[HN Gopher] 95% of container ships are now going around the Sout...
___________________________________________________________________
95% of container ships are now going around the Southern Tip of
Africa
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 255 points
Date : 2024-01-08 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| cs702 wrote:
| What are the implications for shipping costs and times?
| chrisandchris wrote:
| I guess it's the same as when the Suez canal was blocked [1] .
| It will result in about 2 weeks longer transportation time.
| Don't know about costs.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction
| mjbeswick wrote:
| Container ships use in the region of 150 to 250 metric tons
| of fuel per day, so $75,000 to $125,000 in fuel alone.
| jandrese wrote:
| Spread out over thousands of containers that doesn't seem
| like a huge penalty.
| hef19898 wrote:
| We'll see, if we care to look which I don't anymore since
| I'm not involved in sea freight for a while bow, how
| rates from Asia to Europe change. Because this rate
| change is what matters, not the additional cost for
| carriers.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| The extra time necessary, thus lower throughout, thus
| availability issues, will likely be the bigger problem
| than fuel.
| esel2k wrote:
| Except that back then people where drawing world end
| scenarios while today it sounds like "just a small detour".
| kibwen wrote:
| Possibly because the people shouting about world-ending
| scenarios from the blocking of the Suez were being
| hyperbolic.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Or the remaining 5% are really important.
| poooogles wrote:
| From China to the EU it adds roughly 1/3rd to the time, which
| is a decent proxy for cost. There are savings in not having to
| pay Suez fees but these don't seem to make a huge affect to
| shipping costs.
|
| It's probably worth adding that going round the cape doesn't
| add just more cost to fuel and time, insurance for cargo down
| there isn't cheap either as the weather is very changeable.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's a great proxy for cost, but price has more to do with
| availability than with cost. I'd expect price to go up a lot
| more than 1/3rd, especially if this drags on.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Right, price is driven by supply and demand. If your ships
| have to travel 4/3 as far, you have ships available at 3/4
| of the previous rate, so the supply of shipping went down.
| Demand didn't, so the price goes up.
| marvin wrote:
| If any Norwegians are reading, which are shipping nerds
| by virtue of geography, speculating in this market is
| essentially why John Fredriksen, the Warren Buffett of
| shipping, is rich.
|
| Shifts in ship availability causes waves of bankruptcy,
| and either gluts or shortages (whatever happens to be
| most inconvenient at the time).
| justrealist wrote:
| He estimated ~2% consumer price increase in a diff comment.
| hef19898 wrote:
| A two to three week longer transit time will increase sales
| prices of the imported product by _2%_? I ' d like to see the
| calculation behind that assumption...
| thfuran wrote:
| We probably can't quickly pull enough extra ships out of
| our hats to make up for the extra time they're spending in
| transit, so total shipping capacity will decrease. That may
| well have a large impact on shipping prices.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| With renewed unrest in the area (140mi 280km to Gaza), cost of
| sinking the entire cargo vs an extra two weeks is also a
| consideration.
| falcolas wrote:
| The trip is about 15 or so days, with the associated fuel
| costs. Granted, fuel costs are distributed across tens of
| thousands of containers, so the delay will probably be the
| bigger issue.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Perun has a pretty nice long video presentation that talks
| about the factors involved and what they may mean for shipping:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GKlKYQDDcQ
|
| Makes for good background listening.
| badpun wrote:
| It's not just shipping costs and times, but also (and perhaps
| most importantly) shipping's total capacity. The same fleet of
| ships can now make substantially less trips, which means that
| substantially less goods will be transported between Europe and
| Asia. Perhaps rising costs of shipping on this route will
| divert some ships from other routes around the world here, but
| overall outcome across entire world has be to less maritime
| commerce, leading to increase in prices of goods.
| reliablereason wrote:
| That is a terrible use of the Mercator projection.
|
| The extra distance around Africa looks comparatively small on the
| Mercator projection.
| thih9 wrote:
| > The extra distance around Africa looks comparatively small on
| the Mercator projection.
|
| Compared to what? I.e. what projection or approach would you
| choose instead of Mercator?
| reliablereason wrote:
| A projection that is better at showing the comparative
| difference in length between going through the Suez canal vs
| going around.
|
| The mercator makes Africa look comparatively small on the
| y-axis which is a problem if you are trying to visualise the
| size of Africa and the time it takes to go around the
| continent.
|
| If i visually compare the distance on the mercator and an
| equal area projection is looks to make the trip about 20%
| shorter on mercator (compared to the apparent visual distance
| going through Suez). Non of the projections will be 100%
| accurate but the mercator is less accurate for this specific
| case.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > The mercator makes Africa look comparatively small on the
| y-axis which is a problem if you are trying to visualise
| the size of Africa and the time it takes to go around the
| continent.
|
| LOL.
|
| The Suez canal is at ~30degN, while Cape Town is ~35degS.
| If anything the Mercator projection is exaggerating the
| visual distance of going around.
| trgn wrote:
| Hating on Mercator is just pavlovian concern trolling at
| this point (it's the first thing people learn in their
| GIS classes, whatever). People are so obsessed with
| conservation of area, it's cringey, Freud would have
| something to say about that. Maps should always neatly
| establish a frame of reference. Unless you need to
| actually take out a ruler and measure a thingie of of it,
| projections don't matter all that much. The mercator map
| is an excellent world map: land masses nicely
| proportioned, straight reference lines that don't
| clutter, north is up thank god, no weird bulges, just
| rectangular, you know, like a page in a book or a
| website. It's just a really good world map. The haters
| are wrong 90% of the time.
| isk517 wrote:
| Considering that the discussion is about shipping in the
| southern hemisphere then maybe choose one of the many
| different map projections that better represent that part of
| the world.
| agos wrote:
| such as?
| Y_Y wrote:
| Many of you will be well aware that you can't have a
| distance-preserving "map", that is a projection from the
| globe to a segment to of the plane where the length of an
| arbitrary path is preserved. Hence you can't measure real-
| world distances using string and a paper map.
|
| That said you can preserve distance in special cases, for
| example any two chosen points. For example you can go to
| https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/two-point-equidistant/ and
| put your points at the Suez Canal and the Cape of Good Hope.
| While that still won't let you measure wiggly ship routes
| along the coast, it does a better job than Mercator.
|
| Failing that you can use Gall-Peters which does a better job
| of conveying the vastness of Africa, since it's area
| preserving.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Hence you can't measure real-world distances using string
| and a paper map.
|
| You very much can. The scale of longitude and latitude is
| just not the same so you need to do Pythagoras (usually by
| approximation rules).
|
| There are usually lines to allow for that.
| Y_Y wrote:
| If you only use rigid string and sail in strange curves
| that map to straight lines in 2d then that's true. Or
| maybe by "do Pythagoras" you meant to calculate the
| metric tensor for your projection and integrate that
| along your shipping route?
| bevenhall wrote:
| Is measuring distances in Google Earth misleading? Why
| bother with ancient flat maps?
| kube-system wrote:
| The measuring tool is accurate. The way it appears on
| your screen is always misleading in some way, because
| your screen is flat.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| They actually curve the line of the measuring tool so
| that it follows the geodesic.
| logicchains wrote:
| Ideal would be an embedded gif (or even interactive widget)
| of a 3D globe rotating, with the lines drawn on it, but
| obviously that's a lot more work.
| jofer wrote:
| This is arguably where mercator shines. Note that the paths are
| straight lines. Otherwise you'd be scratching your head as to
| why they're taking long curved routes instead of straight
| paths.
|
| And the distance is going to be distorted no matter what.
| grotorea wrote:
| Good points. Since there are so many projections I thought
| there would be one for distances but the equidistant
| projections only work for specific points of origin.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equidistant
| jcranmer wrote:
| Except the shortest distance between two points on the
| surface of a sphere is a geodesic, not a rhumb line. So a
| straight line on a Mercator projection (rhumb line) is not a
| "straight" line on the surface of the planet, and if I see a
| long straight line, I'm asking "why aren't they taking the
| shortest path?"
| kube-system wrote:
| Straight lines on mercator are a constant bearing which is
| the most simple way to navigate.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Do ships still use rhumb lines? I'd have thought that
| modern technology was good enough to guide them along
| geodesics.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| But the Mercator projection doesn't show shortest-paths as
| straight lines unless they're north-south or the equator.
| colanderman wrote:
| Gnomonic projection shows great circles as straight lines:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomonic_projection
| thwarted wrote:
| Good thing Ryan's tweet is about the ratio of the number of
| ships diverted from their normal route (orange dots vs black
| dots), not about the absolute distance. "Look at how much
| orange there is". It's implied (and well known) that the route
| around the tip of Africa is longer (in both time and distance),
| it doesn't matter how much longer to make the point that the
| previous route is now considered riskier and many are chosing
| an alternative.
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| A radical idea would be making the Northeast South America the
| Western world distribution center via the Cape -- a great
| circle route from Indonesia. Export to the rest of the West
| from there, while letting the ships go quickly back-and-forth.
| A bold and probably a little more expensive solution in the
| beginning, but far safer. That would diminish the Strategic
| value of the Red Sea, as far as the world commerce goes.
| crubier wrote:
| I ran some measurements, this would replace the Malacca
| Rotterdam 14,000km route with a 22,000km long route at least,
| increasing costs by 50%. Not realistic IMO
| scythe wrote:
| Isn't this backwards? The equatorial regions including the Red
| Sea are compressed by Mercator while the high latitudes around
| the Cape are stretched.
| ur-whale wrote:
| The "why" part is sort of missing ...
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/05/business/maersk-red-sea-s...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/07/houthi...
|
| https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/1/6/24027735/yemen-h...
|
| A google for keywords including some of "attack ships red sea
| houthi" will provide some context
| thih9 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_involvement_in_the_Isra...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/more-ships-avoid-r...
| H8crilA wrote:
| And before someone says the equivalent of "just blow them off
| the map" - this will likely be worse than Afganistan. North
| Yemen has been bombed for close to a decade already by Saudis
| and others, and the Saudis eventually decided to negotiate
| via Chinese mediation. I don't know ho likely it is to work,
| but splitting Yemen into recognized North Yemen and South
| Yemen may be a good diplomatic solution.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Or an easily thawed frozen conflict. The root problems are
| spelled _Saudi Arabia_ vs _Iran_ and almost certainly
| somewhere in the curtains, some Russian cheer leading.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Yeah they opened up diplomatic relations, under Chinese
| mediation, and so far nothing indicates a breakdown. Plus
| do not make the common mistake of not noticing agency -
| Houthi are quite effective political agents with their
| own agenda.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| They have agency, but their force multiplier is weapons
| and money from Iran.
| FpUser wrote:
| And who will do the splitting?
| H8crilA wrote:
| Yemen is currently split along mostly reasonable lines.
| It's just not recognized internationally (the most
| internationally legitimate government has de facto
| nothing to say in the north nor in the south).
| hnfong wrote:
| It seems to be due to conflicts/attacks in the Red Sea region
| arising from the Gaza conflict -
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/03/what-is-the-re...
|
| Disclaimer: I learnt about this 3 minutes ago.
| LargeTomato wrote:
| How can you possibly have learned about this 3 minutes ago
| lol it's been the most significant political event in the
| world for months.
| fulladder wrote:
| What is a most significant event to one person may be of
| little or no significance to another.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Ships are being attacked by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who
| have declared support for Hamas.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67731853
| consumer451 wrote:
| Another interesting factor is that Russia and Yemen are on
| good terms. For example, all this time Russian ships are not
| under threat from Yemen.
|
| Recently Russian media began communicating their expectations
| for Houthis to specifically attack British ships, after
| Ukraine used Storm Shadows to destroy a Russian ship loaded
| with Iranian drones which was docked in Crimea.
|
| https://nitter.net/NavyLookout/status/1740273039718428975#m
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Well its in the news, Houthis attacking due to conflict/war in
| Gaza to force western countries into more pressure on Israel
| fulladder wrote:
| I don't understand this. Like, I'm some random American
| voter, and a Maersk chemical tanker gets attacked. Maybe I
| pay a higher end-consumer price for some product a few months
| from now, but why is that going to cause me to go out and
| protest something or other to do with Israel?
|
| What I'm trying to ask: what is the outcome these attackers
| are expecting, and how does it benefit them?
