Snap! We forgot the mines!!! Do you remember where we put them? Ahmed, do you know? Amir, didn't you take notes!!?? Bloody Hell. We're gonna cop it for this! Next time you lay mines, Reza, take a fricken' map of where you put them!!! Khāk bar sar-am!!!
Haha, this reminds me of that Iraq video where those two teenagers are so bumbling inept. Abdul! No! I need the fragmentation where I had! That ones are anti-armor!
As the post stated, the Navy just decommissioned and sent to the scrap yard the last 4 mine sweeping Avenger class ships with wooden hulls at the end of last year - just months before they were needed. The Navy built these specialized ships right after the Iranians mined the Gulf in '87 when we had one of our ships heavily damaged, the USS Samuel B. Roberts. With a wooden hull the Avenger class had little to no magnetic signature and were proven in 2 wars. The Navy also disbanded the unit dedicated to mine sweeping and hunting along with the decades of accumulated institutional knowledge that was then distributed out among other units.
Instead, the Navy developed newer $475 million aluminum hulled Littoral Combat ships with a mine hunting system that failed its own detection trials. Just in March of this year a report from the Pentagon's DOT&E found that the Navy could not determine the operational effectiveness or reliability of the system. Unfortunately none of it was fully ready for game time before they decided to moth ball what actually worked last year. I guess the PowerPoints looked convincing. The mines that the Iranians use can detect the magnetic signature of an aluminum hull meters away. So, I am not sure what they were thinking. The Pentagon's report doesn't inspire confidence. The mission's package couldn't effectively find mines in the clear waters near CA so it is doubtful how much better they will be trying to find them in the murky waters of the Gulf.
Japan has agreed to help us mine sweep once the area is more secure. Japan has a constitutional prohibition that doesn't allow their defense forces to operate in a foreign active combat area. Their dedicated mine sweepers and hunters have fiberglass - reinforced plastic hulls that don't have a magnetic signature. Anyway, we will see how effective these newer LCS ships and their mission packages will be under real world situations. It's all we have at the moment. So far, its questionable.
It would have been nice to have a space method of finding those mines. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that SAR would be able to identify something as small as a mine from any other anomalous signal in the water or on the sea floor in that area. It is a high shipping traffic corridor and has a lot of junk in the water that makes it hard to identify a target from all the signal noise. I believe that has been one of the biggest issues with the LCS missions package is target identification. Even using AI, they may not have the real world data library for the AI to be useful.
I can believe that the overzealous Iranians would just randomly dump mines out there without leaving a detailed map. The US screwed up by scrapping the ships we needed for the job before we actually had something that worked to replace them. They tried to retire the A-10 more than once that has shown itself indispensable in this conflict. New tech is great given the constantly changing battlefield. But there are times when just the simpler older proven tech fits the job better than anything else.
50 year old mine sweepers that were ready for mothball. I know those ships and they were so heavimu canabalized and under maintained dueing the obama administration tjey basically rotted away.
Obama did a lot of damage to our military in so many ways. I know our military will make the situation work with what they have - even if there remains some unanswered questions at the moment regarding effectiveness. We often shine our best while under pressure. It's always been part of our military DNA.
We should be able to use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) on either aircraft or drones combined with optical imagery and signal intelligence data fed into a trained AI system to locate these anomalies in the water.
If you think the US military would retire its mind sweeping capability if it didn't have something better to replace it with.... Well you need to think a bit harder.
The government doesn't give up its toys unless it replaces it with something better That's more fun to play with.
It is not that the newer tech is bad. It's not. It is at this moment simply a victim of inconvenient timing. They almost retired the A10 - several times and we are all glad they didn't. Budgets have a way of forcing the military into decisions like this.
Those wooden hulled Avenger class ships are now in salvage. The newer Littorals have a missions package of various mine hunter technologies that have yet to show they can effectively find mines. That missions package failed its own detection trials and the Navy officially stated thus saying, they "could not determine the operational effectiveness or reliability of the system." That is all public knowledge. The Pentagon report was released in March of this year.
