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Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War

Posted by timothy on from the good-time-to-be-ex-navy dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The high stakes standoff between Iran and the U.S. over the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-fifth of the world's oil, escalated this week as Iran's navy claimed to have recorded video of a U.S. aircraft carrier entering the Port of Oman and the deputy chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami rejected U.S. claims that it could prevent Iran from closing the strait. To drive the point home, Iran has started a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf to show off how it could use small speedboats and a barrage of missiles to combat America's naval armada while in a report for the Naval War College, U.S. Navy Commander Daniel Dolan wrote that Iran has acquired 'thousands of sea mines, wake homing torpedoes, hundreds of advanced cruise missiles (PDF) and possibly more than one thousand small Fast Attack Craft and Fast Inshore Attack Craft.'" (Read more, below.) Hugh Pickens continues: "The heart of the Iran's arsenal is its 200 small potential-suicide boats — fiberglass motorboats with a heavy machine gun, a multiple rocket-launcher, or a mine — and may also carry heavy explosives, rigged to ram and blow a hole in the hull of a larger ship. These boats will likely employ a strategy of 'swarming' — coming out of nowhere to ambush merchant convoys and American warships in narrow shipping lanes. But the U.S. Navy is not defenseless against kamikaze warfare. The U.S. has put more machine guns and 25-millimeter gyro-stabilized guns on the decks of warships, modified the 5-inch gun to make it more capable of dealing with high-speed boats, and improved the sensor suite of the Aegis computer-integrated combat system aboard destroyers and cruisers. 'We have been preparing for it for a number of years with changes in training and equipment,' says Vice Admiral (ret.) Kevin Cosgriff, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command."

5 of 969 comments (clear)

  1. Gee, maybe U.S. shouldn't try to steal oil by InterestingFella · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    If you just would leave rest of the alone and not steal resources belonging to other countries then maybe, MAYBE everyone wouldn't hate U.S. so much?

    1. Re:Gee, maybe U.S. shouldn't try to steal oil by sita · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Yep, the American hegemony in the latter half of the last century really needed all that German oil.

    2. Re:Gee, maybe U.S. shouldn't try to steal oil by InterestingFella · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      What would you think if your kids died and someone told you it was because of overpopulation? Would that make their dead ok? That their dead supported world not getting overpopulated? Just think a little bit before writing stupid shit.

  2. Owwww by rotorbudd · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Yea, a 5 inch with flechette rounds.
    Wonder how that fiberglass speedboat will hold up?

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
  3. Re:Suicide boats is not Iran's primary weapon by gary_7vn · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You make it sound like Iran is the aggressor here. Are you fucking drunk?