorts at the ends or possibly in the middle. This is very unlike the USN experience in WW2 or even today where you can surround the high-value ship. The tanker in this scenario remains open to being shot, whether the escorts are there or not simply because the strait is not wide enough for the sort of 'surround the target' effort needed to protect the tankers.
Defenseless - no. But neither is optimized for fighting such threats. The USN anti-drone capabilities are rather limited, and there aren't much of specialized cheap munitions (like Coyote/Roadrunner anti-drones).
The solution is quite simple.
Total regime annihilation. Nothing more is required. Nothing less is acceptable.
One small problem. How the hell you are going to do this?
Boots on the ground, forever. It's what we voted for when we choose Trump.
Motivate the Iranian people to clean their own house.
Iran just issued a list of purely civilian targets they are threatening - power and desalinization plants, among others. Well, Iran has such targets as well: We do not normally attack purely civilian targets but our true allies, who are threatened, just might. And the Iranian people may object to not having water, in the dark.....
Or they can start fighting their government. The choice is theirs.
By bombing and killing them, and demonstrating that you are worse than their own government? Sorry to disappoint you, but this usually cause peoples to gather around their government, not against it.
Did you not read what I said?
Right? The first thing we (or Israel) did was blow up a bunch of kids. And now the Big Plan is for us to keep blowing up more kids until the parents of the kids we killed overthrow the people fighting us and become our friends 😁
This is stupider than Vietnam
Ok, I've tried to engage with your points in calmness and good faith, but this is actually offensively retarded horseshit. Would it kill you to actually study history for one iota?
"By bombing and killing them, and demonstrating that you are worse than their own government?"
I realize things like "actually studying the past" is kind of gauche, but keep in mind: Saddam Hussein bombed Iran on a scale even we could not dream of. He didn't just use bombers and fighter bombers but also SCUDs. He killed dozens of thousands of Iranian civilians in the process, probably hundreds of thousands, and helped contribute to the regime surviving by ACTUALLY demonstrating that for Shiite Iranians he was worse than their own government.
*AND YET HE STILL MANAGED TO GET AT LEAST 50,000 IRANIAN COMBATANTS TO FIGHT ALONGSIDE HIM, AND PERHAPS 2-3 TIMES THAT TO OPERATE ON HIS SIDE UNDERGROUND OR IN EXILE.*
Let that sink in. Actually get that data point through your overly thick cranial walls and study groups like the MEK.
And if you think US and Israeli bombings have been ANYTHING as indiscriminate or brutal or alienating as Saddam's were, you're simply ignorant. The regime had to cancel SEVEERAL rallies back when we killed Q Solemani precisely because they would spontaneously erupt into celebrations at the death of the man who was basically a Persian Himmler or Dzerzhinsky. We have multiple accounts of defections, desertions, and celebrations on Iran now as we bombed things like the Assembly of Experts.
Which isn't surprising when you realize the Iranian regime routinely kills, tortures, and rapes hundreds of thousands of its own people for crimes like "not wearing the veil", 'being an unaccompanied woman", or "protesting." Indeed rape and then murder is an institutional part of the regime's repression, as it is meant to deny victims the very prospect of going to heaven.
(This is also what made retarded claims like Cucker Tardlson's "Unconditional Surrender means foreign troops get to rape your women" stuff self-defeating, because in addition to being literal blood libel it shows he neither knew or cared how prolific that is already being done by the regime's enforcers itself.)
Now does this mean it will actually work? No. But we aren't seeing anything like the popular backlash against us like the Iraqis triggered (and again, EVEN LITERALLY SADDAM HUSSEIN'S IRAQ MANAGED TO ATTRACT DOZENS OF THOUSANDS OF ARMED IRANIAN COLLABORATORS TO THEIR SIDE IN SPITE OF IRAQI ATROCITEIS.)
"Sorry to disappoint you, but this usually cause peoples to gather around their government, not against it."
Sorry to disappoint you for knowing history and why that happens.
