6 ms·

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

by 1970-01-01 8mo ago

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.

ethagknight 8mo ago
It’s not fear, it’s cost-benefit, and it would take all the trucks in the middle east to move a tiny portion of the export that typically goes via ship. It would be easier and more aligned for Qatar, UAE, Saudis to pay mercs to keep the strait clear.
- sebastiennight 8mo ago
  > it would take all the trucks in the middle east to move a tiny portion of the export that typically goes via ship May I suggest an alternative mode of freight that pre-dates trucks and can move much larger volumes at a much lower CO2 cost, namely... a transcontinental train line? (obviously not going to happen, and might even trigger a few PR cycles about a "hyperloop", but if you were going to try to build large-volume freight, that's where I'd start)
  - BurningFrog 8mo ago
    Pipelines are by far the best option for large-volume oil freight on land! Note that it takes about 10000 trucks to carry the 2 million barrels of oil in one typical oil tanker.
    - sebastiennight 8mo ago
      I can't believe that I didn't think of a pipeline first. So... yes. Also another argument against trucks: they consume fuel to carry fuel.
      - beAbU 8mo ago
        > I can't believe that I didn't think of a pipeline first. Don't feel bad, a pipeline is just a different type of train. The tracks are hollow and the cars are molecular in size.
  - sourcecodeplz 8mo ago
    that railway can be bombed too
    - sebastiennight 8mo ago
      I'd say there are orders of magnitude of difference between attacking a narrow passage of water that borders your very large country (here the narrower the area you want to block, the better), versus a few-meters-wide railway that starts in another country and goes thousands of kilometers in a direction pointing away from you (and in the second case, the narrower the target, the more difficult to hit).
  - kipchak 8mo ago
    I'm reminded of the pre ww1 Berlin–Baghdad railway.
    - sebastiennight 8mo ago
      Well see? Problem solved!
  - cjrp 8mo ago
    I guess a train line has a similar risk of security concerns/disruption, vs. trucks which can be re-routed.
- beshur 8mo ago
  Is there a real merc naval power that can support operations against ground based anti-ship missiles?
onlyrealcuzzo 8mo ago
KSA can get most of their oil to the Red Sea in 2-3 years (like 90%+). By the end of the year, they should be able to get >50% there. UAE can get ~30% through Oman now, and probably ~75% in 3-4 years. Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are screwed without the straight. Qatar could probably work a deal with KSA to get all of their oil through its pipes to the Red Sea if need be in 2-3 years, but they'd pay a premium. If I had to guess, I think this will structurally push KSA and UAE to move out of the straight, and for anyone in the straight to be tied to China and India. I imagine Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran are all going to become Chinese and Indian client states. North & South America now have a major oil & natural gas surplus. Their total usage is declining and production is increasing. Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can. China's probably reached peak fossil fuel imports already.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  >Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can. Yeah, but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been, so that doesn't help the EU manufacturing industry that in 10 years we'll be fossil fuel free, if they have to close shop in 12 months from the energy price hikes.
  - toomuchtodo 8mo ago
    > but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been This is factually inaccurate. Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs - https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-and-costs/ https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... (updated daily) Ember Energy: Wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the EU for the first time in 2025 - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-generated-more-power-than-fossil-fuels-in-the-eu-for-the-first-time-in-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener... - January 22nd, 2026 Bloomberg: How Europe Ditched Russian Fossil Fuels With Spectacular Speed - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/ukraine-news-europe-ditches-russia-fossil-fuels-with-surprising-speed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/ukraine-n... | https://archive.today/yxGp2 https://archive.today/yxGp2 - February 21st, 2023 > But what the past year has shown is that it’s possible to go harder and faster in deploying solar panels and batteries, reducing energy use, and permanently swapping out entrenched sources of fossil fuel. > Solar installations across Europe increased by a record 40-gigawatts last year, up 35% compared with 2021, just shy of the most optimistic scenario from researchers at BloombergNEF. That jump was driven primarily by consumers who saw cheap solar panels as a way to cut their own energy bills. It essentially pushed the solar rollout ahead by a few years, hitting a level that will be sustained by EU policies. (Europe has enough wind potential to power the world, their energy constraints are deployment rate of renewables, battery storage, and transmission)
moralestapia 8mo ago
The problem is not the road. It is prohibitely expensive to move things using trailers vs. freight.
- 1970-01-01 8mo ago
  If they're literally shipping just fuel, wouldn't the transporting cost almost be free?
  - moralestapia 8mo ago
    You cannot burn your fuel and then sell it. Also ... hmm ... trailers don't work with unrefined oil ...
    - phil21 8mo ago
      Trailers work with unrefined oil. There isn’t much difference between a truck trailer and an oil tanker car on the railway. Difference is size and cost per unit to move it. We are talking about Middle East light sweet crude oil here, not Alberta’s oil sands or whatnot which does require some processing and heating even before sending it through a pipeline. North Dakota currently sends a few trainloads of crude oil directly from the fields to refiners 50 miles away from me today. Tanker trucks do routes picking up a few dozen barrels per rig every few days/weeks/months in low producing areas of the country.
      - moralestapia 8mo ago
        >Trailers work with unrefined oil. No.
        1970-01-01 8mo ago
        Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine#Modern_crude_oil_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine#Modern_crude_...
phil21 8mo ago
US Naval power has been drastically hollowed out - other than for strategic force projection for low intensity conflicts involving air strikes. Even for that, it's a shadow of what it once was. This isn't the 1980's where we can surge 100 warships to an area of the world to deny the area or perform escort missions. If we decided to 10x the Navy budget today and start building ships we'd be a couple decades out since we'd have to start from "train the ship building workforce" first principles to begin with. Other than air power, the US has been operating off military (reputation) inertia for decades now.
- D13Fd 8mo ago
  There is also the question of whether ships even make sense right now, when a multi-billion-dollar ship full of sailors is at huge risk from a swarm of drones costing 1/1000th as much, and we have not yet mastered drone defenses.
  - andriy_koval 8mo ago
    ships are carriers of cruise missiles they can launch from 2k miles distance out of range of swarm of drones.
  - phil21 8mo ago
    I think ships make a lot of sense - particularly much cheaper ships built in larger quantities. Think WWII era destroyers and frigates that can be mass-deployed by the dozens for air and sea coverage. Obviously updated quite a lot with cheap point defense, and of course some more expensive ballistic missile defense systems. The fact we can't send 100+ warships out there to create an integrated air and sea defensive screen for not even drone swarms - just a few dozen drones at at time at best - is pretty embarrassing. The question is if the US is even capable of building such a thing these days? My bets are on no, since we can't seem to build much of anything at an industrial scale for any cost. But that can turn relatively quickly so long as there is emergency of existential scale and time enough to do it.

