What's Going On With Shipping? is an excellent YouTube channel. In today's installment, Sal reviews the latest bad news from the Straits of Hormuz.
What hits me here is that the US Navy is too small for the job and the Littoral Combat Ships simply aren't fit for purpose. They have almost no firepower and are essentially bullet sponges. They were originally intended for just this kind of area, but when faced with operational realities, they've got to be kept out of the line of fire.
Second, the US is learning the lessons from the recent revolution in warfare - inexpensive drones - the hard way. The Iranian-built Shahed 136 is a long-range kamikaze drone with a 100# warhead. I'm pretty sure it's GPS-guided. It's great for attacking immobile, thin-skinned targets like energy infrastructure or docked ships. At 100 MPH, it would take forever for it to get to its target, but you need something in the air to shoot it down.
We're not privy to the kill rates for the Allies or the munitions drawdown for the Iranians, so I'm still sanguine about the end result. It's not even been 2 weeks yet. It would be great to have a magic wand to wave and make it all go away, but those are in short supply.
Lastly, some of the attacks on shipping have been done by Unmanned Surface Vehicles. Think speedboats with explosives on the bow, guided by radio from a nearby command boat. You have to get real close to the enemy to use those and the command boat is a sitting duck. It's a kamikaze mission of its own. It's the fact that the Iranians have had any success at all with these that makes the small size of the US Navy apparent. As Sal says in the video below, during Desert Storm, we didn't have these problems because our Navy was twice the size it is today and none of the hulls were those useless LCSs.
Anyway, here's the video.
1 comment:
"I'm still sanguine about the end result."
That kind of depends on what you expect as the end result. Where do you think this is ultimately heading?
If the goal was to just smack around the Iranian government and tell them, "Now behave, or we will smack you around again!", then the objective has likely already been achieved.
If the goal is to replace their old leadership with some that are more well-disposed to us, well, that's another can of fish. So far we've replaced one absolute theocratic despot with another, but the new one has the added bonus that we not only assassinated his father, but also apparently killed his wife and children. Now, if I were in his position, this would not incline me towards abject surrender and voluntary subjugation. It would be more likely to inspire me to devote everything I have and the remainder of my life to exacting a terrible vengeance on the killers of my family. Is that really where we wanted to end up?
And if the goal is to actually invade any significant part of Iran, and engage in ground combat with over 90 million people who have been told for their entire lives that the US and Israel are devils incarnate and must be destroyed, I don't see that working out well at all for anybody.
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