| ars wrote:
| > What I'm trying to ask: what is the outcome these
| attackers are expecting, and how does it benefit them?
|
| It's not really that complicated. They just hate Jews (and
| the US), it's quite literally in their slogan.
|
| They don't really have a goal other than "try to kill
| Jews", and this is the best they are currently able to do.
| fulladder wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. I don't understand what the motivation for this
| is. People are saying the goal is piracy, but attacking a ship
| from as much as 1,000 miles away wouldn't enable you to board
| it or take ownership of the valuable cargo. Overall, I don't
| understand how somebody fighting a civil war would feel that
| it's somehow advantageous for them to attack a merchant ship
| with no connection to their conflict. The whole thing makes no
| sense to me.
| devnull42069 wrote:
| Israel is committing a genocide in occupied Palestine. So Yemen
| is intervening by blockading Israel through the Red Sea and
| launching strikes (similar to the NATO intervention in the
| Kosovo genocide).
|
| Shipping companies, rather than abiding by the selective
| blockade of Israeli bound ships, are re-routing all ships
| instead because they believe making this a global problem will
| resolve the matter with military intervention without them
| having to "pick" a side. Some of these companies also have deep
| ties to Israel (or based in countries that have de-facto signed
| off on Israeli aggression) so abiding by the blockade is not
| politically feasible. One exception is COSCO and they seem to
| going through the canal just fine.
| ars wrote:
| Israel is not committing a genocide. Gaza is not occupied.
| Yemen is not blockading Israel. The Houthis are not attacking
| Israel bound ships, they are attacking all ships. Israel is
| not in control of shipping companies.
|
| You probably set a record for most false information in one
| post.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Good news for the port of Cape Town?
|
| Cape Town was originally founded in 1652 "as a supply station for
| Dutch ships sailing to the Far East." i.e. as a half-way point on
| this route around Africa. But then in 1869 the Suez canal opened.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Given that the ships primarily being diverted are freighters /
| container ships travelling from the east to the west (and vice
| versa), it's not obvious why they should stop in Cape Town
| (since they don't need to refuel, and it makes no sense to
| unload at Cape Town).
|
| So no major benefit to Cape Town.
| thfuran wrote:
| Only if ships still stop halfway for supplies.
| rob74 wrote:
| Not really... the container ships will be steaming right by,
| they don't need to take on supplies like 3 centuries ago.
| lgleason wrote:
| They may need to stop to refuel. That said Durban had the
| bigger port these days. The bigger issue would be if Transnet
| has enough capacity to be able to handle the extra demand since
| it has had trouble with it's day to day operations lately.
| thih9 wrote:
| - "Red Sea attacks disrupt world trade, more ships vow to avoid
| waters": https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/more-ships-
| avoid-r... (Reuters, December 22 2023)
|
| - "Houthi involvement in the Israel-Hamas war":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_involvement_in_the_Isra...
| (Wikipedia)
|
| - "Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38821372 (HN, December 31st
| 2023)
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Can someone explain why when the Evergiven blocked the Suez canal
| for a few days the news reported it with such catastrophistic
| tones but now that the canal is effectively blocked by Iran-
| backed forces nobody screams about a global crisis?
| tiltowait wrote:
| Maybe the realization that it didn't lead to End Times back
| then, so such hystrionics this time around would be met with
| great rolling of eyes?
| burkaman wrote:
| I don't remember the catastrophic tones, but I would guess
| there was heavier coverage for the Ever Given incident because
| several hundred container ships were effectively stuck until
| that was resolved. In this case nothing is stuck, ships are
| just taking a slower route.
|
| It's the difference between "Atlanta Airport shut down
| indefinitely, all flights cancelled until further notice" and
| "Bad weather in Atlanta, all flights delayed". Both are
| newsworthy, but the latter doesn't generate as many headlines.
| Not to downplay the violence in the Red Sea, obviously it's a
| lot more serious than bad weather, but I think the analogy is
| ok.
| serf wrote:
| > In this case nothing is stuck, ships are just taking a
| slower route.
|
| that might be what parent is mentioning : this alternative
| route was sold to the news-viewing public as absolutely
| impossible and untenable when producing profit over time --
| they were told that the suez canal was of vital importance
| and that trade must halt until it was cleared.
|
| and now suddenly, not much time afterwards, the threat of
| violence has prompted the realization that there are clear
| and viable alternatives to the suez canal.
|
| the 180 on the importance of the canal feels telling, but I
| don't know how. I presume it's an effort to keep public
| opinion from desiring a strong military response in the area.
| It feels like election-time stalling so that "Cleaning up the
| Red Sea" can be a political talking point during election
| season -- but I hate to be so cynical as to think we're
| ignoring a global political partner for the sake of a
| politician having an ace up their sleeve during debates.
| burkaman wrote:
| I really have to disagree, I'm not sure your memory is
| representative of the coverage most people saw. I'm looking
| at the New York Times, which I think is a good example of
| mainstream US news. While the Ever Given was stuck, they
| reported stuff like:
|
| > With each day that the Ever Given container ship remains
| stuck in the Suez Canal, the cost of the disruption grows
| more consequential. After days of failed efforts to move
| the mammoth ship, shipowners began rerouting ships bound
| for the Suez Canal around Africa's Cape of Good Hope,
| adding weeks to their journeys and burning additional fuel
| -- a cost ultimately borne by consumers. When deciding
| whether to divert, a shipping company must consider the
| cost of sitting for days outside the canal versus the added
| time of steaming around Africa. It is not an easy choice.
|
| Today the Red Sea crisis is front page news, and their
| story leads with:
|
| > They can send their vessels through the Red Sea if they
| are willing to risk attacks by the Houthi militia in Yemen
| and to bear the cost of sharply higher insurance premiums.
| Or they can sail an extra 4,000 miles around Africa, adding
| 10 days in each direction and burning considerably more
| fuel. Neither option is appealing and both raise costs --
| expenses that analysts said could ultimately be borne by
| consumers through higher prices on the goods they buy.
|
| Basically the same, even using the exact same phrase about
| consumers. This was just one example, but when I look at
| coverage of Ever Given I see a general attitude of "damn
| this is terrible timing, supply chains were just starting
| to recover from the pandemic, this will cause a lot of
| problems". Nobody was declaring the end of the world or
| that "trade must halt". Today I don't see anyone
| downplaying the situation, at most I see a little bit less
| front-page placement because of the nature of the story.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| It was an entertaining story that could be followed minute-by-
| minute.
|
| It was funny that a single ship could get stuck with such a
| huge impact on the global shipping industry, so people were
| tuned in. And you could follow day by day with the plans and
| attempts made to dig out the ship. Great, simple fodder for the
| 24-hour news cycle, and memes probably made people more engaged
| with the story.
|
| With the Houthis it's a big, complex geopolitical mess, and all
| the oxygen in the room is being taken up by the war in Gaza. No
| big countermoves have been made so all there is to be done is
| report on the strikes when they happen, the threats made by
| various powers, and speculate if the US is going to intervene
| in some significant way.
|
| The Ever Given was an acute issue, and acute issues are
| attention grabbing. The attacks in the Red Sea are a
| progression of a war that the average person in the west
| doesn't really understand that's been going on for 9 years.
| rcpt wrote:
| https://defector.com/big-boat-stuck-a-story
|
| One of my favorites
| krisoft wrote:
| > but now that the canal is effectively blocked by Iran-backed
| forces nobody screams about a global crisis
|
| Not sure about what sources you follow, but the ones I am
| following scream about a full blown global crisis. Here is for
| example the explainer from the Guardian:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/19/red-sea-shi...
|
| At the same time many defence analyst is astonished by the
| appearent dithering of the US Navy over the issue. In fact the
| more fringe elements are talking about that the recent
| incapacitation of the US SecDef might be the reason behind the
| inaction.
| skywhopper wrote:
| The hook with the Evergiven was that the ship had run aground
| and couldn't get out. That was fun and relatable, it was a
| single event, there were pictures. It was reported on by
| everyone when the event happened and the rest of the coverage
| was followup coverage. The "omg is global trade ending" pieces
| didn't happen right away.
|
| The situation here is much harder for the press to explain, has
| been going back and forth for a couple of weeks at least now
| (ie not tied to a single specific event with pictures), and is
| relatively new. The "omg" pieces will come out in a couple of
| weeks if this continues, don't worry.
| galdosdi wrote:
| I don't recall catastrophic tones, nor do I think the current
| houthi situation is being underplayed.
|
| I think you and I subscribe to different media sources and this
| is your warning sign that yours are too sensationalistic.
| paxys wrote:
| Have you been reading the new for the last 3 months? There is
| nothing but "GLOBAL CRISIS" splashed all over the front page.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| "Big Boat blocked lanes, so many shipz waiting, lolz, oh noes!"
| vs "Shipping transit rerouted around African cape, prices might
| increase in a few months"
|
| If it's not entertaining nobody gives a crap
| asylteltine wrote:
| I hate twitter posts. They never have any context and post as if
| you have all of the context already. And you can't even see
| original posts or replies without being logged in. Please don't
| post twitter or be kind and just use nitter
| josefresco wrote:
| You might prefer this: https://www.flexport.com/blog/global-
| ocean-carriers-halt-red...
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| this is a voting-based site
| kibwen wrote:
| If it were possible to downvote posts on HN, I'd have been
| downvoting every Twitter link for the past decade. Please
| post somewhere that's actually readable.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| One cannot downvote submissions, only comments. This seems to
| be largely a non-sequitur as one can only not vote up
| something.
|
| I have, for example, downvoted your comment as it is not
| useful and is a bit snide or condescending (inclusive "or" to
| be clear), whereas had you posted your comment as a post, I
| would not have been able to do so.
| observationist wrote:
| Nitter allows people to see the context of a thread without
| having to log in to Twitter. By posting a nitter link, you're
| enriching the conversation instead of either annoying people
| or doing marketing for x/twitter.
|
| The platform shouldn't be the point of a conversation. If a
| platform makes itself the center of attention, there's
| something wrong with it.
| okr wrote:
| Why involving another website? Twitter links should be ok.
| Just create an account, its free.
| otterley wrote:
| Some of us don't want to provide material support to Elon
| Musk in any way, including providing Twitter a recorded
| history of our browsing habits related to the site which
| could later be used to monetize our individual behavior.
| okr wrote:
| That is correct. But those people on HN want to be able
| to read content, or lets say, to spy on a site they
| despise, from the, huuuh, evil enemy.
|
| They can not have it both ways and i find it
| hypocritical. Don't read twitter then.
| dang wrote:
| It's fine to post workaround links in the comments, but top
| level URLs need to point to the original source.
|
| This is in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Also see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html re paywalls.
| josefresco wrote:
| Another link, directly to Flexport:
| https://www.flexport.com/blog/global-ocean-carriers-halt-red...
| alecco wrote:
| > DECEMBER 20, 2023
| focusedone wrote:
| Looks regularly updated, most recently January 5.
| jokoon wrote:
| If this keeps escalating, the US might get more involved
| bbor wrote:
| I can't tell if this comment is a joke or not but I agree! It's
| just funny to see that on the story "95% of traffic through the
| Suez Canal diverted" --- seems pretty escalated!
| kube-system wrote:
| I presume by escalation, they are referring to the entire
| conflict, not just the diversion of traffic.
| r00fus wrote:
| Did you hear about Operation Prosperity Guardian and its
| complete failure to address the situation?
| briffle wrote:
| I don't undertand why the EU isn't all over this. those
| containerships are mostly going to them.
|
| I'm also curious how long this route around africa is the best
| option, since right now, its summer in the southern
| hemisphere.. I seem to remember hearing that winters around the
| cape of Africa are pretty legendary.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I have a suspicion that it's the same reason European aid to
| Ukraine has so far been a tiny fraction of what was publicly
| pledged: western European military capabilities are much,
| much more degraded than anyone is publicly admitting. After
| the collapse of the USSR it was fine to just write off
| defense capabilities for a while and lean on the American
| security shield, but now after ~35 years of kicking that can
| down the road there's nothing useful they can do to to help
| against a bunch of unguided rockets getting fired from the
| desert, never mind a shooting war with Russia.
| hef19898 wrote:
| European navies can project force just fine, especially the
| Royal Navy, French Navy and the Italian Navy all of ehich
| have aircraft carriers.
|
| By the way, military support for Ukraine runs just fine.
|
| Main reason nobody goes to fight over this, is the
| avoidance of escalation. And so far, some delays in
| shipping is not the end of the world.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Don't they have like one aircraft carrier each. Would be
| absolutely embarrassing to have it melted by Houthis.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Last time I checked, Italy had two.
|
| Anyway, for now geo politics mean that taking the long
| way around, and not intervene with force, the smart
| decision for everyone involved.