One of the main problems for the Littoral missions package from what I understand is that there has not been the data library accumulated yet along with the institutional knowledge to allow operators, and even AI, to distinguish between actual mines and signal noise. That library will be built through actual use in order to dial it in - just like it is with every other systems library we use. They will get there. It just may take a little more time. The MEUs being sent into the area also have some mine sweeping capabilities. The Tripoli is already in theater and the Boxer was on the way. So it is not like we have no options. However, in high stakes combat situations we would have preferred to have a stronger hand going into this.
Well in my original comment I talked about combining data from three different sources and running it through AI. Your original response was only about one of those sources so it was a misrepresentation or a strawman of my entire point.
I remind you we have the technology to detect a specific heartbeat from the air from a great distance away that The general public didn't know about until just this week.
Machine learning excels at detecting anomalies and pattern recognition. It's just a matter of putting the data in and I doubt with millions and millions of dollars in contracts on the table that some government contractor hasn't put in this work already for all types of applications in underwater detection.
All of that tech you mentioned may work on land and for air applications. Underwater is a different story. My statements are not solely my own random speculations and opinions, but are based upon statements made by those with a great deal more expertise with underwater technology and the environment than myself, as well as the Navy and Department of War themselves about the current status of our operational capacity.
Marine research does not have the same institutional knowledge base that has been built over the years for air and land. There is so much of what is under the waves that we know almost nothing about simply because we have not been able to clearly see it. However, our tech is getting better at peering through the underwater environmental physics that adds some difficulty to our tech applications. But the US, as well as others, are quickly learning and more advanced systems are coming online in real time. It won't be long before many of those ocean knowledge gaps will be closed. AI has become a huge factor in that process.
Sounds like the perfect test for our new mine detection systems. I’m far from knowledgeable on these systems, but I would wager we probably have more on hand than what’s being reported in this article.
Honestly seems more likely Iran is trying to use information warfare to craft the narrative that there are mines and that they don't know how many or where because of "rogue forces deploying them improperly" so there's nothing that they can so therefore no ships should bother sailing. They're banking on nobody calling the bluff
That's the problem. No one knows for sure. Shipping is extremely risk averse. Who is going to test to see if its a bluff when you are dealing with millions of dollars in ships and cargo. It's not the first time Iran has mined the Strait. So, they do have a track record of being that crazy. There are also rogue actors. Command and Control has been fractured and the IRGC command, what's left of them, don't have control over all the forces in the country.
Ok. Fine. Keep the fucking Strait closed. While a giant railroad complex gets built in the Arabian Peninsula all the way to the Indian Ocean bypassing the Strait to allow M.E. oil to flow again, the U.S. ramps up oil and fertilizer production in the Western Hemisphere to counteract the shortage, becomes the world's #1 exporter of oil, LNG, fertilizer compounds, and other goods, which puts all of OPEC out of business permanently bankrupting the whole of the M.E., and continues putting pressure on the IRGC until the Iranian People start merc-ing them all.
Eventually the IRGC caves and either helps track all the mines down and destroys them, or they end up going bankrupt by the beginning of summer, causing The People to rise up and start purging their country of all IRGC members along with the civilian govt.
Either way, this comes to an end under a Trump Presidency and he goes down as being the one world leader who was willing and able to end the Ayatollah/IRGC regime.
The Americas, including canada have enough oil and gas to provide fuel. For several millennia. When will the oil and gas companies decide to stop fucking over everyone for profit..maybe it is time for a bunch of ropes and scaffolding. Perhaps they might consider their options with regard to pricing. I think in the past this kind of motivation has been effective. After all, the mines that they lost the map for are not in The americas and I think that the likelihood of a tanker hitting a mine, given that the oil is transported in pipelines is pretty remote.
This is great. Gives US companies more motivation (through higher prices), to expand operations and to take a chunk out of the new global market before prices stabilize.
The sources are Iran and the NYT. It's just as likely that there are no mines.
Yes - check out the link in my comment. Interesting how examining the incentives gets you somewhere
IRCG head office:
Up vote for that one.
Haha, this reminds me of that Iraq video where those two teenagers are so bumbling inept. Abdul! No! I need the fragmentation where I had! That ones are anti-armor!
kek.
Well, I'm not saying its was a direct quote, but neither do I deny it!