ethagknight 8mo ago

It’s not fear, it’s cost-benefit, and it would take all the trucks in the middle east to move a tiny portion of the export that typically goes via ship. It would be easier and more aligned for Qatar, UAE, Saudis to pay mercs to keep the strait clear.

sebastiennight 8mo ago
> it would take all the trucks in the middle east to move a tiny portion of the export that typically goes via ship May I suggest an alternative mode of freight that pre-dates trucks and can move much larger volumes at a much lower CO2 cost, namely... a transcontinental train line? (obviously not going to happen, and might even trigger a few PR cycles about a "hyperloop", but if you were going to try to build large-volume freight, that's where I'd start)
- BurningFrog 8mo ago
  Pipelines are by far the best option for large-volume oil freight on land! Note that it takes about 10000 trucks to carry the 2 million barrels of oil in one typical oil tanker.
  - sebastiennight 8mo ago
    I can't believe that I didn't think of a pipeline first. So... yes. Also another argument against trucks: they consume fuel to carry fuel.
    - beAbU 8mo ago
      > I can't believe that I didn't think of a pipeline first. Don't feel bad, a pipeline is just a different type of train. The tracks are hollow and the cars are molecular in size.
- sourcecodeplz 8mo ago
  that railway can be bombed too
  - sebastiennight 8mo ago
    I'd say there are orders of magnitude of difference between attacking a narrow passage of water that borders your very large country (here the narrower the area you want to block, the better), versus a few-meters-wide railway that starts in another country and goes thousands of kilometers in a direction pointing away from you (and in the second case, the narrower the target, the more difficult to hit).
- kipchak 8mo ago
  I'm reminded of the pre ww1 Berlin–Baghdad railway.
  - sebastiennight 8mo ago
    Well see? Problem solved!
- cjrp 8mo ago
  I guess a train line has a similar risk of security concerns/disruption, vs. trucks which can be re-routed.
beshur 8mo ago
Is there a real merc naval power that can support operations against ground based anti-ship missiles?