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| To be clear, the displacement of the aircraft carriers of
| the Italian navy are 30k tonnes and 14k tonnes. US
| carriers are about 100k tonnes, UK about 65k tonnes. I
| don't think they're really comparable, as US amphibious
| assault ships have greater displacement than the Italian
| carriers.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And yet, both can project force. Even using F-35s like
| the US Navy does. Not that any of that would help against
| Houthi rebels.
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| Absolutely capable of projecting force, yes. But the
| commenter above pointed out that it would be an big risk
| for a country with two (they said one, but it's two very
| small) ACs to send one of them into a war zone instead of
| trade ships simply going around. At least that's was my
| read of it.
|
| Although it's a worthwhile correction to say Italy's navy
| fields two ACs instead of one, I just don't think it's
| material to their point.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Boring pedantic note: the US Navy uses the heavier
| catapult-launched F-35. Other nations use the STOVL F-35,
| which has a smaller weapons payload and shorter range.
|
| (Only three nations in the world have catapult-equipped
| aircraft carriers: the US, France and China. The latter
| two countries are not F-35 users.)
| bluGill wrote:
| > By the way, military support for Ukraine runs just
| fine.
|
| If that was the case Ukraine wouldn't be so worried about
| loss of US support. Sure Europe is giving some support,
| but the EU alone is enough bigger than Russia that
| Ukraine should have no problems getting enough support.
| This is true even if you eliminate a few players like
| Hungary that are supporting Russia. (UK of course isn't
| in the EU)
|
| The major players in Europe (France, Germany, UK) don't
| seem to be against supporting Ukraine, but they don't
| have the ability to do it despite an economy that says
| they should be able to if they wanted. There are a lot of
| smaller players in Europe that likewise should have
| plenty of ability to provide support but somehow they
| can't provide it.
| traject_ wrote:
| Yeah, this is a point a lot of people simply don't
| understand. Having billions of dollars in GDP generated
| by the service industry (like financial services or
| informational technologies) does not map one to one to
| generating a functioning arms industry to produce
| artillery ammunition for example. You need manufacturing
| facilities, a large pool of candidates with potential
| expertise in technical hardware skills to run these
| factories and logistical lines to keep them running.
| These prerequisites existed in the West during the
| earlier part of the 20th century which was why the
| transition to the war economy was relatively painless but
| no longer exists now. It is simply irrelevant to talk
| about multibillion dollar GDP economies specialized in
| unrelated industries if you don't have the actual
| physical resource and staffing requirements.
| hef19898 wrote:
| True, maintaining an industrial base in the defence
| sector is hard. Demand is usually, luckily, rather low.
| Technology is pretty advanced, making ot impossible to
| just repurpose existing industrial sites as was done
| during WW2.
| bluGill wrote:
| Let this be a lesson to all: you need to ensure your
| industrial base can actually step up and produce what you
| need for war. Thankfully you don't normally need it, but
| you are not in control of when someone will decide to
| attack. You are not in control of if NATO or other
| alliances fall apart. You have some input on both (please
| work for peace!), but there are factors outside your
| control involved.
|
| That nobody is producing enough artillery shells almost 2
| years later is criminal. I give Ukraine a small pass here
| only because evidence is post 2014 they were doing their
| best to build capacity, and that takes time. The rest of
| us didn't have the corruption and other problems that
| Ukraine has done internally, and so we should already
| have that in place. (or in place the ability to give
| Ukraine air supremacy so they don't need artillery -
| there are lots of options)
| hef19898 wrote:
| The idea of "If you want peace, prepare for war" is as
| true today as it was back then. Only risk being, that
| some people in power might tempted to use a strong
| military for all kinds of reasons.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Yes, like now for instance.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The US is the largest individual contributor, but the
| combined contributions of the EU and its member states
| are larger both in absolute terms and especially as a
| fraction of GDP. You just hear less about it, because
| it's generally less newsworthy. Except for Hungary's
| attempts to stop some EU-level programs.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Not really. European navies suffer from very similar
| problems to their airforces and armies. Small amounts of
| expensive kit, surprising unavailability of forces at any
| given time - very limited logistical kit, manpower
| available for any operation.
| uluyol wrote:
| Israel has been begging for the US to get more involved.
|
| Like how they are provoking Hezbollah with their "double-tap"
| strikes.
| tptacek wrote:
| Israel and Hezbollah have been in a low-grade state of war
| for over a decade. If Hezbollah hadn't diverted its energy to
| the Syrian Civil War, they might by now have been in a state
| of total war. Hezbollah has units dedicated to infiltrating
| and attacking targets in Israeli Galilee. My guess is, and I
| could be wrong, that it probably doesn't make sense to
| attribute a motive of "dragging the US in" to Israeli strikes
| on Hezbollah. In many ways, Israeli strikes on Hezbollah are
| far more ordinary than strikes in Gaza are.
| thisisonthetest wrote:
| the theory I've heard says that's extremely unlikely. The US
| only has ~80 destroyers most of which are protecting their
| super carriers. They don't want to police the worlds oceans
| anymore. [1] https://youtu.be/mcZPOuI-vcU?feature=shared
| seydor wrote:
| Another bonanza for shipowners
| igammarays wrote:
| Lots of people wondering why we haven't wiped the pirates off the
| map yet. First of all, Saudi has been trying to do that for years
| (with US support) and failing. I think it shows how much leverage
| the Houthis have, and how much cheap drone technology has changed
| the nature of warfare. They have 3 hands to play:
|
| 1. Attack Saudi Arabia's oil infra with cheap drones and threaten
| 1/3 the world's energy. These drones cost 10x to 100x more to
| shoot down.
|
| 2. Start another Arab Spring, counting on the fact that the
| Houthis enjoy massive popularity in the Muslim world right now,
| among Sunni and Shia both, for opposing Israel.
|
| 3. Drag the US into another Afghanistan, which nobody wants.
|
| See: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-
| East/2024/0104/Gaza-w...
| taeric wrote:
| This feels too reduced in options and reasoning, to be honest.
| I would be surprised if any of those three options pan out, mid
| term.
|
| To expand a little, I don't understand how the Houthis have
| support right now, outside of support that is specifically
| about destabilizing the entire region. Which is why I don't see
| your brief paragraph being enough to explain things. You do
| mention US support in there; who else is involved? And why?
| belter wrote:
| Easy, its all orchestrated from Iran.
| taeric wrote:
| I want to believe that that is too simplistic, too. It does
| seem to fit the evidence far too well, though.
| comte7092 wrote:
| It's only really simplistic if you come at things from a
| pro US/western point of view.
|
| The nuance is that not everyone agrees about US backed
| hegemony in the region. The goal isn't to
| "destabilize"/whatever neutered phrase the pentagon is
| using, the goal is to assert a different political order.
| The language you're using here takes the current state of
| affairs as neutral or a given when it is not.
| dralley wrote:
| Iran supports Iranian hegemony in the region, news at 11?
| belter wrote:
| Neither Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis would survive
| without the support from Iran. They don't even try to
| hide the origin of their weapons...
| mulmen wrote:
| So who backs Iran? They're not a superpower. How long
| does Iran survive a shooting war with the US?
| belter wrote:
| Who backs Iran? Russia of course. Did you not notice the
| amount of Iranian drones attacking Ukraine? Other
| agreements between the two must be in place...This is the
| result of all the appeasement tactics of the last 15
| years.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm afraid it really is that simple. The various big
| players in the Middle East have been doing it for
| decades. Iran also provides support for Hamas, which is
| why the Houthis are involved so directly.
|
| The details are of course incredibly complicated, but the
| basic observation that weapons and money flow out of
| Tehran is straightforward.
| briffle wrote:
| taking out a drone with an expensive rocket is a bad
| choice, but taking out the drone launching crew and site
| with a rocket (or even better, a good size naval canon)
| seems like a much more cost effective choice. Its easy to
| launch things when nobody is shooting back at you.
| mulmen wrote:
| Do these drones need significant infrastructure to
| launch? Seems like whack-a-mole. What do you do when they
| launch drones from school athletic fields? Or on top of
| hospitals?
| jfengel wrote:
| Except when the drone was launched from a civilian
| apartment building. Then you get a whole lot of bad
| press, and people insist you stop fighting entirely.
| bluGill wrote:
| All might be to strong, but it is clear that Iran is
| funding, providing leadership, training, and giving vocal
| support (sometimes in secret channels). With out Iran
| this might still exist, but it would have a lot less
| ability.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Just because there is a loose alliance and significant
| military support between several organizations doesn't mean
| that they all do the main party's bidding, much less that
| they _only_ do the main party 's bidding. (To whit, note
| that the US can't really order NATO to do much of
| anything).
|
| I suspect that Iran isn't in any sense ordering the Houthis
| to do anything, and the idea to attack shipping is entirely
| germinated from the Houthis themselves (largely as a form
| of "showing support" for Palestinians, even if, as a few
| people have noted, this action only _hurts_ them while
| providing them no meaningful aide). Largely, this is
| because it 's colossally stupid for Iran to push for a
| provocation that is meaningfully likely to see all the
| major world powers (except for maybe Russia; note that
| China is going to be on the US's side here) create a
| coalition to eliminate a troublesome menace.
| logicchains wrote:
| >I don't understand how the Houthis have support right now
|
| They've got a huge amount of popular support in the Middle
| East, because so many people there hate Israel, and see the
| Houthis as the only ones standing up to Israel (apart from
| Hamas and Hezbollah). I don't have a source, but if you ever
| happened to check the comments on Middle East TikTok videos
| you'd see what I mean.
| tptacek wrote:
| The conventional geopolitical answer for this is: the IRGC is
| the principal sponsor of the Houthis; the Houthi uprising was
| funded originally as an Iranian proxy war against Saudi
| Arabia. The Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah are part of an
| "axis of resistance", the subtext of which is "they take
| their orders from the IRGC".
|
| It may or may not be the case that they're disrupting
| shipping at the direction of Iran, but it almost certainly is
| the case that Iran equipped them, and that Iran can
| effectively instruct them to stop.
|
| It's hard to make any kind of comment on a thread here
| without getting pulled towards one pole or another of the
| ongoing argument about what's happening in MENA right now;
| I'm doing my best to keep this as dry as possible, and to
| hedge statements by saying things like "the conventional
| geopolitical answer". You can find alternate geopolitical
| answers; in fact, you can probably find any answer you're
| looking for. All I can do is relay what I'm reading.
| taeric wrote:
| Perfectly fair response. I, sadly, failed and walked into a
| thread I should have avoided. :(
|
| I think my main question is what valid paths forward do
| people see here? I honestly don't know how to find news
| that isn't dominated by posturing, at the moment.
| xinuc wrote:
| I don't know about the best path, but I know an obviously
| wrong path: which is to reduce other people's resistance
| and struggle as mere terrorism and extremist. US and
| western world clearly have the power to rule the world,
| but the way they act right now will ensure many more
| resistance and pain for everyone.
| taeric wrote:
| This, I think, is a fair and well meaning criticism.
|
| That said, you have to hold your own accountable for bad
| acts. Doesn't mean none will ever happen, of course. Nor
| does it mean that you cannot have legitimate concerns and
| claims. And your response to a terrorist act cannot
| legitimately be to try to minimize it. Nor is it a valid
| response to rapid fire old grievances, many of which are
| misrepresented or where the people involved were held
| accountable.
|
| So, in spirit of your criticism, let's try and move past
| it. You don't know the best path. What are some valid
| paths?
| juliusdavies wrote:
| I've read that Hezbollah does not take orders from Iran,
| and that Nasrallah's thinking and decision making on
| strategy is given a lot of weight (just like Britain did
| not take orders from USA in WW2):
|
| https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/04/asad-abukhalil-
| nasrall...
|
| That article has a few quirks (e.g., derisively referencing
| George Soros), but I found some of the small details in it
| add to its overall credibility, like how a portrait of
| Nasrallah was visible in Soleimani's house when Soleimani's
| family members were mourning his death.
