Begun, the Battle of Hormuz Has
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As long as the A-10 is around we’ll find a use for it:
The U.S. and its allies have intensified the battle to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, sending low-flying attack jets over the sea lanes to blast Iranian naval vessels and Apache helicopters to shoot down Iran’s deadly drones, American military officials said.
The stepped-up operation is part of a multistage Pentagon plan to reduce the danger from Iranian armed boats, mines and cruise missiles, which have halted ship traffic through the waterway since early March. If the danger can be reduced, the U.S. could send U.S. warships through the strait and eventually escort vessels in and out of the Persian Gulf.
But it will still likely take weeks for the U.S. to clear out Iran’s web of assets that have harassed traffic through a chokepoint for 20% of the world’s oil exports and a large amount of commercial shipping traffic. The strait’s effective closure has sent Brent oil prices soaring above $100 a barrel—briefly touching $119 before closing at $108.65, up 1.2%, on Thursday—and forced the Trump administration to grapple with the economic implications of the war it launched alongside Israel on Feb. 28.
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed the operation in a Pentagon news conference Thursday, saying heavily armed A-10 warplanes, known as the Warthog, along with Apache attack helicopters, were flying missions over the strait or off the southern coast of Iran.
Brief aside; the way we talk about the term “obsolete” with respect to military equipment is broken. “Obsolete” does not mean “useless” and may not even mean “incapable of delivering the required effects.” World War II battleships (and indeed modernized World War I battleships) were the only platforms capable of delivering certain volumes of fire in preparation for amphibious assaults, but it doesn’t mean that it was worthwhile or economical to keep them around for those purposes. The A-10 may be uniquely well-suited to this particular mission, but that doesn’t mean maintaining the fleet makes sense at this late date. That said, Trump will probably decide that they’re “cool” or some such and keep them around for another fifty years.
This particular exercise also underscored the danger posed by Iranian naval mines, and how A-10s could help protect ships tasked to clear them. The Santa Barbara is one of three Independence class LCSs configured for minesweeping duties that had been forward deployed in the Middle East last year to fill gaps left by the decommissioning of a quartet of Avenger class mine hunters. Those ships have become a separate topic of discussion after two of them, the USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, emerged thousands of miles away to the east, first in Malaysia and now in Singapore. Why the Navy sent those ships not just out of harm’s way in the Middle East in the run-up to the current conflict, but then to an entirely different theater remains largely unexplained.
In general, threats posed by small boats, especially operating in swarms, are not new. This is also an area where Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has invested heavily for decades, as TWZ has explored in the past. U.S. officials have previously declared the Iranian Navy to have been rendered combat ineffective, but many of the more than 120 ships it has targeted so far have been larger vessels. Iran has hundreds of fast boats, some of which are armed with short-range anti-ship missiles, as well as artillery rockets and other weapons. They can also be used to lay naval mines. These fleets are inherently harder to find and fix, and do not need large ports to operate from. The A-10’s attributes, including its long loiter time, make it a key tool for interdicting these threats.
All of this is now further magnified by the expanding use of explosive-laden drone boats. Though kamikaze uncrewed surface vessels are now firmly in the public consciousness as a result of their use in the conflict in Ukraine, Iran and its regional proxies pioneered their use in Middle Eastern waterways years beforehand. This is a capability that Iran has now brought to bear in its efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to regular maritime traffic.
This is to say that we are fighting Iran on terms and in places that are most advantageous to Iran. This doesn’t mean Iran will win; it just means that our leaders have chosen poorly. In other news, Marines are on the way:
The Pentagon is sending three warships and thousands of additional Marines to the Middle East, even as President Trump insists he won’t put American boots on the ground in Iran, according to U.S. officials. Roughly 2,200 to 2,500 Marines from the California-based USS Boxer amphibious ready group and 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit are heading to the U.S. Central Command, responsible for all American forces in the Middle East, the officials said.
This is the second massive deployment of Marines in the past week, after the Pentagon sent the Japan-based USS Tripoli and 31st MEU to the region. The news comes just a day after Trump said he had no plans to put American troops on the ground in Iran.
You will not be surprised to learn that a staggered deployment of this sort is precisely the wrong way to fight a war, especially a war that YOU STARTED AT A TIME OF YOUR CHOOSING. As the President has become fond of World War II analogies, it’s worth taking note that both the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Western colonial possession in the Pacific were well-prepared in advance and tightly coordinated; Yamamoto didn’t send two carriers to bomb Pearl and then another two a week or so later just to mop up.
Also Chuck Norris has passed, at exactly the moment America most needs him.