Someone explain to me how this could have happened innocently. There were two boats. Each boat has redundant propulsion. Each boat has redundant navigation. The boat group has two crews (redundant brain power.)
Farsi Island is basically a speck. The ‘channel’ between Farsi Island and Saudi Arabia is roughly 48nm. The territorial waters around Farsi is twelve miles so the ‘safe channel’ is roughly 36nm wide.
So what the USN wants us to believe that a boat group with that many redundancies couldn’t navigate threw a 36nm wide channel? Of course they could.
So here’s what I think happened. The boat group was sent to skirt Iranian waters in a typical freedom-of-navigation move (which can hardly be called ‘innocent passage’) and somehow messed up. Oops. Shit happens.
Now think about it. If a ship passes too close to a shoal or reef and something bad happens then they run aground. Cause and effect. If a warship passes too close to hostile territorial water and something bad happens then they get apprehended/attacked. Cause and effect.
A company would fire it’s master for running its ship aground. So should the USN for running its boats into hostile waters.
Someone explain to me how this could have happened innocently. There were two boats. Each boat has redundant propulsion. Each boat has redundant navigation. The boat group has two crews (redundant brain power.)
Farsi Island is basically a speck. The ‘channel’ between Farsi Island and Saudi Arabia is roughly 48nm. The territorial waters around Farsi is twelve miles so the ‘safe channel’ is roughly 36nm wide.
So what the USN wants us to believe that a boat group with that many redundancies couldn’t navigate threw a 36nm wide channel? Of course they could.
So here’s what I think happened. The boat group was sent to skirt Iranian waters in a typical freedom-of-navigation move (which can hardly be called ‘innocent passage’) and somehow messed up. Oops. Shit happens.
Now think about it. If a ship passes too close to a shoal or reef and something bad happens then they run aground. Cause and effect. If a warship passes too close to hostile territorial water and something bad happens then they get apprehended/attacked. Cause and effect.
A company would fire it’s master for running its ship aground. So should the USN for running its boats into hostile waters.[/QUOTE]
Maybe because they had such a wide channel their ECDIS was set to a scale so the little speck called Faris Island didn’t show up, or at least the fact that it is Iranian territory may not have been clearly indicated??
The whole situation was Iran twisting the knife after the idiotic nuclear arms deal that our administration handed to them. They’ll get as much mileage out of it as they can.
Good thing it wasn’t N Korea. Another USS Pueblo incident and shit would really hit the fan.
[QUOTE=salt’n steel;184582]Definitely a strong possibility. No sensitive equipment should ever fall into enemy hands intact.[/QUOTE]
It’s like they have never seen U-571 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141926/
I’m tired of all the apologists for the USN encroachment into hostile Iranian waters. What do these people think the United States would do if an armed Iranian warship full of Republican Guard sailors ‘drifted’ into American waters? Would we feed them juice and cake while driving them to the nearest day spa? Of course not!
We would arrest, detain and question them. For the handcuffing alone we would direct them to their knees, then face down, then face away from the person approaching them to be handcuffed, direct their feet to be crossed at the ankles, hands on the top of their heads to be handcuffed at the small of their backs - and we would use whatever force required to accomplish this which may make some scared and cry.
In other words, we would handle the Iranians the same way the Iranians likely handled the USN sailors.
[QUOTE=DeckApe;184567]…Farsi Island is basically a speck. The ‘channel’ between Farsi Island and Saudi Arabia is roughly 48nm. The territorial waters around Farsi is twelve miles so the ‘safe channel’ is roughly 36nm wide…[/QUOTE]
It is not such simple. We cannot know the orders they had for their mission. The straight course for small boats from Kuwait to Bahrain would use Saudi territorial waters, but I think the Navy has some agreements with the Saudis.
Just 12 NM south of the Iranian ‘Farsi Island’ is the Saudi Arabian ‘Arabi Island’ (seen by GoogleEarth, there may be some small port structures, as on Farsi Island). Both islands have their own 12 NM territorial zones, reduced to 6 NM between the islands in the N-S direction.
There is a 1968 Saudi-Iran agreement on the continental shelf delimitation in the Gulf, with the special situation around Farsi and Arabi.
>> grossly zoom the chart to see something
The nearly straight NW>SE economic zone delimitation line has an excrescence to the West, to Saudi Arabia, at the Farsi latitude, and this excrescence is not just an extension of the Iranian economic zone but clearly Iranian territorial water.
If we assume that the orders were ‘from Kuwait to Arabi Island and then to Bahrain’, the end of a straight first leg would clearly cross Iranian territorial waters.
maybe they did not see these Iranian waters on their chart, maybe it was not on the chart or maybe they sailed with OpenStreetMaps
then they had engine problems in Iranian waters or they had not, it does not matter, the Iranian Welcome Committee was in place…
Right or wrong, the Iranians are wallowing in their superiority over this debacle and those Navy personnel on the boats should not have been left undefended. As a Navy veteran I am left wondering if our modern inclusionary armed Naval forces are properly trained and ready when pushing envelopes like this.
[QUOTE=DeckApe;184589] What do these people think the United States would do if an armed Iranian warship full of Republican Guard sailors ‘drifted’ into American waters?[/QUOTE]
Or if an Iranian warship stationed just off the east coast shot down a U.S. airliner departing from JFK …
[QUOTE=Steamer;184596]Or if an Iranian warship stationed just off the east coast shot down a U.S. airliner departing from JFK …[/QUOTE]
USN vessels can go anywhere these days as the whole world knows they couldnt navigate their way out of the ICW.
So everywhere they are is a mistake.