|
| * I usually treat references to George Soros as antisemitic
| dog whistles, but the author is normally a strident
| opponent of antisemitism, so I don't know what to think in
| this instance.
| tptacek wrote:
| As I understand it, the biggest story with Hezbollah over
| the past decade has been their involvement in the Syrian
| Civil War, which apparently depleted them significantly
| and greatly reduced their status --- which does remain
| dominant --- in Lebanon. I think it's pretty widely seen
| as something Hezbollah did at the instruction of the
| IRGC, which is Syria's closest military ally.
| juliusdavies wrote:
| Ah! What you are saying honestly enriches my
| understanding of this line in the piece I cited:
|
| > When it comes to war with Israel, Nasrallah is the
| ultimate decision maker.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think Houthi Yemen is the place to look for where
| concerted military pressure would be applied here; the Houthis
| are in the main a proxy for Iran, in its struggle against Saudi
| Arabia (that being the most salient geopolitical conflict in
| MENA).
| igammarays wrote:
| So fail at another trillion dollar forever war?
| tptacek wrote:
| Maybe? I'm just saying: Houthi Yemen isn't where you apply
| pressure when/if/as this reaches the point where pressure
| needs to be applied. I'm not predicting outcomes.
| igammarays wrote:
| War with Iran would be apocalyptic to proportions hard to
| imagine. For one, they could destroy oil infrastructure,
| and that would be far more destructive to world economies
| than the current blockading of the strait. That would
| also mean the end of the petrodollar, a unique basis of
| American power.
| tptacek wrote:
| It feels like you're trying to debate me about whether we
| should go to war with Iran. I'm not advocating or making
| predictions; I'm simply saying that a conventional
| framing for the the current conflict is that the Houthis
| are, whether they've gone "off script" or not,
| effectively an arm of the IRGC.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Lots of people wondering why we haven't wiped the pirates off
| the map yet.
|
| Because they're not a nation state and you can't actually do
| this in any meaningful way? It's like trying to wipe "greed"
| off the map. Good luck.
| mattas wrote:
| I'm particularly interested in how Egypt responds to this. They
| lose about $300,000 per vessel that diverts around the cape. In
| fiscal 2023, about 25,000 vessels went through the canal.
| LargeTomato wrote:
| What can they do? They are the longest standing Arab security
| partner to the West and Israel. They gave Israel early warning
| about the attacks. They locked down the Palestine border at the
| request of Israel and are cooperating with the US and Israel on
| aid flowing into Palestine. They only control the Suez (north
| Red Sea) and the Houthis are across-the-sea from Somalia. Egypt
| couldn't defend against Houthi rockets if they wanted to.
|
| Egypt has a vested interest in stabilizing the region and
| returning to the status quo. They are politically and
| economically aligned with the West and Israel and their best,
| and only, option is to remain a stable partner.
| sparrc wrote:
| They're free to patrol the waters in the South Red Sea
| though. Doesn't Egypt have a navy? To me this situation seems
| like it would warrant sending nearly their entire fleet to
| the South Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
| LargeTomato wrote:
| Good questions!
|
| Egypt doesn't have the advanced anti missile cruisers.
| Egypt has a massive tank force.
|
| There is already a multi national naval fleet in the Red
| Sea patrolling the waters. Mostly US but also UK and some
| others.
|
| Edit
|
| There's more :) Egypt can't counter the missiles better
| than the US can, but it could certainly get pulled into a
| larger conflict if it started deploying military assets
| outside it's borders. They can't really make their
| situation better but they can definitely make it worse.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The danger isn't primarily from other ships that the
| Egyptian Navy could chase off but from land-based cruise
| missiles launched by the Houthis. The US Navy's most
| advanced weapons systems can intercept _most_ of the
| missiles but not all of them, and at some considerable
| degree of risk to the US vessels.
|
| The only military option to stop the attacks are drone /
| bomber incursions into Yemen which of course Egypt has no
| interest in doing since it could turn into a full hot war
| pretty easily.
| f6v wrote:
| > The only military option to stop the attacks are drone
| / bomber incursions into Yemen
|
| After they withstood years of war with Saudis? Those
| sandal-and-skirt guys are much tougher than people think.
| LargeTomato wrote:
| Conventional military wisdom is that you cannot win a war
| from the air. Case in point: Vietnam. You have to put
| boots on the ground to secure the area and the Saudis
| aren't about to do that and the American people would
| never support dying for a Saudi war.
| TylerE wrote:
| You don't need to a win a war here, just make life
| sufficiently hard that most of the fighters give up.
| logicchains wrote:
| It's Yemen, have you checked their GDP per capita
| recently? Life there is already hard enough that it's
| difficult to make it significantly worse.
| TylerE wrote:
| If harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages
| will stop harboring pirates.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages
| will stop harboring pirates_
|
| The history of area bombardment is it strengthens
| civilian resolve. Think: the Battle of Britain, Vietnam
| and America's wars in the Middle East.
| eastbound wrote:
| Aren't there counterexamples? How would Dresden be
| considered?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Nazi Germany was already fundamentally beaten by the time
| of Dresden.
| mhb wrote:
| Tell the Palestinians.
| quotz wrote:
| Thats straight out of the Henry Kissinger handbook.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| And every tough guy wants to say that because it makes
| them feel good, but history keeps proving them wrong.
| nulld3v wrote:
| Unfortunately, there is a small problem with this
| approach: Pirates have guns, villagers don't. So
| villagers don't get to choose whether or not they harbour
| pirates.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Sounds suspiciously like Israel's theory of operations
| for Gaza, which has little evidence for its correctness
| at this point.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _make life sufficiently hard that most of the fighters
| give up_
|
| You need to degrade their capability to fire long-range
| assets precisely. That's doable. If it's locals lobbing
| unguided rockets into the ocean, that's commercially
| manageable. Guided missiles and helicopter landings are
| not.
| underlipton wrote:
| This is an interesting statement to make, considering
| Yemen's recent history.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Due to their histories, the Yemenis - like the Afghan -
| have extensive experience using guerilla tactics against
| better equipped occupiers. Top it off with the
| mountainous terrain in the northern and eastern regions
| and you have a recipe for failure through attrition.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _extensive experience using guerilla tactics against
| better equipped occupiers_
|
| That's fine. Let them fight their civil war. The problem
| is long-range precision warfare extending past their
| costs. Knocking out that capability doesn't require boots
| on the ground.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| You underestimate how important the Palestinian cause is
| to the Yemeni people. I'd wager they'd be willing to
| "pause" the infighting for quite some time.
|
| Also, this move is making the Houthis immensely popular:
| they are winning the PR war internally right now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this move is making the Houthis immensely popular:
| they are winning the PR war internally right now_
|
| As I mentioned elsewhere [1], this is fine. A stable,
| adversarial Yemen is better than the clusterfuck it
| currently is. A big part of the problem with the current
| situation is there is nobody to negotiate with who can
| credibly claim to control these armed factions.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38917581
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Guerilla tactics don't work against shipping lanes and no
| one (well, not the coalition to defend shipping, at
| least, certain of their neighbors might have other
| thoughts) wants to occupy Yemen in the first place.
| hattmall wrote:
| Flying cheap drones with homemade explosives into
| commercial cargo ships sound pretty guerilla.
| m101 wrote:
| They will not out fight you, they will out wait you. Just
| like Afghanistan.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Since the strategic objective here will likely be to
| suppress them while changing the context with regard ro
| Israel-Palestine and their sponsors in Iran and not
| regime change, that works in the US's favor.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _After they withstood years of war with Saudis?_
|
| Different aims. Riyadh sought to remove them from power.
| That's a boots-on-the-ground operation they attempted
| from the air.
|
| Egypt would just need to degrade their coastal
| capabilities. Taking out vessels, helicopters and arms
| stores could do that from the air.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Saudi Arabia also attempted to stop the Houthis from
| bombing Saudi industry, and failed. It's difficult to
| bomb guided missiles, because they are typically only
| stored 1-4 at a time in a highly mobile and disguised
| manner, for example inside a truck, and are only going to
| be exposed as they're being fired. It's a really
| difficult task, unfortunately. As far as I known it's
| never been successfully done without a ground invasion.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's never been successfully done without a ground
| invasion_
|
| Counter-battery fire is tremendously precedented and
| _always_ done at standoff. You can also start hitting
| arms stores, port infrastructure, training and C3
| facilities.
|
| The beauty of this is it's cruelly win-win-win. The
| Houthis can use the bombing to strengthen their domestic
| image, maybe even boost recruitment. Iran can piggyback
| on that. And America can claim it cleared the Strait. As
| long as everyone stays in their lane (literally), it's a
| stable conclusion.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Counter battery fire simply does not work. These missiles
| are not stored nor fired in central locations, there are
| only a couple at a time. You can fire at the launch spot
| all you want, there's going to be no one and nothing of
| value there. It's the same tactics the US itself copied
| for the HIMARS, and despite thousand of airstrikes Russia
| hasn't been able to destroy them.
|
| Training and top level command is most likely not even in
| Yemen. You could hit the ports, that wouldn't stop the
| import of these missiles - they are shipped in small
| boats as a kit, assembled wherever, and then kept in a
| cave somewhere or in a car, ready to be fired. No port or
| infrastructure needed.
|
| These tactics have been used since the 80s, and no
| solution short of a ground invasion can stop them. Israel
| couldn't even stop Hamas and the PIJ from firing guided
| rockets from Gaza - at the end of the day when the IDF
| bomb houses that rockets were fired from, it's just
| theater: they never store more than a dozen munitions,
| and by the time counter battery fire arrives, they've
| likely fired all munitions already. This is a tiny 2.4sqm
| strip fully blockaded, I don't see how you can stop it in
| Yemen.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can fire at the launch spot all you want, there 's
| going to be no one and nothing of value there_
|
| This is blind counter-battery. You use the shot to place
| loiters. That then trains your fire.
| paganel wrote:
| > arms stores,
|
| Those arms stores do not exist as such, they're most
| probably highly dispersed and only at the limit can one
| call them "stores", and if gathered in one place that
| place is most probably located underground, where aerial
| bombings would have close to no effects.
|
| Just look at how difficult it is right now for Israel to
| take out Hamas's weapons cashes in Gaza, and we're
| talking about a much concentrated operation in terms of
| space and most probably Israel knows a lot more about
| Hamas's weapons caches than the US would be able to ever
| know about where the Houthis store their weapons.
| r00fus wrote:
| > And America can claim it cleared the Strait.
|
| See the thing is, if shipping companies don't trust the
| waters they simply won't send ships there - claims don't
| matter one whit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if shipping companies don 't trust the waters they
| simply won't send ships there - claims don't matter one
| whit_
|
| What part of removing long-range precision strike
| capability suggests an empty claim?
| bluGill wrote:
| Counter battery only works if you know where to fire. If
| your first clue is they just launched their entire
| storage of missiles there is nothing to do. If you are
| fast enough maybe you can get the now-empty launcher, but
| modern military practice is shoot and scout so odds are
| against that.
|
| Getting information on where things are stored is hard.
| It needs boots/spies on the ground (satellites can only
| get limited information and are easily fooled). As
| pointed out elsewhere, modern best practice is to not
| have a large warehouse that is easy to find and destroy,
| instead you scatter this stuff around in small units.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _just launched their entire storage of missiles_
|
| If they launched their entire stockpile, it's no longer
| an issue. The question was using one launch to take out a
| couple missiles, maybe a launcher and those operating it.
| Done repeatedly, this will degrade a static force.
| (Additional levers would need to be pulled on resupply.)
| paganel wrote:
| It would be politically suicidal for any Arab ruler to
| fight another Muslim/Arab country in the interest of
| Israel and the US, not even secular el-Sisi is free of
| that danger.
| golergka wrote:
| > The US Navy's most advanced weapons systems can
| intercept most of the missiles but not all of them, and
| at some considerable degree of risk to the US vessels.
|
| Aren't Egyptian Navy vessels much cheaper than american?
| They can just zerg rush and eat the damage. I don't think
| that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles piled up.
| mulmen wrote:
| > They can just zerg rush and eat the damage.
|
| The last time the StarCraft doctrine was used in a real
| war was over a century ago and it did not go well.
