What's the use of malleting every "known" location when there are probably far more unknown ones?
Is it acceptable to destroy every single small fisherman's boat you find? Nice! What to do about inflatables with big outboards that can be kept in a house, hut or cave? Ditto drones and even mines. Small boats are easily hidden.
It's a vain hope even with modern sensors that you'd achieve a high success rate. After all, you have to be lucky 100% of the time, they only have to be lucky once.

It will be even more interesting to observe the Chinese navy and the Indian navy escort their shipping past a US blockade.

The UK and France are going to organise a conference to discuss the Strait.

At least its not a planning conference to examine, conceptually, the potential for meeting to develop outline options for discussions addressing the issue of the Strait in a non-interventionary context.

Do they have mirrors?

Will be even more interesting to know what will happen to Chinese flagged ships (or Chinese escorted ships) trading with Iran. Is Trump prepared to go to war with China over this? Is China?

Exactly. Despite their pretty incredible capabilities, even the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps would struggle to hit every potential threat, and then keep them suppressed.
All that's needed is one drone hitting a tanker.
And if Iran really wanted to hurt the US, a ballistic missile or two fired from inland and pointed at a carrier or similarly significant capital ship.

If they were able to do that, they'd have already done it, don't you think?

Presumably there'll be coffee. But will it be doughnuts or crossiants? Maybe a neutral choice would be Danish pastries..... You've got to get the important things right.

Fighters going home, but a constant stream of resupply C-17/C-5 etc going the other way.

Considering the lack of planning, thought and discussion that has gone into this conflict, taking some time for allies to align and decide if they really want to be involved in the US mess, collaborating with an unreliable partner and what risks they will be exposing their services to, doesn't seem unreasonable.

If it weren't for the global impact of the strait being closed, I am sure they would rather let the US administration stew in its own juices.

But to enforce a blockade they are going have to move closer to Iranian territorial waters and possibly in range of a strike.

The aircraft heading the other way may be because they have expended their available hours, so require maintenance checks, it does not stop fresh aircraft heading back the other way when needed, no point keeping valuable assets in a region where they may be attacked..

Why? Their strategy appears to be based on the calculus that they can endure more pain than the other side, not inflict more.

I think it's because, with the Iranian Air Force eliminated, the F-22s are unnecessary, have no real ground attack, EW or other role, unlike the F-16s, F-35s, F-15s etc.

Not to worry, because the American public previously was informed that U.S. Armed Forces would no longer be operated in accordance with "stupid rules of engagement."

The suggestion was "carrier or similarly significant capital ship". Both the Ford (until withdrawal to Crete) and Lincoln groups have been within nominal IRBM range since Epic Tantrum kicked off.

Not through choice - which is why they're busy volleying stuff indiscriminately at the Gulf states and beyond. Given the chance to inflict a blow on a carrier from the Great Satan do you think the IRGC would refuse?

The lack of planning seems to be at the political level. Looks to me like there is no lack of military planning and it has been superb.

My uninformed view is that current evidence suggests they are not implementing a "use it or lose it" strategy and I can imagine there might be reasons not to inflict such a blow (or not to have done so "already", as per your original comment) at a given point in time, reasons other than a lack of capability.

Another excuse for Starmer to do buggerall to sort his many problems at home. Airmiles Starmer.

"The aborted Pakistan peace talks were nothing but theatre. Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are energy dependent, which is why Pakistan cobbled together a peace deal, but presented a different 'deal' to both sides (hence the confusion over wether Lebanon was included in it).

The real reason is firstly that the Americans are using the talks as a stalling tactic while they and the Gulf states rearm interceptors and position the George HW Bush, to carry on the war to the required conclusion. Interceptor stocks are reduced by about 60% so are being supplemented from Greece Taiwan and North Korea. About 800 Tomahawks have been used, another 600 are on their way for round 2"

To this point (from Seafury's) earlier thread, there was a very interesting interview on Sky TV yesterday with USN Rear Admiral Joe Sestak, Formerly Deputy Chief of US Naval Operations, who was speaking about the lack of preparedness by USN and others for asymmetric warfare and the fact that IRGC have been launching hundreds of drones which necessitated response from Patriot and presumably other systems using expensive interceptors to counter the ( relatively cheap) threat. The point he was emphasising was not the fact these systems worked (thank goodness) but the fact that US was rapidly depleting its inventory, he stated that it could take many years to restock the current inventory even if they significantly increased production today and that's just based on round 1 of the conflict, so really how likely is it that US or even the allies plus US can continue to resource this conflict ? and even if they did and prevail ( which inevitably they will) what state does that leave them in to fight any other conflicts ? I can imagine Russia and China are very happy with this situation.

It appears that USS New Orleans is heading to the Strait, last spotted on AIS just under 8.5 hours ago


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