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Conceivably, the 50 tankers per day could move in batches with the protection of a Destroyer. It's hard to imagine a credible surface or subsea threat with cur
by kev009 8mo ago
Conceivably, the 50 tankers per day could move in batches with the protection of a Destroyer. It's hard to imagine a credible surface or subsea threat with current fleet presence so it's basically a question of missile defense. Some constellation of vessels can indefinitely secure the zone if any powers that be with a suitable Navy desire it, and there are at least a few that have plausible capabilities.
- mkoubaa 8mo ago[flagged]
- Dylan16807 8mo agoOkay. Would you like to say which parts are the wrong parts?
- hedora 8mo agoDrones. It costs a lot more to block one than to build one, and Trump's already blaming Biden because the US is running low on the top tier interceptors. Congressional testimony suggests the current stockpile will last weeks. After that, they'll fall back on ones that are less accurate, and that will let some attacks through. The destroyer doesn't help much in that scenario, in the same way it's not going to stop mosquitoes from biting the oil tanker's crew. You could use it to transport a large number of interceptor drones behind an armored hull, I guess. But, in scenarios where you need to worry about strikes taking out stored interceptor drones on the tankers, then the tankers are already swiss cheese.
- nozzlegear 8mo agoIt'd be more helpful if you could explain for the class why you disagree with their comment, rather than disparage it with nothing of your own to offer.
- jibal 8mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bigfatkitten 8mo agoIf Iran makes a nuisance of itself for long enough, I expect a coalition naval task force will go and open the strait back up.
- verdverm 8mo agoIt's less about "opening it up" and more about the tanker companies feeling there is enough safety. With the Red Sea instance, they didn't start running ships until the Houthis said they were done.
- bigfatkitten 7mo agoThe feeling of safety in this scenario would be provided by the assurance that anyone who tries picking on a tanker would be stomped into the ground by a destroyer.
- verdverm 7mo agoexcept that history shows otherwise, as relayed in the submission
- verdverm 8mo agoThe missiles destroyers have are not the kind you want to use to shoot down shaheds. The economics don't work out in the long run. Same for AIM-9s. There are some new guided pod rockets that likely break even, but they are new. https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/06/typhoon-spotted-rocket-pods-first-time/ https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/06/typhoon-spotted-rocket...`
- decimalenough 8mo agoHow is a single destroyer going to protect 50 oil tankers at once? Oil tankers are almost comically unsuited to warfare and you don't need missiles to penetrate their non-existent defences, they can easily and cheaply be taken out by drones. Here's Ukraine doing just that for the Nth time last week: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5ll27z52do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5ll27z52do As the friendly article says, the US military has no idea about how commercial shipping works and how hard it will be convince anybody to transit through an active war zone.
- vkou 8mo agoThe simple solution seems to be to put the Trump fortune up as insurance collateral. If he's so confident that the war's such a good idea, he needs to put some skin in the game.
- dylan604 8mo agoSo now we know the true purpose for Board of Peace membership dues
- kev009 8mo agoNot congruent to what I wrote: Why would the batch size be 1? Must it be the US military? What anti-drone capabilities do Destroyers have or could be made to have? If the tankers are primarily for the benefit of Asia and not the US do you risk bringing additional parties with a grievance into your conflict?
- decimalenough 8mo agoKuwait, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, and Saudi are all US allies and they all rely on the Straits for exports. If they can't sell oil/LNG, they will be in much bigger trouble than their customers, who have other suppliers to choose from.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago> Must it be the US military? When the action you are talking about is, for anyone other than the US or Israel, signing up to become a co-belligerent with the US & Israel in their war with Iran? Yeah, the realistic options for who might do it are pretty limited.
- nixon_why69 8mo agoAnd now you have a US navy destroyer in torpedo range of the shore.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ncallaway 8mo agoYou have to convince three sets of people to move any tanker through the Straight: - the crew - the company - the insurer The company has an obvious reason to take on some amount of risk to move a vessel through the Straight. However, both the crew and the insurer will be quite risk averse, so the Navy would need to demonstrate a very high success rate in intercepting both missiles and shaheds to convince those two other groups to say "yes".
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- cosmicgadget 7mo agoSeems like a great way to have the destroyer's air defense overwhelmed/depleted by shaheds while IRGC drone boats and speedboats attack from the surface. Then you have 50 insurance claims against the US treasury.