|
| > I don't think that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles
| piled up.
|
| Are you willing to bet the lives of Egyptian sailors on
| that assumption? How about your own?
|
| This isn't a video game.
| TylerE wrote:
| 1939 was less than 100 years ago. Didn't go well for
| Poland. "Blitzkrieg" means "lightning war".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _"Blitzkrieg " means "lightning war"_
|
| _Blitzkrieg_ was early combined-arms warfare; its modern
| iteration underwrites American military supremacy.
|
| Zerg rushing is an r-production analog that uses swarms
| of cheap, expendable units to overwhelm the enemy
| numerically. This is closer to the Soviet (and now
| Russian) doctrine of using humans to absorb ammunition.
| It fails against combined-arms armies because it lacks
| manoeuvre. It works when the enemy is production
| constrained, _e.g._ Ukraine.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The Russians, and Soviets, never did this. Their doctrine
| of mobile combined arms warfare, that worked really well
| during WW2, is called deep battle.
|
| Zerg rushing works in video games.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Russians, and Soviets, never did this_
|
| The Soviets in WWII used human waves against the Nazis.
| (EDIT: They did not, they used them against the Finns in
| the Winter War.) That said, the USSR was capable of
| combined-armed warfare.
|
| Russia has proved incapable of combined-arms warfare.
| They launched human waves in Bakhmut, and are largely
| using numerical advantages in raw recruits to push for
| marginal gains. This isn't how a modern army fights.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Soviet himan waves are as much myth as are the Germans
| calling it Blitzkrieg. The only thing comming close to
| these himan wave attacks are the failed Banzai charges of
| desperate Japanese forces. And thoae never worked.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Soviet himan waves are as much myth_
|
| The Red Army definitely used them against Finland. But
| you are right, they weren't used against the Nazis.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| It's not "human waves" in Ukraine, it's advance by
| attrition in Ukraine, as JumpCrisscross pointed out
| above. The Russians have not considered themselves
| limited by causalities, while the Ukrainians have to
| conserve manpower and materiel. So the Russians can
| "afford" to throw a bunch of squads out along a front,
| and if 90% or more are casualties, they don't care, so
| long as they can take some ground. Then, once they do,
| they rinse, lather, and repeat. It's a hideous
| expenditure of human lives, but it has worked tactically.
| Whether it is a significant gain operationally or
| strategically, I don't know. (Russia is going to pay a
| price down the road for losing all those young men, but
| it won't be paid by the old men sending them to their
| deaths.)
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Zerg rushes have worked since then. worked for Chinese
| "volunteers" in the Korean War. Iran-Iraq saw a bunch,
| and they mostly worked, if you don't mind elementary age
| kids running through mindfields.
|
| at sea, this approach took down the Russian Fleet at
| Tsushima Strait. The MCII exercise, contentious as it
| were, showed that an Iranian attempt at that might have
| worked.
|
| hell, for all of their losses in Ukraine, the Russians
| are still gaining ground, and a lot of that came at the
| expense of modern Straf-Bat penal units.
|
| that said, Egypt is a tank power, not a ship power, and
| flooding the area with older gear is a good way for most
| of it to end up at the bottom of the ocean. it's a non-
| starter of an idea for them.
| kiba wrote:
| "Gaining ground" is not really particularly a meaningful
| metric if you don't take a look at its magnitude and the
| attrition on equipment and manpower.
|
| It is in any case a full brute force approach that
| bellies an enemy that is unwilling or unable to train
| their troops.
|
| Yes, quantity is a quality all its own, but that's why
| the US military is one of the biggest armed force on the
| planet. We do literally have the biggest air force in the
| world, for example.
| bluGill wrote:
| > We do literally have the biggest air force in the
| world, for example.
|
| In fact we have 4 of the top 10: #1 (airforce), #2
| (Navy), 4(Army), and #5(marines).
| golergka wrote:
| > Are you willing to bet the lives of Egyptian sailors on
| that assumption? How about your own?
|
| Egypt usually doesn't have any problems with that.
| They're not a liberal democracy, so enduring high
| casualties is not a political problem for them.
| mulmen wrote:
| I don't see the connection. Liberal democracies risk the
| lives of their militaries all the time. Does Egypt have a
| history of selecting strategies that needlessly waste
| military strength in service of their social structure?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| how much do you think zerg rushing with ships cost?
| UberFly wrote:
| 6000 vespene gas
| bombcar wrote:
| Carrier has arrived.
| samus wrote:
| Zerg rushes are _maybe_ effective at overwhelming an
| enemy position. It can be considered to be acceptable for
| a tactically successful operation. Eating missiles
| without good outcome is usually _not_ part of a
| tactically successful operation.
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| The US interceptor missiles are something like 3 million
| dollars each. The Houthis drones are closer to 20
| thousand. Eventually they will win on economic grounds.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| When has America ever backed down on spending money for
| war?
| Scarblac wrote:
| Right now, for Ukraine.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Fair. Though I would slightly defend my position that
| qualifies as aid instead of letting America pull the
| trigger.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| It was the same in Vietnam. It even caused the US to end
| US dollar gold standard
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Judging by how broken the US economy seems, I'd say
| that's already here.
| pc86 wrote:
| What economy have you been looking at?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _US interceptor missiles are something like 3 million
| dollars each. The Houthis drones are closer to 20
| thousand_
|
| That's a 150x cost difference. Well within an order of
| magnitude of America versus Iran's economies and defense
| budgets.
|
| Which is irrelevant, since before this becomes a
| production problem it would become the diplomatic ones of
| bombing Houthi supplies in Yemen and intercepting IRGC
| vessels on the high seas.
| whartung wrote:
| To be really pedantic, a $20,000 drone out of Yemen is
| 0.1% of Yemen GDP.
|
| A US interceptor of 0.000013% of US GDP.
|
| So, yes, I know, LOTS of details (like Iran) here, but
| the overall point being even if our $3M missile is more
| than their $20K drone in absolute dollars, we can afford
| it more than they can.
| logicchains wrote:
| What percent of Iran's GDP is a $20k drone?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What percent of Iran 's GDP is a $20k drone?_
|
| About what a third of $3mm is to the U.S. (15x larger) or
| U.S. defense budget (50x larger). A 3x production-cost
| advantage in an economically unconstrained conflict is
| not an advantage. It's at best a Twitter PR point.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The conflict is actually not far from being constrained
| by production, which is difficult to scale up for a 3mm$
| munition, because private contractors expect lengthy
| contracts to justify long term amortization of increased
| capital expenditure.
|
| Given that Iran is producing thousands to tens of
| thousands of these missiles every year, and is looking to
| expand production even more, there actually really is a
| risk that the stockpiles will not keep up, after which
| dozens of billions of dollars will have to be expended to
| seriously ramp up production. This dynamic is also the
| reason why it's been so difficult to ramp up artillery
| production in support of Ukraine.
|
| Additionally, given that the expensive parts in these
| drones seem to be homemade in Iran (engines, fuselage,
| even some of the electronics), and given the sanctions,
| USD equiv. GDP isn't a great metric since there's no free
| market to convert Iranian production to USD.
|
| Then there's the problem that these missiles are sorely
| needed in case of a war in China, so actually going
| through a significant expenditure, even if money is
| allocated to increase production in 2-3 years, means that
| the US Navy may find itself with insufficient stockpiles
| to defend itself against the PLA, should the need arise.
| Its' ability to defend against credible Chinese
| saturation attacks is already marginal.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _conflict is actually not far from being constrained by
| production_
|
| If anyone is talking about escalation risk, production
| isn't the bottleneck. We are nowhere close to being
| resource constrained in the Middle East.
|
| > _the US Navy may find itself with insufficient
| stockpiles to defend itself against the PLA_
|
| In a production contest it's maximum sustainable flows,
| not stocks, that matter. (Stocks buy you time to get
| flows up.) To the extent challenging the PLA is a
| concern, boosting production to counter the Houthis is a
| net win.
|
| > _ability to defend against credible Chinese saturation
| attacks is already marginal_
|
| You're arguing both ways. If their value is marginal,
| expending them now is fine.
|
| Your broader point--I think--is correct. America doesn't
| want to spread itself thin. But that's a constraint at
| the CVN level. Once the carrier strike force is
| positioned, it's immaterial whether it's firing off
| missiles or guns.
|
| Anyone positioning Iran _et al_ v America _et al_ is
| missing key pieces in the logistics of war.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The stocks are not sufficient to buy time to get the
| flows. There are only around 500 SM-6 missiles (long
| range, suitable to protect large numbers of vessels at
| various distances, 5mm$ each), and there is only capacity
| to produce a few hundred for the short to medium term.
|
| The older SM-2s may have more plentiful stocks, but most
| of them have been deemed too dangerous to use after
| causing serious damage in test firings, and there are
| only around 180 modernized versions available, and the
| missile itself is no longer produced.
|
| Defending against a saturation attack means that the
| value experiences a step function. Either you have enough
| missiles to stop most low-tech enemy missiles, and you're
| going to be largely fine, or you don't, and your _entire_
| fleet might sink. It 's not something you can afford to.
| The US Navy is never going to allow stocks to go under
| what is necessary to stop at least a long-range Chinese
| attack, and that means at least 600 missiles, which is a
| serious chunk of what remains.
|
| Boosting production to counter the Houthis is surely
| something the US will do. It will take 2-3 years to bear
| fruit. In the meantime, stocks are not sufficient to tank
| Iran's capability to produce these kinds of missiles.
|
| I think that the most likely outcome is either more
| shipping companies negotiating terms to transit unharmed,
| like China's COSCO has all but admitted to have done, or
| these detours to continue.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _US Navy is never going to allow stocks to go under
| what is necessary to stop at least a long-range Chinese
| attack, and that means at least 600 missiles_
|
| Agree.
|
| > _stocks are not sufficient to tank Iran 's capability
| to produce these kinds of missiles_
|
| My core point is it never gets to Iran making missiles,
| the Houthis firing them and the U.S. doing nothing more
| than intercepting. Well before it becomes a production
| contest, the situation is resolved diplomatically or
| escalated.
|
| > _the most likely outcome is either more shipping
| companies negotiating terms to transit unharmed_
|
| This would be difficult for a Western company to do
| without risking sanctions.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My core point is it never gets to the point where Iran
| is making missiles, the Houthis are firing them and the
| U.S. is doing nothing more than intercepting them. Well
| before it becomes a production contest, the situation is
| resolved diplomatically or escalated.
|
| Given the "final warning" issued 4 days ago by the
| coalition, I think escalation or resolution (probably the
| former) is very much a "sooner rather than later" thing.
| BWStearns wrote:
| > Additionally, given that the expensive parts in these
| drones seem to be homemade in Iran (engines, fuselage,
| even some of the electronics), and given the sanctions,
| USD equiv. GDP isn't a great metric since there's no free
| market to convert Iranian production to USD.
|
| I wouldn't be so sure that the parts are locally sourced.
|
| [0] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/bizarre-theft-
| wave-tar...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Not the same type of hardware. They might need larger
| engines for their reusable drones, but the ones they used
| for Shaheds are in-house clones (funnily enough, a Wankel
| engine for one of them). The Wikipedia pages for the
| suicide Shaheds has teardowns and sources.
| swashboon wrote:
| But its not Yemen, its Iran that's paying for it - with
| money from oil smuggled past sanctions.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Shipping from Iran to Yemen is also vulnerable, however.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The question isn't how much each missile/drone costs. The
| question is, how many of those does each side have and
| how quickly can you get more?
|
| Maybe $3M missile isn't that costly to the US, but if you
| have like 1000 of them and it takes 6 months to replenish
| the stock, while the other side has 10000 drones that
| they can replenish in 3 months, you have a massive
| problem at your hand. (The same problem Ukraine is having
| re: stockpiling artillery shells that are sourced from
| US/NATO)
| Retric wrote:
| Edit: They where off by a factor of 1,000 for Yemen GDP.
|
| That said if they were actually 0.1% GDP each then 10000
| * 0.1% GDP each = 100% of GDP for 10 years. Which would
| obviously not happen.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| The problem is also the stock value of the industrial
| military complex. If your artisanal rockets are out
| competed by smart flying sand with a stick, your actual
| evaluation is in for a correction, fiscally as
| tactically.
| onthecanposting wrote:
| Dollars aren't directly convertible to warmaking power.
