Given the Navy’s abrupt break from the prevailing narrative, somebody in the Navy needs to step up and explain the Service’s sudden change in direction. For years, the Navy has publicly worried over the future of large and pricey platforms on the battlefield, and the April sinking of the 11,000-ton Moskva in the Black Sea seemed to reinforce the vulnerability of large combatants at sea. While the Navy’s growing appetite for large surface combatants-whatever they might turn out to be-is welcome news for the large surface combatant industrial base, the Navy’s inability to fix on a consistent plan is a public relations and strategic disaster. Large and small do not mean what they used to, and the Navy’s rating system probably should be redefined to better align with modern warfighting capabilities. An Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship, rated as a small combatant, is 418 feet long, just 87 feet shorter than the larger destroyer. The Constellation-class frigate, a ship type traditionally rated as a small combatant, is expected to clock in at over 7,400 tons, a mere 1,500 tons less than a Flight I Arleigh Burke destroyer. The line between large and small combatant, always fraught to begin with, is getting progressively tougher to distinguish. and UAE security partnerships.That failure is unfortunate, as America’s public and policymaker communities need clarity more than ever. military’s Central Command said Saturday its chief visited the region, met with Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and “discussed shared regional security concerns as well as U.S. The United Arab Emirates claimed last week it earlier “withdrew its participation” from a joint naval command called the Combined Maritime Forces though the U.S. The recent seizures have put new pressure on the U.S., long the security guarantor for Gulf Arab nations. Purported emails published online by Wikiran, a website that solicits leaked documents from the Islamic Republic, suggest that cargo carried by the Niovi was sold on to firms in China without permission. Treasury in August 2021 sanctioned the Oman Pride and others associated with the vessel over it being “involved in an international oil smuggling network” that supported the Quds Force, the expeditionary unit of the Guard that operates across the Mideast. While not carrying any cargo, data from S&P Global Market Intelligence seen by the AP showed the Niovi in July 2020 received oil from a ship known then as the Oman Pride. Meanwhile, Iran separately seized the Niovi, a Panama-flagged tanker, as it left a dry dock in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, bound for Fujairah on the UAE’s eastern coast. While authorities have not acknowledged the Suez Rajan’s seizure, the vessel is now off the coast of Galveston, Texas, according to ship-tracking data analyzed by the AP. The vessel also resembled the images released by the Navy. Its location also matched information about the incident given by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a British military operation overseeing traffic in the region. While the Navy did not identify the vessel involved, ship-tracking data from analyzed by The Associated Press showed the Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier Venture erratically changed course as it traveled through the strait at the time of the incident. Navy Boeing P-8 Poseidon shows three Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast-attack vessels near a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, sees 20% of the world’s oil pass through it. “The merchant ship continued transiting the Strait of Hormuz without further incident.” “The situation deescalated approximately an hour later when the merchant vessel confirmed the fast-attack craft departed the scene,” the Navy said. Navy’s guided-missile destroyer USS McFaul and the Royal Navy’s frigate HMS Lancaster responded to the incident, with the Lancaster launching a helicopter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |