Report: U.S. Shoulders Steep Price to Protect Merchant Ships in Strait of Hormuz

USNI News ^ | November 29, 2019 | John Grady

[Retain Mike]

The Navy pays a steep price keeping an aircraft carrier with escorts on station to deter attacks on oil tanker traffic operating in and around the Persian Gulf as part of the United States’ “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, according to a new report. The ongoing carrier operations in the region are not only pricey for the U.S. Navy but also creates the potential to disrupt energy markets if a confrontation escalates.

Operation Sentinel, the U.S.-led effort to maintain maritime security through the strait, involves deploying more aircraft to the region and sending more U.S. troops to support air defense systems sent to Persian Gulf states at the expense of other parts of the world, says the Center for New American Security report, ‘In Dire Straits’ Implications of U.S.-Iran Tensions for the Global Oil Market.

Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, now has resources to protect shipping traffic transiting the Strait of Hormuz, but by doing so, “cuts a lot of what you can do in the Pacific and Europe,” Ilan Goldenberg one of the report’s authors told USNI News in an interview.

[Retain Mike]

Evidently, we have achieved energy independence, so why should we be the noes to shoulder the burden? Well the following quote from the article is significant to me. “What China will do in the region “is the million-dollar question” when it comes to future operations in the Persian Gulf. “China only now is building out the capability” to sustain long-term escort operations that’s bolstered by Beijing’s new naval base in Djibouti.”

[Psalm 73]

I think, though, that our active carriers need to be on station somewhere.

So the "cost" is negligible - they need to be out and training anyway.

[The Pack Knight]

.... In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.

[DoodleDawg]

They could be training closer to home. They aren’t there alone and the ships along with them could burn less fuel training in home waters.

[entropy12]

Why not borrow more to protect oil flow from the Gulf to China & Japan & SE Asia & South Asia? After all China & Japan are eager to lend us more! /Facetious

[Mariner]

With airfields all around and everything within shooting distance, there is no reason for a CBG to be there. Maybe cruise into the Arabian sea occasionally for ops, but certainly not the Gulf. Especially the Strait of Hormuz.

Of course it’s an effective triple-dog-dare, spectacular even.

The entire gulf can be protected with shore based air power, 2 diesel boats, 6 corvettes and 4 frigates.

And if every tanker cannot be protected every hour, it’s adequate deterrent.

[wastedyears]

That’s what I think our Navy should be doing these days. Simply protecting US-flagged commercial and merchant vessels. If other countries and companies want our protection, a nominal fee would suffice.

We just spend too damn much.

[sheehan]

We need to build a Strategic Gasoline Reserve and boost refining capacity across the country to lessen the real everyday short-term impacts of oil price fluctuations due to instability in Gulf.

[FreedomPoster]

It’s really an absurd place to put a CVN, whose natural home is open ocean.

[Zhang Fei]

[Evidently, we have achieved energy independence]

---

Energy independence would involve not using oil at all. Given that there’s more or less a single global price for oil, if oil prices go to $150, our gasoline prices go to $6 a gallon. Like it or not, we need global supplies to flow to keep oil prices low. Would we feel less pain than Europe if oil went to $150? Sure. But we’d still feel a lot of pain.

[Billthedrill]

Lots of calculator buttons clicking on this one - at what point does a carrier group presence there become more expensive than U.S. interests warrant? There's quite a bit more to it than just the oil market, namely the opposition of Iranian expansionism and exportation of armed revolution, given that these dovetail with an ongoing program to develop nuclear weapons and delivery capabilities. As to the latter two in particular, it has long been a major bone of contention with the EU as to their unwillingness to support sanctions and their willingness to pursue economic relations given that they are directly threatened by those programs and the U.S. is not (at least so long as the Iranians lack a proven ICBM).

At the moment it appears that containment is worth the cost, but that will not always be true given the rapidly changing political environment in the Middle East and Europe, and to a lesser degree Asia and the U.S. The U.S. is not energy independent yet, although we could be if we are willing to incur the considerable cost, but we are an oil exporting nation now, hence insulated from oil price volatility to a great degree. That changes Iran's strategic alignment, because a spike in oil prices now benefits the Great Satan as well as Iran. That wasn't true before, and it constitutes the loss of their principal strategic weapon that their nuclear weapons programs promise to replace, should those be allowed to come to fruition. Lots of chips on the table here.

The Europeans could break this deadlock, and so could the Iranians, but neither will, at least at present. Either one could change very rapidly.

[rrrod]

Iran/Russia need to constantly checked.

[Retain Mike]

that sounds fine to me. I would suggest that Trump could ask the European NATO countries to start pulling their weight by sending their warships to the gulf. The kids would love it and it would be great training.

[Retain Mike]

Yep. It’s great training and the kids love it. They need to get into the Atlantic once and a while, so the pilots can land and take off in real seas.

[Retain Mike]

Doesn’t seem to be much chance there. The only alternative energy source is nuclear fission. All the rest is nuclear fusion sourced in the sun. In this political climate I doubt we would get any even though there is now technology light years ahead of the time civilian power plants were based on ship power plants with each dimension multiplied times 20.