| The factories and skilled labor that make weapons are a
| scarce resource that don't scale with mere market
| capitalization.
|
| That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US
| GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single
| conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000
| tomahawks) is an important example of this.
| ovi256 wrote:
| The 7500 RU launched cruise missiles haven't achieved a
| tenth as much as the Tomahawks the US hit Iraq with.
| After that, Iraq didn't have a working integrated air
| defence any more.
|
| The RU missiles have killed plenty of civilians though.
| jopsen wrote:
| True, but it's possibly fair to argue that its easier to
| scale up cheap drone production, than production of
| interceptors.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| At a certain point, US foreign policy tends to move from
| interceptors to flattening launch sites and key
| personnel.
| jopsen wrote:
| Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The point is to have a deterrence gradient, so you always
| have (1) deescalate (lower), (2) match (proportionate),
| and (3) escalate (higher) responses, for _any_ level of
| attack.
|
| If there's a level at which you don't have all three
| options, there exist political situations that can leave
| you vulnerable.
|
| E.g. if the US has no proportionate response to a Russian
| tactical nuclear strike on Ukrainian soil, it may hazard
| towards _not_ escalating.
|
| Similarly, why the talking points of US response strikes
| for the past few decades have generally been 'this was a
| _proportionate_ response. '
|
| But after the last warning to the Houthis, I expect the
| next ASBM or large drone that hits a civilian ship
| prompts a large US/UK (and maybe France and Germany)
| strike.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| With actual attacks on US warships. we're actually past
| the point that usually occurs.
| cpursley wrote:
| Do keep in mind that Iraq had ancient SAMs (only about 75
| of them) and practically zero ISR support. US coalition
| forces hit them hard from the get-go. Ukraine had/has
| several hundred modern(ish) SAMs with the ISR support of
| NATO. There's a reason the Russians don't fly too far
| into Ukraine.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The US conducts war with a scalpel. Russia does it with a
| rusty hatchet. Those cruise missiles from Russia are
| (relatively speaking) very cheap and inaccurate.
| guimplen wrote:
| In all recent US wars civilian casualties vastly
| outnumber military ones. In the Ukrainian war civilian
| casualties constitute less than 10% of overall
| casualties. Outstanding precision for a rusty hatchet.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Most recent US wars have spent most of their time in an
| asymmetric counterinsurgency phase, the Russo-Ukrainian
| war is (in style of warfare) basically a symmetric force-
| on-force international war.
|
| These have very different dynamics, inherently.
| 93po wrote:
| This reads like propaganda. The US military does a fine
| job of destroying entire countries
| getpokedagain wrote:
| It's actually worse. I read this as Russia accidentally
| hits civilians because they have no choice where as we do
| it with intention.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| I advise you to educate yourself. The US killed 300
| thousand civilians in the second Iraq war using their
| 'precision' strikes. That compares to 10 thousand
| civilians who died so far in the Ukrainian war. Both of
| these numbers are provided by the US gov itself.
| klooney wrote:
| Mosul, Fallujah, etc were quite bloody. You can't
| actually take cities cleanly, you can only win the
| propaganda war in your own sphere of influence.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US
| GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single
| conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000
| tomahawks) is an important example of this.
|
| The US has built a _lot_ more cruise missiles than just
| its Tomahawks [0], _and_ the US has a less cruise missile
| dependent doctrine because it is heavily invested in
| acheiving air superiority and delivering smart glide
| bombs, and shorter-range missiles that are much cheaper.
|
| [0] ~7500 Harpoons, some large number I can't readily pin
| down of SLAM (AGM-84E) and SLAM-ER (AGM-84H/K) developed
| from the Harpoon, ~2000 AGM-86, ~1600 AGM-129, 2000+
| AGM-158, plus some more developed ans retired in the
| first half of the Cold War
| mnbion wrote:
| >Russia has launched more cruise missiles in a single
| conflict (~7500)
|
| What is the source for that number? The only long-range
| weapons Russia has launched _thousands_ of are the
| Iranian-made long-range suicide drones.
| ajuc wrote:
| > That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US
| GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single
| conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000
| tomahawks) is an important example of this.
|
| By their fruits you'll know them. If Russia was able to
| destroy the enemy like USA did with half the number of
| missiles - they absolutely would. But they can't (mostly
| because USA has system where it takes minutes from
| recognizing targets to destroying them, and in Russia it
| takes hours - so they can only hit stationary targets
| reliably), so they have to go into quantity instead.
|
| Also USA use bombs much more often (because they could -
| because they obliterated the air defence in the first
| hours which Russia still can't do).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > To be really pedantic, a $20,000 drone out of Yemen is
| 0.1% of Yemen GDP.
|
| Yemen's GDP is $21B, not $21M.
| buzzdenver wrote:
| As an engineer, saying that $20k, the price of a cheap
| car, is 1/1000th of a GDP of a whole country does not
| pass the smell test. Google says that Yemen's GDP is
| $21.61b, so a drone is 0.0000925% of the GDP. In other
| words it's about a million drones per year for Yemen, and
| about 7.7 million interceptors per year for the US.
| waffleiron wrote:
| Not 0.1%, you are off by a factor 1000. Their GDP is 20b
| not 20m. Would still be relatively more costly but a lot
| less extreme.
| lr1970 wrote:
| > To be really pedantic, a $20,000 drone out of Yemen is
| 0.1% of Yemen GDP.
|
| Are you saying that entire Yemen's GDP is just $20M ?
| Does not seem plausible.
| boplicity wrote:
| You're embedded assumption is that Yemen would be paying
| for these drones.
|
| Examined on its own, that's a bold claim.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| Yemeni rebels don't pay for these, though. It's free
| 'aid' from Iran. So arguing costs doesn't make much
| sense. Similarly mujahedeen in Afghanistan got free
| Stingers MANPADs
| ALittleLight wrote:
| That assumes the US won't fight back. US contributes ~6%
| of Yemen GDP in foreign aid. Yemen is a big food
| importer. US could shut off foreign aid and blockade
| Yemen and collapse their economy - they wouldn't be able
| to afford food, let alone 20k drones.
|
| The Houthi strategy isn't an economic strategy, it's a
| "hope the US isn't willing to kill us" strategy.
| logicchains wrote:
| >US could shut off foreign aid and blockade Yemen and
| collapse their economy - they wouldn't be able to afford
| food, let alone 20k drones
|
| Yemen's already in famine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Famine_in_Yemen_(2016%E2%80%.... The drones are
| supplied by Iran.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yes, of course, let's starve even more people, that will
| sure gain us more friends...
| robotomir wrote:
| There is a non-zero chance we are headed for a situation
| where global warming and sea level rise will make
| hundreds of millions, mostly from equatorial regions,
| desperate refugees. It could be that an attitude of self-
| righteousness might become impossible to maintain.
| Friends come and go.
| hef19898 wrote:
| So, you propose to do what? Let those people drown? Or
| actively shooting them? Or maybe proactively let the
| starve? Either way, it would be genocide.
| robotomir wrote:
| Yes, we might need to shoot at them.
| hef19898 wrote:
| What is it with you people just casually argueing for
| genocide? Do you think this is, I don't know, tough or
| edgy?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Do you propose doing nothing about the people firing
| rockets at shipping? What about the lives of the sailors
| on those ships?
|
| Is there some intrinsic right that the rocket-firers are
| defending that warrants treating them as other than
| aggressors in this situation?
|
| Why do you call it genocide? Surely if you shoot at ships
| in international waters, and it is not defence, then
| you're bringing whatever acts of defence follow on your
| own head. Acts of defence seem impossible to class as
| genocide (but I'd like to hear arguments to the contrary
| if you have them).
| hef19898 wrote:
| OP talked about the millions of potential refugees from
| climate change we might have. Not the Hoithi rebels
| firing at international shipping as retaliation of what
| happens im Gaza.
|
| Regaeding the latter, yes, for bow I think doing nothing
| militarily is exactly what is needed.
| schoen wrote:
| I think you missed who the "them" was in this later part
| of the thread: not Yemenis attacking civilian shipping,
| but rather hypothetical future climate refugees from
| islands that disappear due to sea level rise.
| robotomir wrote:
| Not only that, people whose most fertile agricultural
| land is now under salt water.
| dragonelite wrote:
| The Saudis with help of the US has already tried to get
| rid of the Houthis. That didn't exactly went well.
|
| Never in my wildest dream would i think that the Houthis
| would be one doing the first modern blockade of a strait.
| I always expected the US to do the first modern block in
| the Malacca strait, when China is forced to do a Armed
| reunification with Taiwan.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| While the Houthi drone itself is inexpensive, the cost to
| the economy of a drone hitting shipping is substantially
| greater than the $3M cost of the US interceptor missile.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| $3M each is what DoD is charged, or maybe an export
| price, for low quantities. Real marginal cost of mass
| production is much lower.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is the big question here. How much can/should the US
| scale production. We know from several current wars the
| cheap drones are a big issue. So we need to come up with
| a solution. Can we develop a new anti-drone weapon system
| that is cheaper? Can we mass produce these missiles and
| thus get them much cheaper? Some other option I'm not
| aware of? Whatever, the fact is every half-competent
| wannabe general now knows that drones are cheap to build
| and expensive to defend against. The US needs to respond
| somehow or we will lose to them.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| In a previous similar thread, it was mentioned that
| directed energy weapons could be an effective & efficient
| response to drones, and have already been in development
| and testing by the US military for some time.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, they won't, because the immediately coming war
| between the US-led coalition organized to reopen the sea
| lanes and the Houthis is not going to be conducted by
| simply trying to intercept attacks.
| mnbion wrote:
| This doesn't take into account the cost of smuggling the
| drones from Iran to Yemen. There is a reason cocaine is
| an order of magnitude cheaper in Colombia than in Miami.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| You're grossly underestimating the US military. Do you
| remember the 20T for Trillion spend in the mid east on 2
| optional wars for 20 years.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _which of course Egypt has no interest in doing_
|
| Because someone else will do it for them. Saudi Arabia,
| Egypt and everyone based on Djibouti have a joint
| interest in keeping the Bab al-Mandab strait traversable.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Saudi Arabia pretty much triggered this whole mess by
| invading, excuse me, "intervening in" Yemen.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-
| led_intervention_in_the_...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It's difficult to blame Riyadh exclusively without taking
| into account Iran's role in the Houthis' takeover of
| Yemen [1]. Saudi Arabia regionalised and intensified the
| conflict, but they didn't start it. (To your credit, I
| don't think the Houthis would have long-range precision
| weapons were Riyadh out of the picture.)