Targeted killings of unpopular, hated leaders and instruments of repression tends to encourage people to pull away from the government, not towards it. This is something Saddam never understood, but we seem to.
We did not have IRQ and IRN capabilities completely degraded during the tanker war yet managed to start convoying. What we did have in the late 80's was a numerous Navy. Wouldn't it be nice to have those fifty OHPs about now?
Navy helps but you only need credible reply: "You try, you die."
Well, the Italian destroyers carry three 3-inch guns with guided ammo, so in terms of drone defense each of them probably superior to a full squadron of Arleigh Burke's (American 5-inch gun is far less suitable for small target than OTO Melara 3-inch one, and American still didn't have any 5-inch guided munition). Italian destroyers demonstrated themselves rather good in Red Sea, so arguably they are best suited for Hormuz-like operations. Problem is, Italy is not interested much.
“ Does any country's navy, including ours, have the ability to convoy tankers through Hormuz?
Obviously, Trump has not yet used any USN assets to do so.”
Mostly because
A: There are better things to be using USN ships and attention for at this stage, mostly destroying the Iranian Navy, Air Force, and rocketry while hunting VIPs,
And
B: The tankers are largely convoying themselves out so long as they are able or willing to eat the insurance premiums and a certain amount of risk while turning off transponders. It’s not a great solution, but it shows that this is not like the Nazi high water mark in the Kanalkampf where most unescorted ships would not make it out.
The biggest obstacle to ending the “closure” of the strait seems to be economic and will related, not military. The Mullahcracy could rarely shut the strait to foreign shipping even with a much stronger situation in the 1980s and inadvertent help from crossfire with its Iraqi enemy. It is going to be even less capable now.
The big issue is drones and how much ramp up ability the regime still has for Shaheed Spam.
Our European allies are absolutely worthless.
I don’t see why we should even care if ships can enter or leave the Persian gulf. We have enough energy of our own. Let the countries who depend upon the gulf for oil worry about keeping it open.
Our only objective should be to rid the world of the Islamic Republic. I will be very disappointed in the President if he settles for anything less. General Eisenhower did not stop at the Rhine. Admiral Cooper should not stop at Kharg Island.
Unfortunately, we can't do that. Oil is fungible, and Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil being blocked will result in us feeling some of the squeeze as prices rise.
Also, higher oil prices help Russia. Not a fan.
How come the nations that rely on gulf oil can just do nothing but we can’t? Let them freeze.
They just make deals with Iran to allow their tankers to pass. Not a big problem, since Iran have zero desire to anger China or India.
They can make all the deals they want. We should be blockading the straits, both directions.
No reason to ease up on our enemy iran in order to assist our enemies in the eu.
They haven’t been so far. Most traffic through the straits today goes in defiance of Iranian threats even if there may be under the table dealing. The offer of free passage for expelling US and Israeli diplomats is something even Iran’s closest allies have refused to do. And if anything Iran has been going after China and India to try and pressure them to Pressure us, hence the number of PRC ships stuck as they wait their turn for an opportunity to sneak through.
While that might be emotionally satisfying, it's also stupid, because, again, thanks to the way the world oil market works it also hurts us, and if we want to pursue this war to the necessary conclusion we need to keep domestic disruption to a bare minimum.
I’m content with being emotionally satisfied.
Decouple the US market from the world market. We seem to have enough oil for our use with plenty of margin. Certainly have plenty of natural gas.
Ban exports or treat them like military exports, require a license.
We don't sell to the world, except on special arrangement, we don't buy from the world. Everybody sorts their needs from there. And defends them as well.
Texas is burning off NG, because there are not enough pipelines to LNG ports, and the blue states of the NE refuse to buy American NG via new pipelines
Well, if the NE wants to be dumbasses then they can shiver in their winters and bake in their summers due to lack of power.
A hefty portion of them are moving south anyway.
Actually, oil is not fungible. The characteristics of oil differ from location to location. There are many different crude oils and they contain vastly different chemical compounds in vastly different amounts. Refineries are very specialised; and a plant which can process oil from one location may not be able to refine oil from a different place.