As the post stated, the Navy just decommissioned and sent to the scrap yard the last 4 mine sweeping Avenger class ships with wooden hulls at the end of last year - just months before they were needed. The Navy built these specialized ships right after the Iranians mined the Gulf in '87 when we had one of our ships heavily damaged, the USS Samuel B. Roberts. With a wooden hull the Avenger class had little to no magnetic signature and were proven in 2 wars. The Navy also disbanded the unit dedicated to mine sweeping and hunting along with the decades of accumulated institutional knowledge that was then distributed out among other units.
Instead, the Navy developed newer $475 million aluminum hulled Littoral Combat ships with a mine hunting system that failed its own detection trials. Just in March of this year a report from the Pentagon's DOT&E found that the Navy could not determine the operational effectiveness or reliability of the system. Unfortunately none of it was fully ready for game time before they decided to moth ball what actually worked last year. I guess the PowerPoints looked convincing. The mines that the Iranians use can detect the magnetic signature of an aluminum hull meters away. So, I am not sure what they were thinking. The Pentagon's report doesn't inspire confidence. The mission's package couldn't effectively find mines in the clear waters near CA so it is doubtful how much better they will be trying to find them in the murky waters of the Gulf.
Japan has agreed to help us mine sweep once the area is more secure. Japan has a constitutional prohibition that doesn't allow their defense forces to operate in a foreign active combat area. Their dedicated mine sweepers and hunters have fiberglass - reinforced plastic hulls that don't have a magnetic signature. Anyway, we will see how effective these newer LCS ships and their mission packages will be under real world situations. It's all we have at the moment. So far, its questionable.
It would have been nice to have a space method of finding those mines. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that SAR would be able to identify something as small as a mine from any other anomalous signal in the water or on the sea floor in that area. It is a high shipping traffic corridor and has a lot of junk in the water that makes it hard to identify a target from all the signal noise. I believe that has been one of the biggest issues with the LCS missions package is target identification. Even using AI, they may not have the real world data library for the AI to be useful.
I can believe that the overzealous Iranians would just randomly dump mines out there without leaving a detailed map. The US screwed up by scrapping the ships we needed for the job before we actually had something that worked to replace them. They tried to retire the A-10 more than once that has shown itself indispensable in this conflict. New tech is great given the constantly changing battlefield. But there are times when just the simpler older proven tech fits the job better than anything else.
50 year old mine sweepers that were ready for mothball. I know those ships and they were so heavimu canabalized and under maintained dueing the obama administration tjey basically rotted away.
Obama did a lot of damage to our military in so many ways. I know our military will make the situation work with what they have - even if there remains some unanswered questions at the moment regarding effectiveness. We often shine our best while under pressure. It's always been part of our military DNA.
Doesn't the navy maintain a few teams of dolphins for exactly this kind of mine detection work?
Great question. I will have to look into that a little more. I know at one time that was being tested.
Lol what a cluster fuck.
We should be able to use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) on either aircraft or drones combined with optical imagery and signal intelligence data fed into a trained AI system to locate these anomalies in the water.
I heard that the CIA has a device that can spot the heartbeat of a mine from 40 miles away
I know they can map some geological structures using SAR, but locating mines? I don't think so. At least not yet.
😂
If you think the US military would retire its mind sweeping capability if it didn't have something better to replace it with.... Well you need to think a bit harder.
The government doesn't give up its toys unless it replaces it with something better That's more fun to play with.
It is not that the newer tech is bad. It's not. It is at this moment simply a victim of inconvenient timing. They almost retired the A10 - several times and we are all glad they didn't. Budgets have a way of forcing the military into decisions like this.
Those wooden hulled Avenger class ships are now in salvage. The newer Littorals have a missions package of various mine hunter technologies that have yet to show they can effectively find mines. That missions package failed its own detection trials and the Navy officially stated thus saying, they "could not determine the operational effectiveness or reliability of the system." That is all public knowledge. The Pentagon report was released in March of this year.
One of the main problems for the Littoral missions package from what I understand is that there has not been the data library accumulated yet along with the institutional knowledge to allow operators, and even AI, to distinguish between actual mines and signal noise. That library will be built through actual use in order to dial it in - just like it is with every other systems library we use. They will get there. It just may take a little more time. The MEUs being sent into the area also have some mine sweeping capabilities. The Tripoli is already in theater and the Boxer was on the way. So it is not like we have no options. However, in high stakes combat situations we would have preferred to have a stronger hand going into this.