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_takeover_in_Yemen
| jopsen wrote:
| > ...bomber incursions into Yemen which of course Egypt
| has no interest in doing since it could turn into a full
| hot war pretty easily.
|
| How would the Houthis respond?
|
| Much less, what do they have that can possibly hit Egypt.
|
| That said, bombing might not do the trick. Just create
| more suffering in Yemen.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Ghadr-110 has a claimed range up to 2000km, which is just
| about the distance from Sanaa to Cairo
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghadr-110
|
| https://www.mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-
| tool.php?circles=%...
| citrin_ru wrote:
| > How would the Houthis respond?
|
| It assumed that Houthi is a proxy of Iran so the question
| is how Iran would respond.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I thought the Houthis were no longer receiving funding
| from Iran with the SA-Iran deal of 2023. Did that change?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I thought the Houthis were no longer receiving funding
| from Iran with the SA-Iran deal of 2023. Did that change?
|
| I think its more "Iran lied and has used less overt
| channels" than "that changed".
| ksherlock wrote:
| Houthis have long range missiles (courtesy of Iran). They
| regularly launch them at Israel, they can launch them at
| Egypt too.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| This idea of the Houthis as some sort of desert people
| misses that they took over the military of what was
| formerly an ally of "The West"..
|
| They have attack helicopters: https://pictures.reuters.co
| m/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2..., https://pictures.re
| uters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2...
|
| They have American & Soviet fighter jets (F-5 / SU-22): h
| ttps://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID
| =2..., https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H4BV3xzWWXk/TnI
| KIQMOAFI/A...
|
| They have tons of cruise missiles:
| https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-
| PARADE-R..., https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-
| SECURITY-PARADE-R...
|
| And ballistic missiles:
| https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-
| PARADE-R...
|
| They're being supplied by Iran and whoever else hates
| Saudi Arabia, so they have a ton of capability to launch
| pretty devastating attacks on their neighbors -- hence
| why we have destroyers and aircraft carriers in the
| region. The missiles targeting merchant ships are bad --
| it'd be worse if they started targeting land-based
| military targets in other countries.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They have American & Soviet fighter jets (F-5 / SU-22)
|
| They have, from the accounts I've seen (including their
| own propaganda videos) a _single_ flyable F-5
| constituting their entire "fast air combat capability" of
| those delivered to Yemen more than 40 years ago (and the
| F-5 was an older cheap export fighter then.)
|
| And... I wouldn't expect it to be flyable much longer.
| Mobile missile launchers may be hard to find and kill on
| the ground, boring conventional fixed-wing jet fighters
| aren't, and even though they aren't the strategic target
| of the coalition the US has put together, US combat
| doctrine very heavily favors early destruction of an
| enemy's air combat capability and air defenses to
| maximize freedom of operation.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| True enough - but they've carried out multiple strikes
| with the SU-22s in their possession and can presumably
| restock / refit those with Iranian support -- they also
| have several dozen older MIGs. There's no doubt that
| they'd be annihilated if they tried to use those for
| continued offensive missions outside of the Yemeni
| borders but they could likely pull off a single fast
| attack on Cairo or Suez if they were so inspired.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > but they could likely pull off a single fast attack on
| Cairo or Suez if they were so inspired.
|
| No. They couldn't. Yemen to either is like three times
| the range of the SU-22 on a shortest distance path, which
| would take them through Saudi Arabia and close enough for
| mistakes of intent to Israel, either of which--as well as
| Egypt--has Air Forces more than capable of intercepting
| and destroying them if they magically gained the range to
| try to pull of that kind of flight.
|
| The Houthi Air Force is useful for their civil war, and
| not a whole lot else.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > [Egypt is] free to patrol the waters
|
| Putting patrol-boats out there may deter boarding by
| Somalia-style pirates, but in this case the risk comes from
| various missiles and bomb-drones launched from the shore
| [0]. Even if the the defender has a few fancy anti-missile
| warships, the attacker could choose the least-covered
| target from a constant stream of (big, slow) cargo-ships
| through a ~300km route. [1]
|
| [0] https://www.mei.edu/publications/houthis-red-sea-
| missile-and...
|
| [1] https://www.axios.com/2023/12/20/map-houthi-shipping-
| vessel-...
| Axsuul wrote:
| Not many navys can project force that far due to logistics.
| jessepasley wrote:
| Israel has a navy, and is curiously missing from 'Operation
| Prosperity Guardian'
| zilti wrote:
| I suspect after the ground invasion in Gaza and the
| attacks at Lebanon, the Israeli public would be even less
| pleased at a "third front"
| jessepasley wrote:
| Good thing there a lot of other countries willing to foot
| that bill.
| r00fus wrote:
| I love how Israel expects the US and other countries to
| do all the heavy lifting on a front that is actually
| vital for their economic needs while they're on a mission
| dropping a Hiroshima of bombs on their own territory.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Israel can potentially benefit from the situation, as a
| land route Bahrain -> Haifa port is currently being
| considered as an alternative to Suez Channel.
| maxglute wrote:
| They also can't afford to potentially embarrass themselves
| militarily with much more existential grand renaissance dam
| drama unfolding in the background.
| namaria wrote:
| It's quite painless to allocate the limited resources of
| others isn't it?
| scythe wrote:
| The Egyptian government is a dictatorship holding together
| a powder keg. The military coup of 2013 overthrew a Muslim
| Brotherhood government and was followed by the election of
| 2014 which produced the very believable and realistic
| result of 96% of the vote for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (he was
| reelected with 97% in 2018 and 90% in 2023). A military
| mobilization of Egypt would jeopardize the minimal existing
| political infrastructure in the country and, arguably, play
| into the hands of the Houthis themselves, who are no
| friends of regional stability.
| partiallypro wrote:
| It's fairly obvious at this point that the only way to stop
| it is to bomb targets in Yemen...which isn't going to be
| politically popular. The US is even struggling to put
| together a coalition to secure the water ways.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > What can they do?
|
| Hypothetically, Egypt can do the same thing they did the last
| time Yemen fell into civil war - support the PLC.
|
| The issue is Saudi and UAE - Egypt's primary backers - are
| supporting conflicting factions in the Yemeni Civil War. The
| Saudis are supporting the Yemeni Republican Guard (the old
| leadership of the Republic of Yemen) while the UAE is
| supporting the secessionist Southern Transitional Council
| which is fighting to reconstitute South Yemen.
|
| If Egypt choses one side over they other, they are in big
| trouble, as the other side will start meddling in Egypt in
| retaliation. Egypt is already in a de facto Cold War with
| Turkiye and Qatar because they supported Morsi and the Muslim
| Brotherhood, and Sisi needs as much support as possible to
| retain power in Egypt.
| justrealist wrote:
| > They locked down the Palestine border at the request of
| Israel
|
| I'm not arguing they should do this, but what Israel actually
| wants right now is to allow Gaza residents to exit into the
| Sinai, not a blockade.
| zardo wrote:
| While a large portion of the Egyptian population likely agree
| with the Houthi stance, the political actors they would
| support are in prison.
| ars wrote:
| > They gave Israel early warning about the attacks.
|
| Both Israel and Egypt denied that this was true. They both
| said the warnings were of a general natural "Hamas wants to
| attack", nothing specific.
| autoexecbat wrote:
| Their navy can defend the shipping routes rather than waiting
| for someone else to step up
| splittingTimes wrote:
| > They locked down the Palestine border at the request of
| Israel
|
| Where did you get the info from that it was on Israel's
| request and not of their own accord?
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| It's a big area, I believe there's US Navy and UK Navy ships
| there right now.
| mk89 wrote:
| I didn't believe this comment until i found that they hit $7B
| record in 2022, which matches the numbers. Crazy, thanks for
| sharing this.
| justinzollars wrote:
| Conspiracy corner: Egypt is joining BRICS. Maybe this is
| deliberate pressure and this is a convenient excuse?
| alephnerd wrote:
| BRICS is not some omnipresent challenge to NATO or the WB.
| China and India hate each other and were literally a trigger
| away from war 3 years ago.
|
| "[the] two countries almost at the brink of war with
| artillery guns ready to fire at Chinese tanks which were
| trying to storm Indian positions, a fate averted by a hotline
| between the two sides, reveals former Army chief Gen M.M.
| Naravane (Retd)" [0]
|
| [0] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-
| narav...
| janmo wrote:
| Egypt will feel some pain, but most of it will be felt by
| Israel and Europe. Egypt has closed the canal many times itself
| as a form of protest, the longest closure was from 1967 to 1975
| after the 6 day war with Israel.
|
| So I do not expect them to do anything.
| neonate wrote:
| https://nitter.net/typesfast/status/1743654060673093754
| johnea wrote:
| A better link (actual article not a twit):
|
| http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/maritime-shipping-disaster-...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| That's a black-eye to US foreign policy IMO. A major mission for
| the US Navy during peacetime is to preserve and defend maritime
| trade but they have failed.
| f6v wrote:
| Except US is not at peacetime, it's engaged in one of the
| biggest wars in recent history. Something people don't realize
| is that US has been struggling to coerce partners into
| delivering more air defense systems into Ukraine. Now, fighting
| off missiles in Red Sea is a cherry on top.
| drumhead wrote:
| You cant get insurance for sailing in a conflict zone.
| iammjm wrote:
| This ain't cheap tho
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure you can. However it costs a lot more money and so most
| lines find it cheaper to go around war zones.
| feedforward wrote:
| The incredible bravery of the Houthis, who have very limited arms
| and resources is inspiring to me. They want the genocide in Gaza
| to end. This is what a real humanitarian intervention is. That a
| small band of brave people with limited resources can have such
| an effect is as inspiring as their bravery.
| shashashasha___ wrote:
| they want it to end? thats the goal? do you support them? do
| you support their official slogan "God is the Greatest Death to
| America Death to Israel A Curse Upon the Jews Victory to
| Islam"? does that sound like a bunch of people who just want
| peace in the middle east? do you understand that they are a
| genocidal force on their own? stated very clearly in their
| official slogan
| nerfbatplz wrote:
| They've been at the sharp end of Uncle Sam's finest munitions
| for a decade, they have earned the right to hate America.
| They haven't attacked any other countries, they haven't even
| killed anyone in any of their ship attacks.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah something that is really hard to see in these US and
| Europe focused HN comment sections is that the united
| states _is the legitimate enemy_ of a great many people.
| They have not imagined or misunderstood the situation. We
| will, and in many cases have, destabilized their countries,
| armed despots and helped execute coups, routinely killed
| civilians including children, blockaded regions causing
| famine and preventable death by the millions.
|
| We justify this that it is better for the world overall if
| we do it. Maybe we are right. But that doesn't put the legs
| back on your children we cannot expect everyone to love us
| for it.
| xinuc wrote:
| A good reading about this is of course Noam Chomsky.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Their demands are clearly communicated and reasonable in this
| case. It is that israel stop bombing gaza and that food,
| medicine, and aid be allowed into gaza unimpeded.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Good. Economic sanctions like this will help bring to heel the
| genocidaires in Israel and the United States.
| elric wrote:
| What's the impact on emissions? On the price of goods being
| transported?
| Solvency wrote:
| Emissions? Bad. Really really bad.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Curious if people will demand we shop less rather than
| condemn the attackers.
| elric wrote:
| Why not both?
| gumballindie wrote:
| I am all for consuming less, for more than one reason,
| but i am not keen on people taking the side of pirates.
| That might make me want to consume harder to be honest.
| solarpunk wrote:
| this is nonsensical.
| gumballindie wrote:
| In hindsight it is.
| lebean wrote:
| That's been happening, but is that a surprise?
| nottorp wrote:
| Shopping less is always a good idea, but it's unrelated to
| the situation discussed here.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I understand going around Africa adds 20% to the route for a
| ship coming from Asia.
| uluyol wrote:
| If the purpose of keeping emissions low is humanitarian, then
| there is a much bigger humanitarian concern at the center of
| all this.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there is a much bigger humanitarian concern at the center
| of all this_
|
| If you're talking about Yemen, sure. If you're talking about
| Gaza, it's naive to think anything there will restore
| confidence in the Bab al-Mandab.
| pphysch wrote:
| The Houthi leadership have repeatedly said that they will
| stop the attacks if the Israeli assault & ethnic cleansing
| of Palestine ends.
|
| The real naivete is presuming that the "lalala can't hear
| you, I will do whatever I want" playbook of US/Israeli
| foreign policy is sustainable in any way.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Lots of people say lots of things. When it comes to
| geopolitics, actions and capability are what matter.
| Until someone is willing to underwrite shipping insurance
| on the Houthis' word, their leadership's promises are
| worthless.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Maersk added $500-750 USD "season surplus" which is related to
| this for every shipment from North/South America and Europe to
| start with [1].
|
| The shipping cost for items that have to go around is about
| double $1600 to $4000 ish as seen [2].
|
| So the cost is quite a bit extra.
|
| [1] - https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2024/01/05/peak-
| season-...
|
| [2] - https://www.drewry.co.uk/supply-chain-advisors/supply-
| chain-...
| pfdietz wrote:
| This is a great opportunity for the US to encourage an increase
| in US-flagged merchant vessels.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Why?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Attacks on US flagged ships are acts of war against the US,
| which you would think would cause hesitation on the part of
| the Houthi and Iran. And having more US-flagged ships helps
| the US maintain a logistic capability in the face of larger
| wars.
| miguelazo wrote:
| Attribution for these is difficult. Many non-state actors
| involved. Maybe the US can launch another failed war
| against a concept (terror, drugs, etc)
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| this ain't obscure APT hacking.
|
| in this case it's pretty clearly the Houthi-let Yemeni
| government, which is a proxy for Iran, and all parties
| have been pretty vocal about it.
| rurp wrote:
| There isn't any question that Iran proxies, including the
| Houthis, have been attacking American assets. No major
| actor disputes this. The tricky part is what to do about
| it. The Iranian proxies have been trying to strike a
| balance of harming/harassing US forces while keeping the
| attacks at a low enough level to avoid a major
| retaliation and full blown war. Calibrating the right
| response is not a trivial problem.
