Originally Posted by
Bfah
BonnieLass, the important aspect missing is - as I mentioned in my post - is why the press (and us experts), do not know why or what is going on with this current grouping, if it's so easy to just tune into Ch16.
Has the press (one assumes they have a $50 marine radio), tuned into Ch16 to report on what the captains are saying...?
And none of the (thousands of), crew have mobile phones or their own radio..?
Not hard to have a VHF radio and a small antenna... I've got a 70W on VHF that can run on a battery the size of a showbox for 10's of hours.
I dunno, somethings not right and the lack of those mines, is to me another Saddam WMD....
There have been some transmissions that have gone public from ships within the Persian Gulf...not much though, I agree.
This is from 3 weeks ago
It was essentially to all ships, not only to one specific ship. It is intimidating...perhaps not so much for military crews to hear but to merchant ship crews who have not had the training or who do not know how to handle such transmissions, it would be frightening.
The main reason...I believe...that not much is coming through into the public domain is out of basic fear. Initially in the early days crews may have thought Iran was bluffing with their threats of opening fire on ships, that soon changed when ships really were attacked. I would be totally understandable that crews would not want to be making themselves a target...in the same way on land, given that infrastructure was attacked at the height of the conflict, it is better to say nothing and not attract attention to yourself.