Well, the French pimp-smacking around some of their former colonial subjects is a good start to getting the band back together.
And to be fair, it isn't like the US legislature does any better at providing proper naval strength. (Yes, an escort frigate for the 21st century is a mini-Burke, and appropriately expensive....)
Won't happen. The Euros haven't been serious about maritime affairs since the end of the Cold War, and they're letting their understandable annoyance at Trump's blustering over Greenland and the obviously underplanned Iran war serve as excuses to not face up to the consequences of decades of neglect.
Not that we're that much better, mind you, but at least we understand that keeping the trade lanes open sometimes requires using your firepower on those who would close them.
"This latest Iranian crisis will not last much longer"
???
Iran can build a new anti-ship missile somewhere waaaaaay out in the east, put in a container on a truck, drive it to the coast and fire it at some vessel....over and over and over and over...for DECADES; as proven by their proxies elsewhere. doesn't matter if that even hits anything they might aim it at....the continuing threat is ALL.
But that anti-ship missile requires computer chips, aluminum for the shell or at least carbon fiber, and rocket or jet fuel. None of those things are sourced in Iran. They all come from over seas and have to be built in a factory within pretty easy reach of anything in the US inventory. A lot of Iran's infrastructure (rocket-fuel mixing machinery) was imported and now is destroyed. Iran is not Jason from Friday the 13th where it is unkillable/undefeatable.
But they can be flown in from Russia or China
Russia can't afford it. Their crap is being blown up by the Ukrainians on a near nightly basis. China can't afford to be seen flying in help in the middle of the conflict. Nor does China want to risk a planeload of Chinese getting smashed because they're flying in contested airspace. The reality is that if China was going to help, they would already have helped. They can't or won't because of the reasons above.
Your belief in Ukrainean propaganda is now too tedious to be even amusing. The same Ukrainean sources admits Russia produce more cruise missiles per month now than USA per year.
That's laughable. I diss Ukrainian propaganda on their drone warfare on the regular. The reality is that there are independent confirmation of strikes against Russian infrastructure. There is independent confirmation of Russia requesting return of materials given to other states as military aid. These things are matters of record in open source forums.
I do not denigrate the resilience of the Russian state, but even the US had to basically tell the Europeans that we can't give them certain weapon systems because we needed them for ourselves. Every country has its limits. Russia is in what it feels is an existential war right now. If you think they're going to divert supplies to Iran in the face of that, it is YOU who is tedious.
“ Your belief in Ukrainean propaganda is now too tedious to be even amusing.”
Firstly: Ukrainian, not “Ukrainean.” If you want to complain about others at least get the names right.
Secondly: We also have pro-Kremlin, anti-Ukrainian sources like Rybar mentioning this as well as general declines in the quantity of Russian artillery fire. While their economy has gone full military production. There’s a reason they sought to contract out production on drones and missiles to third parties like Iran, because they suffer.
“The same Ukrainean sources admits Russia produce more cruise missiles per month now than USA per year.”
Right, because Russia has been a nation introduced to rocketry back in the 1300s and has used it as a significant part of its military doctrine for 500 years, especially now with its other major arms suffering.
In contrast the US’s main formative experience with it was in the War of 1812 and to have focused on getting serious about rocketry in the late 1800s, so about a 150 years, and especially the last 70. And it has never, ever, ever been as key a part of our combined arms focus as it has been for Russia.
Ditto Ukraine.
Your point?
We have been spoiling up rocket production like we have everything else. It will take time for us to git gud but we also have a lot more capacity to do so than an economically and demographically gutted Russia and Ukraine. While also being able to supplement our rocketry with Air Force and Navy go Brrrt. If you can smash an enemy with a concrete “bomb” you don’t need to build a rocket or missile, and a lot of times the Kremlin has been reliant upon using missiles or rockets to service targets we’d just dumb bomb because Russia has never obtained air superiority over its great power rivals in its history, unless you are incredibly generous in calculating the last two years or so of WWII and ignoring the Western Allied Air Force’s that actually did that.