| gumballindie wrote:
| > Attacks on US flagged ships are acts of war against the
| US, which you would think would cause hesitation on the
| part of the Houthi and Iran.
|
| Meanwhile, attacks on EU vessels will likely attract
| sympathy for the attackers from the EU.
| js4ever wrote:
| Indeed, Stockholm is in EU
| logicchains wrote:
| The Houthis have already been firing drones at US warships;
| I don't imagine firing rockets at US-flagged cargo ships
| would be any more of an act of war than that.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm not sure how that would change anything? The US navy
| defends pretty much any ship on the open sea to the best of
| their ability, no matter who you are flagged as.
|
| I suppose you could make an argument the the US should only
| defend US flagged ships, which might save the US money or
| something. (I don't think I'd believe this argument, but you
| can make it)
| cm2187 wrote:
| They wouldn't save much US money. Longer routes means less
| shipping capacity, means higher shipping cost. That doesn't
| just affect europe, it's a market, a ship leaving China can
| equally go to Europe or the US. It affects the countries that
| are importing the most, at the very top of which sits the US.
| bluGill wrote:
| Presumably most ships owners would look and discover that
| the US navy is the largest in the world and thus switch
| their flags to the US - they would then pay taxes to the US
| (and have to deal with a lot of other US laws that they
| don't now). Either that or they would pay a lot more
| insurance. Ships going to Europe might switch to either UK
| or France for flags (again paying respective taxes and
| laws) - both are reasonably powerful in their area, though
| not on US level. China's navy is up and coming and so may
| be worth looking at for a flag as well.
|
| Note that the budget of the country in question is what is
| really being talked about, and not the entire GDP of the
| country. It is possible for the US navy to save money while
| costing the average US citizen money.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Presumably most ships owners would look and discover
| that the US navy is the largest in the world and thus
| switch their flags to the US - they would then pay taxes
| to the US (and have to deal with a lot of other US laws
| that they don't now). Either that or they would pay a lot
| more insurance.
|
| You've just described mercantillism. Post Bretton-Woods
| is the first time in centuries the world hasn't worked
| that way. The dream of free trade and globalism was that
| everyone had equal protection on the seas. I fear you're
| correct that we're returning to a darker time where
| autarky reigns and trade is restricted to essentials.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| If only there were a body of water through which the ships
| could sail from China directly to the US...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Peter Zeihan predicted that the US will gradually withdraw
| from being the global security guarantor as it doesn't serve
| their interests anymore, and that we will see an increase in
| attacks on cargo ships on the open ocean.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| For context, Zeihan is former _Stratfor_ , the _Zero Hedge_
| of geopolitics.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > The US navy defends pretty much any ship on the open sea to
| the best of their ability, no matter who you are flagged as
|
| Unless that ship is headed to the Gaza Strip: see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid .
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think the presumption is that the U.S. would (have to)
| respond differently to an attack on a U.S.-flagged vessel
| compared to an attack on anyone else. So, not a question of
| defense, but of the proportionality of the post hoc response.
| swarnie wrote:
| To print a bigger target on them?
|
| What?
| toast0 wrote:
| Can you put a US flag on a merchant vessel built outside the
| US? If not, this isn't a real option, because there's no
| capacity to build large container ships in the US; and probably
| not enough capacity to crew US flagged ships with US based
| crews either.
| jafo1989 wrote:
| Confer: Operation Earnest Will 1987-1988 [1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Will
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The country of registration is separate from the country the
| ship was built in, and separate from ownership or nationality
| of the crewmen.
|
| A ship can be built, owned and operated from outside the US
| but still be registered in the US.
|
| You may be thinking of the Jones Act, which implements
| cabotage in the US, a fairly common practice among seafaring
| nations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabotage
| TomK32 wrote:
| Non-US-flagged ships carry goods to/from the US and if not then
| the might transport goods that will be refined into some other
| good the US will import. The USA are #3 exporter and #1
| importer in the world with a value of >1.4 and >2.4 trillion
| dollar respectively https://www.statista.com/topics/1308/trade-
| in-the-us/#topicO...
| huytersd wrote:
| Back to Magellan times I see.
| dottjt wrote:
| Isn't the obvious answer here just to require all ships passing
| through the red sea to equip anti-drone technology?
|
| I understand those interceptor missiles are super expensive
| because they're designed to shoot down everything, but surely
| there's a much cheaper, automated technology that destroys drones
| specifically?
|
| Don't get me wrong, this approach also causes all sorts of
| issues, but isn't this basically what they do in other countries
| facing potentially threatening situations like South Africa i.e.
| farmers carrying guns etc.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _obvious answer here just to require all ships passing
| through the red sea to equip anti-drone technology?_
|
| Who will require this?
|
| You'd also need every port that ship approaches and every
| nation whose waters it transits to clear active military
| equipment on a civilian vessel.
| TylerE wrote:
| Not just that, but most commercial ships are registered in
| places like Panama specifically because they have almost no
| rules.
| zirror wrote:
| They also have anti ship missles, plus it's not a one size fits
| all approach.
| akira2501 wrote:
| I don't think the "obvious answer" is to engage in a mandatory
| arms race over shipping channels. The most obvious thing is to
| put commerce aside for a few minutes while we address these
| extremely serious social and political issues.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > The most obvious thing is to put commerce aside for a few
| minutes
|
| Do you think it could be viable to set aside commercial
| interests to address the deep discord among the countries and
| their proxies in the region?
|
| The practical approach to call for calm and protect
| commercial ties and robust economics is the only way forward
| that I can see. But I am open to your point of view.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Do you think it could be viable to set aside commercial
| interests to address the deep discord among the countries
| and their proxies in the region?
|
| Isn't that precisely what choosing to sail around the horn
| of Africa is? It's commercially unfavorable and it is
| designed to avoid the area of conflict.
|
| > The practical approach to call for calm and protect
| commercial ties and robust economics is the only way
| forward that I can see.
|
| Sure, but do you think that automatically heightening the
| level of conflict is the best way to achieve that? The OP
| even suggested that requiring this approach through
| legislation would be favorable.
| koromak wrote:
| "Can't we just Nuke em'?"
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| drones aren't the issue, it's the anti-ship missiles.
|
| and both can get complicated enough that you need serious ECM
| and ECCM to reliably jam them, and almost certainly need
| systems that shoot them down; i.e. missiles and CIWS.
|
| at that point you're just making fat warships.
| genman wrote:
| The obvious answer is to deal with the source of the problem -
| better late than never. Unfortunately the US government has not
| even figured out that there is a really serious threat to them
| and have let the situation to spiral out of control for quite
| long time instead of dealing with it.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| > 95% of container ships that would've transited the Red Sea are
| now going around the Southern Tip of Africa as of this morning.
| The ships diverting from their ordinary course are marked orange
| on the @flexport map below.
|
| Notably some already IN the red sea
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| This can't be good for inflation, can it?
| alephnerd wrote:
| For Europe maybe.
|
| The US uses the Pacific to trade with APAC.
|
| Edit: am wrong. See below
| maxmcd wrote:
| Another response in the linked twitter thread seems to
| indicate this is directly affecting US shipping prices:
| https://x.com/typesfast/status/1743657342280098135?s=20
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Please fix the title.
|
| > 95% of container ships _that would've transited the Red Sea_
| are now going around the Southern Tip of Africa
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| That is helpful context which disambiguates an otherwise
| confusing title but I also suspect that the submitter ran into
| a character-length limit on the title. It would be hard to fit
| that statement into a certain length without omitting _some_
| relevant detail.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > 95% of container ships are now going around the Southern
| Tip of Africa
|
| > 95% of Red Sea container ship traffic now going around
| South Africa
| christkv wrote:
| This will cause a lag in the world logistics causing supply
| issues again in the next couple of months I think.
| TomK32 wrote:
| There is simply no way around hitting Iran. Hard. Take out it's
| airfields and factories, if it's power player are hit as well,
| like Soleimani was, it could give the young population a chance
| to get rid of the old mullahs and regain their freedom. This will
| benefit in both conflicts and give a very clear sign to China
| that Taiwan isn't that interesting after all...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Why? I thought economic sanctions through the threats of armed
| action is fine, especially when it is to "sanction" a state
| that is killing thousands and thousands of civilians. I'm sure
| you don't think sanctioning states who are actively and openly
| wiping out civilians is bad?
|
| Even russia isn't this blatant and open with its goals.
|
| >On October 10th an Israeli official told a television station:
| "Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents. There will be
| no buildings." Daniel Hagari, an idf spokesperson, boasted that
| "hundreds of tons of bombs" had been dropped on Gaza. Then, he
| added: "the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."
|
| That sure sound like something that should attract sanctions
| and actual military force to prevent.
| paganel wrote:
| This proves that world-wide sea supremacy by the US is now de
| facto gone, if there really was such a concept to begin with.
|
| I wonder when will political forces inside of the US proper start
| questioning the opportunity costs of maintaining 11 aircraft
| carriers given current events, probably not until the next big-
| ish war proves their futility for good.
| devnull42069 wrote:
| All the respect in the world to the Yemeni people for their
| courageous actions. Palestine will be free, from the river to
| both seas.
| js4ever wrote:
| Burner account used for propaganda and calling for a genocide
| (go check meaning of this slogan)
| devnull42069 wrote:
| Yeah I'm not stupid, you zealots are everywhere, and I still
| have to eat. But the meaning of that slogan is exactly that.
| A fully free Palestine. Turning it into a call for genocide
| is just projection on your part. Not everyone is like you.
| fhub wrote:
| Current generation interceptor missiles are in the single digit
| millions and have speciality launch platforms. But could these
| cargo ships launch a couple of dozen loitering interceptor
| munitions (think something like Anduril Roadrunner) when in the
| danger zones and loiter at 40m altitude in an arc around the ship
| and detect and intercept a missile traveling at 300m/s at
| altitude 7m - 40m?
| solarpunk wrote:
| would this system, its deployment, replenishment, and upkeep
| cost less than simply avoiding the area?
| fhub wrote:
| Note sure. Each Roadrunner is "Low six figures" and claims to
| be completely reusable if it doesn't hit it's target. Since
| you only need them over a certain area, they can move from
| ship to ship so you wouldn't need say a dozen per ship. But
| maybe 200 total.
|
| I'm more curious if it is technically feasible for something
| like that to take out a missile traveling at 300m/s.
| solarpunk wrote:
| aping john gilmore a bit here: global supply chain interprets
| blockade as damage and routes around it.
| pard68 wrote:
| Are the drones fire and forget? Why has EW countermeasures not
| effectively crippled their ability to target ships?
| topspin wrote:
| > Why has EW countermeasures not effectively
|
| EW is highly overrated. The EM spectrum is large, transceivers
| are agile and high gain antennas are inexpensive and easy to
| operate. Thus, any conceivable EW countermeasure you imagine
| has a short expiration date: the problem is highly asymmetric.
| trhway wrote:
| well, at $300K a pop, it may make sense to lease a Skynex (4-5
| containers - control room, radar, 1-2 Oerlikon guns and a
| container with missiles) and load it on a container ship before
| the ship would enter the Houthi's attack zone. Unload after it
| makes through the zone and load on another ship, etc. If I were
| in private military contracting, I'd right now be making a
| killing so to speak.
|
| In general, with drones proliferating, an affordable highly
| mobile (all in one container - radar, minimum 20mm gun, laser,
| vertical launch Stinger class missiles and EM countermeasures)
| point defense should become a pretty good selling product.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The funniest thing to all of this is just _who_ is complaining...
| guess what, many shipping companies are now finding out that
| "flags of convenience" also have a downside. When a ship bearing
| an US flag gets attacked, well, the US government will answer, or
| at least it can be expected to. But why should the US government
| intervene for a ship that's flying the flag of Panama or Liberia?
|
| (Obviously it's still in the US' best interest to intervene
| nevertheless because no country on this rock is as dependent on
| free, worldwide flow of goods than the US, but still, they _don
| 't have_ to)
| drawkward wrote:
| This title seems to need to be fixed
| braza wrote:
| I do not have any horse in this race, but it's quite surprising
| for me that USA is jumping in and Europe and China are not
| championing the operations for the security in the Red See even
| having more vested interests on the transportation.
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