Posted on 12/30/2023 7:15:42 PM PST by rdl6989
An American destroyer shot down two anti-ship ballistic missiles fired from Yemen Saturday as it responded to a call for help from a container ship that was hit separately, the US Central Command (Centcom) said.
Centcom said the US destroyers Gravely and Laboon responded to a request for assistance from the Maersk Hangzhou, a Singapore-flagged, Denmark-owned and operated container ship that reported being struck by a missile while transiting the Red Sea.
While responding, missiles were launched toward the ships from territory controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, Centcom said.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
There was a brief report on cable tv this AM that a US helicopter took out several Houthi boats attacking a freighter.
“...anti-ship ballistic missiles...:
The sad state of journalism.
—
that’s what the missile type is called.
What am I missing?
—
JoeB’s Iranian policy.
“ Always there to insult America, aren’t you”
*****************************************
Well, Frenchy, it looked to me like he was actually insulting a British news publisher.
Engaging in purely defensive tactics to defend something you have no obligation to defend is the losingest game of all.
What I find most distressing about threads like this is that they are filled with posts from Freepers who think it’s a good idea for the U.S. to use its military assets to defend someone else’s shipping industry. When the hell did this make any sense at all?
Why aren’t you storming Yemeni beaches with your rifle?
These armchair warrior warmongers are just to much.
Under leadership we’d be hitting the launch sites and Iran for every attempted missile strike.
You have a number of valid points. Thanks for the reply.
The entire history says that if Iran is smacked with much superior force & loses significant assets or people (see “Trump”, for example), the mullahs will squawk and then back down.
Nonsense. Only a few types are in short supply. When it comes to fighter aircraft-borne munitions, we generally have huge reserves.
That said, what we don't have is platforms in the area that can launch overwhelming numbers of relatively cheap medium size drones. "Turnabout-plus" being fair play and all...
My baby is an AEGIS tech on that ship!!! Good shooting son!
(Can we please hit them back x10000000?)
When the hell did this make any sense at all?
To our globalist masters it always made sense. Everything is interconnected in their global economy, and it all depends on cheap, reliable shipping to continue with the "offshoring" and arbitrage of 3rd-world labor that made them so wealthy.
So, yes, it makes perfect sense for them to use the American military to defend someone else's shipping industry. It is all their industry. Somebody has to protect it. Americans are the most capable and easiest to con in to doing that.
Their biggest problem is that they are stupid. They are wasting a valuable and irreplaceable tool by using half-hearted measures that will break the tool. They are riven by factional conflicts and some of the factions hate America more than they hate their other enemies. There is a distinctly pro-Iranian faction in the American oligarchy that wants to see a catastrophic American defeat in the Persian Gulf. They are the faction which dominates right now.
So, we are cruising around on patrols in the Persian Gulf to "Defend Our Allies" and "Protect The American Way Of Life" and make the world safe for "Our Democracy"(tm). It is a setup.
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious". (General Smedley Butler, USMC)
“Why aren’t you storming Yemeni beaches with your rifle?”
The sea voyage is too dangerous.
Raytheon would love to do that - but right now they can’t. They can’t get the chips and they have said as much.
When avoiding shortages, severe inflation, and possible collapse of Western, allied, and other economies made sense. Diverting shipping will cause around 20% shortages of some commodities (considerably worse in Europe). In the short to medium term, at least in the US, supplies will mostly ...readjust at higher prices. ("mostly" - that fuel pump for my other (old) car, well, I may have to wish myself luck.) Just what we all needed, right? Europe, already much more "teetering", and the problems created with shipping capacity are much greater, will be much worse. Friendly Asian countries (S. Korea, Japan, etc.) OTOH will have production piling up in ports and warehouses, eventually forcing mass layoffs. China too, but even there, no one with any sense wants China's economy to collapse, unless we are in a shooting war with them: The fallout to us is just too severe. Agreed that purely defensive tactics is not going to work. The only alternative is to punch Iran quick and hard: The entire history of confronting the mullahs is that they'll back off, at least for a while.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.