onlyrealcuzzo 8mo ago

KSA can get most of their oil to the Red Sea in 2-3 years (like 90%+). By the end of the year, they should be able to get >50% there. UAE can get ~30% through Oman now, and probably ~75% in 3-4 years. Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are screwed without the straight. Qatar could probably work a deal with KSA to get all of their oil through its pipes to the Red Sea if need be in 2-3 years, but they'd pay a premium. If I had to guess, I think this will structurally push KSA and UAE to move out of the straight, and for anyone in the straight to be tied to China and India. I imagine Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran are all going to become Chinese and Indian client states. North & South America now have a major oil & natural gas surplus. Their total usage is declining and production is increasing. Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can. China's probably reached peak fossil fuel imports already.

joe_mamba 8mo ago
>Meanwhile, the EU, Japan, SK, etc are moving towards renewables & nuclear as fast as they can. Yeah, but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been, so that doesn't help the EU manufacturing industry that in 10 years we'll be fossil fuel free, if they have to close shop in 12 months from the energy price hikes.
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago
  > but current EU energy prices are as high as they ever been This is factually inaccurate. Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs - https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-and-costs/ https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... (updated daily) Ember Energy: Wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the EU for the first time in 2025 - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-generated-more-power-than-fossil-fuels-in-the-eu-for-the-first-time-in-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener... - January 22nd, 2026 Bloomberg: How Europe Ditched Russian Fossil Fuels With Spectacular Speed - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/ukraine-news-europe-ditches-russia-fossil-fuels-with-surprising-speed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/ukraine-n... | https://archive.today/yxGp2 https://archive.today/yxGp2 - February 21st, 2023 > But what the past year has shown is that it’s possible to go harder and faster in deploying solar panels and batteries, reducing energy use, and permanently swapping out entrenched sources of fossil fuel. > Solar installations across Europe increased by a record 40-gigawatts last year, up 35% compared with 2021, just shy of the most optimistic scenario from researchers at BloombergNEF. That jump was driven primarily by consumers who saw cheap solar panels as a way to cut their own energy bills. It essentially pushed the solar rollout ahead by a few years, hitting a level that will be sustained by EU policies. (Europe has enough wind potential to power the world, their energy constraints are deployment rate of renewables, battery storage, and transmission)

moralestapia 8mo ago

The problem is not the road. It is prohibitely expensive to move things using trailers vs. freight.

1970-01-01 8mo ago
If they're literally shipping just fuel, wouldn't the transporting cost almost be free?
- moralestapia 8mo ago
  You cannot burn your fuel and then sell it. Also ... hmm ... trailers don't work with unrefined oil ...
  - phil21 8mo ago
    Trailers work with unrefined oil. There isn’t much difference between a truck trailer and an oil tanker car on the railway. Difference is size and cost per unit to move it. We are talking about Middle East light sweet crude oil here, not Alberta’s oil sands or whatnot which does require some processing and heating even before sending it through a pipeline. North Dakota currently sends a few trainloads of crude oil directly from the fields to refiners 50 miles away from me today. Tanker trucks do routes picking up a few dozen barrels per rig every few days/weeks/months in low producing areas of the country.
    - moralestapia 8mo ago
      >Trailers work with unrefined oil. No.
      - 1970-01-01 8mo ago
        Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine#Modern_crude_oil_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine#Modern_crude_...

phil21 8mo ago

US Naval power has been drastically hollowed out - other than for strategic force projection for low intensity conflicts involving air strikes. Even for that, it's a shadow of what it once was. This isn't the 1980's where we can surge 100 warships to an area of the world to deny the area or perform escort missions. If we decided to 10x the Navy budget today and start building ships we'd be a couple decades out since we'd have to start from "train the ship building workforce" first principles to begin with. Other than air power, the US has been operating off military (reputation) inertia for decades now.

D13Fd 8mo ago
There is also the question of whether ships even make sense right now, when a multi-billion-dollar ship full of sailors is at huge risk from a swarm of drones costing 1/1000th as much, and we have not yet mastered drone defenses.
- andriy_koval 8mo ago
  ships are carriers of cruise missiles they can launch from 2k miles distance out of range of swarm of drones.
- phil21 8mo ago
  I think ships make a lot of sense - particularly much cheaper ships built in larger quantities. Think WWII era destroyers and frigates that can be mass-deployed by the dozens for air and sea coverage. Obviously updated quite a lot with cheap point defense, and of course some more expensive ballistic missile defense systems. The fact we can't send 100+ warships out there to create an integrated air and sea defensive screen for not even drone swarms - just a few dozen drones at at time at best - is pretty embarrassing. The question is if the US is even capable of building such a thing these days? My bets are on no, since we can't seem to build much of anything at an industrial scale for any cost. But that can turn relatively quickly so long as there is emergency of existential scale and time enough to do it.