Not saying it is easy or perfect but this is absurdly one dimensional.
But it is already confirmed that both are. The remains of Russian drones have been recovered, and China has shipped rocket fuel components to Iran
And do we know WHEN those items were shipped? Again, China's not sending rocket-fuel by plane into an active war zone. They ain't shipping it by ship either. Russia isn't sending drones by plane into an active warzone where Israeli and US Planes are constantly flying. Is that a possibility for the future after the war? Sure. Right now? Nope.
How?
We have aerial supremacy. If something goes up with the Iranian regime’s iconography, it becomes a legitimate military target and gets blown up.
If it goes up in a Russian or PRC sigil we might - might - display enough restraint to let it land and then try to blow up the cargoes later. And then we slap a No Fly Zone label so that nobody else gets similar bright ideas.
And this is ignoring how both the PRC and especially Russia are different munitions and equipment shortfalls of their own and need their own stuff.
We might have air supremacy, but I sought even Trump is gutsy enough to shoot down a Russian of Chinese plane
Firstly: being willing and able to shoot down Russian or Chinese planes that FAFO too hard has been a valuable tool that generally gets good results. Erdogan's turkey being case in point. I would not rule it out, though it would be risky. Trump already showed a willingness to bomb VVS planes based in Syria after a warning in his first term, and I doubt he is more amiable towards Putin or Xi now.
Secondly: That's why I mentioned waiting for such a plane to drop off its cargo and then wait for it to get off. And imposing a No Fly Zone over Iran to try and head this off.
It's definitely not 100% probability even for me, but I really really don't think there's evidence it is a 0% as the Syria Red Line bombings show.
Parker nearby is correct, factually.
More bluntly, America has more missiles and drones than Iran has mullahs.
And we can make missiles faster.
Missiles - maybe, but definitedly not drones.
Mate, we use dozens of thousands of drones on the regular and are spooling up production for more including our own answer to disposable one shots like Shaheeds. Take a guess how many Mullahs you think Iran still has, let alone Ayatollahs.
“ Iran can build a new anti-ship missile somewhere waaaaaay out in the east, put in a container on a truck, drive it to the coast and fire it at some vessel....over and over and over and over...for DECADES; as proven by their proxies elsewhere.”
I think you are missing a few crucial components. Namely that their proxies were reliant upon an intact supply line and political leadership back to an unbombed, not blockaded Iran, as well as periodic ceasefires for rearmament. The Saudis have show a decent idea of what a regime that gives few farqs can do to an Iranian proxy with consistent pressure, and the Israelis have made good inroads into hurting Hezbollah’s rocketry. The key thing is to resist urges to let the enemy regroup.
Also the Eastern areas are now in a border war with the Taliban and various anti-Pakistani/anti-Mullah groups.
No problem. Brussels has no verbs. America is out of the Europe.
If $22 trillion GDP EU can't stop $2 trillion thug state, it's in Darwin's hands now.
We've all seen people like this at work, or in the service.....They show up after the work is done, and then slap themselves on the back for their good deeds.
And now that the majority of the work is done, they will suck up US resources, get in the way and should anything actually risky be happening will have to phone home to get permission to actually do anything, including defend themselves - while demanding the US protect them,
The US should set up a toll booth in the Strait, and charge a toll for every barrel that leaves.
The toll booth is a great idea. Totally unnecessary for an unnecessary incursion…
Someone is in worse shape than the United States! (*high-five*)
Well, this is exactly why I slagged the Euros in one of your other threads. These are fundamentally unserious people living off of past glories. They have mismanaged their nations and have no idea how to get out of the death spiral because that would require and admission of failure.
You look at the Brits who squandered a valuable frigate (HMS Richmond is going to be scrapped because she failed inspection) on a glorified PR tour to the far east so the various ministers could have a photo-op with their Japanese counterparts. It's ridiculous.