Well in my original comment I talked about combining data from three different sources and running it through AI. Your original response was only about one of those sources so it was a misrepresentation or a strawman of my entire point.
I remind you we have the technology to detect a specific heartbeat from the air from a great distance away that The general public didn't know about until just this week.
Machine learning excels at detecting anomalies and pattern recognition. It's just a matter of putting the data in and I doubt with millions and millions of dollars in contracts on the table that some government contractor hasn't put in this work already for all types of applications in underwater detection.
All of that tech you mentioned may work on land and for air applications. Underwater is a different story. My statements are not solely my own random speculations and opinions, but are based upon statements made by those with a great deal more expertise with underwater technology and the environment than myself, as well as the Navy and Department of War themselves about the current status of our operational capacity.
Marine research does not have the same institutional knowledge base that has been built over the years for air and land. There is so much of what is under the waves that we know almost nothing about simply because we have not been able to clearly see it. However, our tech is getting better at peering through the underwater environmental physics that adds some difficulty to our tech applications. But the US, as well as others, are quickly learning and more advanced systems are coming online in real time. It won't be long before many of those ocean knowledge gaps will be closed. AI has become a huge factor in that process.
Sounds like the perfect test for our new mine detection systems. I’m far from knowledgeable on these systems, but I would wager we probably have more on hand than what’s being reported in this article.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/navy-using-underwater-drones-and-sonar-hunt-mines-200817
Appear weak when you are strong -Trump Tzu
And then... INFORMATION WARFARE appears!
https://x.com/i/status/2042786809025908904
That's the problem. No one knows for sure. Shipping is extremely risk averse. Who is going to test to see if its a bluff when you are dealing with millions of dollars in ships and cargo. It's not the first time Iran has mined the Strait. So, they do have a track record of being that crazy. There are also rogue actors. Command and Control has been fractured and the IRGC command, what's left of them, don't have control over all the forces in the country.
Averse.
My bad. Thanks.
lol, ok.
I had the same reaction
Ok. Fine. Keep the fucking Strait closed. While a giant railroad complex gets built in the Arabian Peninsula all the way to the Indian Ocean bypassing the Strait to allow M.E. oil to flow again, the U.S. ramps up oil and fertilizer production in the Western Hemisphere to counteract the shortage, becomes the world's #1 exporter of oil, LNG, fertilizer compounds, and other goods, which puts all of OPEC out of business permanently bankrupting the whole of the M.E., and continues putting pressure on the IRGC until the Iranian People start merc-ing them all.
Eventually the IRGC caves and either helps track all the mines down and destroys them, or they end up going bankrupt by the beginning of summer, causing The People to rise up and start purging their country of all IRGC members along with the civilian govt.
Either way, this comes to an end under a Trump Presidency and he goes down as being the one world leader who was willing and able to end the Ayatollah/IRGC regime.
I say let's make the Iranians float some of their own tankers through the area to map a safe corridor.
How convenient for Lloyds insurers. The fear drives sales, policies, insurance money, whether the mines exist or not.
Shipping mines are not just free-floating devices, as I understand them. Aren't they usually tethered to the bottom?
If they're just floating around out there that's one egregious thing, if the IRGC simply doesn't know where they are, that's another.
Either way, the damned Strait has been an IRGC bargaining chip for way too long.
Starlink satellite radar system?
The Americas, including canada have enough oil and gas to provide fuel. For several millennia. When will the oil and gas companies decide to stop fucking over everyone for profit..maybe it is time for a bunch of ropes and scaffolding. Perhaps they might consider their options with regard to pricing. I think in the past this kind of motivation has been effective. After all, the mines that they lost the map for are not in The americas and I think that the likelihood of a tanker hitting a mine, given that the oil is transported in pipelines is pretty remote.
This is great. Gives US companies more motivation (through higher prices), to expand operations and to take a chunk out of the new global market before prices stabilize.
All part of the plan, I’ve no doubt.
u/#haha