Posted on 07/22/2019 12:23:27 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Pompeo said the “the United States has a responsibility to do our part, but the world’s got a big role in this too – to keep these sea lanes open.”
He added that Iran’s recent behavior should alarm nations around the globe.
“We don’t want war with Iran. We want them to behave like a normal nation. I think they understand that and I think the whole world is waking up to the fact that this threat is real,” Pompeo told "Fox & Friends." “It’s not just a threat against America, it’s not just a threat against Israel. It’s a threat against all of us.”
May, speaking to reporters Monday, again demanded the release of the British-flagged tanker.
"The ship was seized under false and illegal pretenses and the Iranians should release it and its crew immediately," she said, according to Reuters. “We do not seek confrontation with Iran but it is unacceptable and highly escalatory to seize a ship going about legitimate business through internationally recognized shipping lanes."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It was actually the reverse: approximately 800,000 Brit soldiers, sailors, and airmen died in WWI and 384,000 of them died in WWII.
One could argue too that the loss of our bravest and best during the last century’s wars has led to the rise the weirdness and apathy we suffer from here, today.
My guess is that outgoing the May government is still committed to appeasement and worried about being shown up by us, again.
We’ll see what Boris brings to the fight.
Iran is an implacable enemy that every day grows even more dangerous. How long do you think it will take, what new atrocities have to happen before we have to commit to end that evil?
Or do think that something magic’s going to happen and Iran will stop attacking us and our allies?
War is something to be avoided at nearly all costs - but at some point you have recognize when an adversary goes beyond rhetoric and transitions to a deadly and maybe overwhelming threat.
Dingbat Obama and his buddy Kerry passed the ball forward, virtually guaranteeing that Iran will have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them here. Should we wait for that? How much do you really know about nukes?
War is an awful thing but waiting for it to come here to us is worse.
I think the long-term strategy was to use up theirs before starting on ours.
I don’t, but when the aggrieved party tells you to stay out of it, stepping in is a great way to get shot by both sides. Ask any cop who’s had to deal with a domestic disturbance.
Boris isn’t going to be able to bring much of anything to the fight for a while. The Brits have stripped their Navy and have made some very poor purchasing decisions. Their major new naval units, the Type 45 Daring class, literally overheat in the Middle East and have their powerplants drop offline. The rest of the ship is fine, it’s just that they can’t operate in warm environments. They keep trying to fix the Rolls Royce powerplants on those ships, but I suspect they’re going to have to eventually admit defeat (years in the future) and install the designed alternate powerplant, the LM2500 as used by the US Navy. But it will take forever - look at how long it took the UK government to publicly admit there was anything wrong with their SA80/L85 rifles and then fix them, almost two decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDCRop6CRwY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js4d8c7KzCQ
Their only other surface combatants are a grand total of thirteen Type 23 frigstes that are worn out and need replacement. Competent ships, but they’re built for ASW and not great for AAW; their surface combat capability is a bit iffy.
Boris may *want* to bring something, but he won’t have much of anything to bring unless he wants to strip the other responsibilities of the Navy bare. The UK already has seven Type 23 on station in the Middle East and we just saw how much good those would (not) do.
Britain has literally told us not to interfere. They have claimed this is their fight. I say let them deal with it until and unless they change their mind... or government. Until then it is their problem, not ours.
What *we* should do is mind our own business - but if the Iranians decide to mess with any ship directly under *our* Navy’s protection, vaporize the threat, vaporize the launch vehicle, vaporize the base that supported the vehicle. And destroy any Iranian unit in sensor range. They’ll get the message pretty quick.
Amen brother! Amen! The hell with being the worlds cop. Our nation and our soldiers deserve better.
I still would. But not for no good reason.
Our economy and security being held ransom at the whims of OPEC is not a strategy. It's stupidity.
Uh-oh...what the “Trump’s gonna get us into a stupid war” folks gonna do with this one???
Hopefully, our navy's in better shape now.
We have our own problems and our latest two designs are disasters in different ways. And our crews keep running into merchant vessels.
That said, do you now understand what many are saying here about Britain being left to deal with it themselves at their own request? They have told us to butt out of the matter. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t defend our own interests there, just that the Brits don’t want us helping with Brit flagged ships. That’s their prerogative and we should honor it, regardless of whether we think they are actually capable of dealing with the problem.
"And our crews keep running into merchant vessels"
Yes, but that really isn't the ships' fault: more like indifferently chosen ship's COs and the thrill of diversity in manning (womanning?) as well as a lack of talent in critical positions.
I have to admit, I'd love to be the one shredding IRG fast boats into itty bitty fragments with a 5"/62 or a 76mm Oto Melara.
You may see more activity - but even if they placed a crash order today, it would be six months to a year before GE or one of their two licensees could deliver a single military grade modern LM2500 if they decided just to shortcut all the attempts to fix the existing Rolls Royce powerplants. The LM2500 is quite popular and there’s a wait list IIRC.
Ships are nothing but inert metal (for now) without their crews. Crew quality and attitude can be and most often is at least as important as the actual hardware. See the Naval Battle Of Elli, where a single Greek cruiser took on an Ottoman four battleship line of battle - and *won*.
But if you want to talk about that, go look at the US Zumwalt class destroyer. It mounts a gun that doesn’t work for anything but medium or long range and we don’t have ammo for it because it’s not compatible with conventional ammo and we (correctly) decided not to buy the overpriced experimental ammo for it. So you have a giant destroyer with less gun armament than some Texas fishing trawlers.
I used to work with the navy on fire support systems and there was a large gulf between the view of the managers of the Office of Naval Research, the engineers at NSWC Dahlgren, and the men who would actually operate the systems.
Basic ballistics would tell even marginally-educated people that shooting projectiles further increases dispersion and reduces payload. The navy pushed the Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM) but it was doomed, because the push for greater range meant it was limited to scattering a few bomblet’s and took a long time to get to it’s intended target.
Now the navy’s latest pet rock is the Rail Gun. They never learn.
It’s not the railgun. They didn’t mount the railgun to the DD1000. They put something called the Advanced Gun System on it. They should have waited for the railgun.
They would have been better off with a 5”/62 (if the ship’s structure can handle the recoil loads): the Rail Gun is a long way off from being useful.
The railgun prototypes they have can actually at least throw projectiles. The AGS can’t.
Read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gun_System
Great fund raiser for industry but so far, another dead end.
But no. The Marines wanted greater range to reach further inshore and the navy wanted to fire from further out to sea to avoid coastal defenses, so they wanted more range. More range means greater initial impulse, which means stronger projectiles, stronger weapon and mount, rocket-assist, terminal guidance, and when the industry designs it (BAE in this case) stand by for monumental costs.
You would think that the Lightweight 8" project failure and the Vertical Gun System failure, and the ERGM project failure would have taught them something before they burned off more DoD/Navy funds. Which of course are our funds.
At Mach 7, you may not need explosives. The conversion of mass to energy on impact with even the ground will cause a large explosions equivalent.
Muzzle flash, counterbattery radar and acoustic gunfire locators will do just fine to locate existing gun systems, so that’s a wash at worst.
The EMP issue causing havoc with surrounding systems was resolved some time ago. Unshielded commercial GoPro cameras in close proximity to a firing railgun have no significant ill effects at this point. Also, it’s not the rail that has to be replaced (at this stage of engineering) but the rail covers.
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