"This brittle military stance is the byproduct of three and a half decades of underinvestment in their defense in general, and their naval power in particular."
----------------------------------------------------
I think you will find that the underinvestment started in the late 1960s (1968 in the case of France) and their capacities -- like ours -- coasted on momentum for a few decades thereafter.
Get rid of the EU and watch individual European countries take their own defense more seriously.
The EU has no defensive function, it is primarily an economic union.
Doug: Yes, and that's the problem. The EU behaves as if it is a supra-national government and the European members defer to the EU and hide behind it for all-things global, even when it comes to what should be domestic security issues and defense issues, despite the fact that the EU has no security and defense apparatus. The EU has eroded the very concept of national sovereignity.
The EU is just the US with stronger states rights. NATO was its defense arrangement at the insistence of the US. That is now changing. The EU has made for the most peaceful period of Europe in its history. NATO and the EU have meant we have not needed to be involved in their conflicts since WWII.
NATO is a conundrum. You have Canada and the Western European deadbeats who have been free-riding for decades. Then you have the Eastern members who are spending more than 2% gdp as required.
We I believe this is the outcome we wished for. It is changing.
"The EU has made for the most peaceful period of Europe in its history."
Not even a little bit true.
NATO has made for the most peaceful period of European history. Euros stopped fighting each other because of an external threat and external leadership from the US.
The EU integrated the economies of Europe. It opened trade, labor and cultural exchange. The relationship between Germany, France, and Britain is fundamentally different. This has endured since the collapse of the USSR.
As usual, the CDR is correct. But what's of more concern, is that by not being able to send a fully-capable task force to assist either in the eastern Med or outside the Persian Gulf, the European nations are demonstrating NATO is hollowed out. Imagine, the most famous navy in history, the Royal Navy can't even deploy a single combatant with guns! Lord Nelson is spinning in his grave! Let along harass an enemy like a pirate - think Francis Drake. The US has its own problems. The most expensive aircraft carrier ever built can't make its toilets function! Anyway, as to escorting tankers, of course, the US Navy won't do it. Not just because a lot of the escorts would be frigates, which we don't have anymore. But because the new type of saturation attack (actually quite old type of attack, think Prince of Wales and Repulse vs Japanese navy torpedo bombers) will quickly expend all shipboard munitions, making any navy ship a target on the way out of the combat zone. Think, the last line of defense, a CIWS Phalanx shooting six thousand rounds a minute, will empty out after six bursts! And even loading up the deck with small arms, which we don't do anymore, will be too slow to respond. So, what do you do when 100 drones come at you? Answer, stay out of the box!
We know and the euros know that they have essentially castrated their own fleets. I hope that we do not let up and finish the job on the Ayatollahs and IRGC savages. Anything short of that will be a mission fail IMHO regardless of how much shit the euros and anyone else talks. What happened to "Unconditional surrender"? The world knows any "deal" will be based on a stack of haji lies. Like it or not we have all the tools there now...we going to rinse and repeat in 2 yrs 5 yrs 10yes?
A treaty is no good. Also Trump will only be around for another three years. There is no guarantee that he will be succeeded by Rubio or Vance. Imagine if Newscum become POTUS. The mullahs would be able to resume their nuclear program with impunity.
I think folks might enjoy this piece. https://centristlibertarianpatriot.substack.com/p/the-pentagon-keeps-announcing-reform?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I've read some of his stuff, and he appears to be opposed to eliminating Goldwater-Nichols, which is a source of more than a few problems.
I'm assuming you get the point of all this. We don't much need any of it and if we did, it wouldn't matter because it's not there.
This is all a wake up call for our allies and also exposes our shortcomings as well. Maybe we will now reverse the decades long decline impacting our own Navy.
None of it is a reason to allow a nuclear armed Iran or their continued support of global terror. We have to take the cards we're dealt.
"joint statement, opens new tab saying they were ready to join appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz"
I can't help but believe the discussions as to what the "appropriate efforts" are could take until just after the crises has passed.