US Navy Fires on Ship in Persian Gulf, One Dead

ABC News:

 

An American Navy ship fired on a boat in the Persian Gulf today, killing one person and injuring three others aboard the craft, a U.S. naval official told ABC News.

A spokesperson for the Navy’s 5th Fleet, which is based in nearby Bahrain, said that a security team aboard the oil supply ship U.S.N.S. Rappahannock fired a .50 caliber machine gun at a “small motor vessel after it disregarded warnings and rapidly approached the U.S. ship” off the coast of Jebel Ali, a city approximately 30 miles from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

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Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

6 Replies to “US Navy Fires on Ship in Persian Gulf, One Dead”

  1. I expect that Obama will try to have those responsible for the shooting court-martialed. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  2. Good for them. It was either a test run or another USS Cole in the offing.

    This has to do with wargames that we carried out several years ago. A commander had to attack ships. He found huge success with a swarm of kamikazi attacks using small boats and aircraft. Though they were small and could be shot easily, it was too difficult to get all of them- and you only need one or two kamikazi attacks to neutralize a ship.

    The top brass seemed to ignore this outcome so he went public- He wanted the navy to be aware of it’s vulnerability to this and make adjustments in equipment, strategy and tactics for it. But he got in serious trouble for it.

    Iran got to know of this strategy. Weather it was because the commander went public or because they found out some other way I have no idea.

    The upsot is that if we get into a shooting war with Iran our warships might face a wave of kamikazi attacks from small boats and airplanes. They have been aware of this for some time but I don’t know if they have made adjustments for this tactic.

    If they have (and I’m sure they have to at least some degree) – I don’t know if they would tell anyone. It’s a question of weather they want Iran to think it would not work OR would not want them to know we can handle that kind of attack.

  3. The idea of small light fast attack boats goes back to the founding of the US, Thomas Jefferson wanted our Navy to consist of such craft, during WWI the MTB’s were developed by the Brits and used by them in WWII, the US called our versions used in WWII PT boats. I know some cargo barges were sunk and so were some versions of destroyers but I don’t know if any larger ships were.

  4. Richard. Yes small and light and fast against large and less maneuverable targets is an old military tactic.

    But the new wrinkle here is that these aren’t attack boats. It’s a wave of kamikazes using small civilian water and air craft loaded with explosives. It’s like an old school video game.

    And when your civilian craft (loaded with warheads) get shot up – you can then unleash propaganda about the enemy killing your oh so innocent civilians. I’d like to see if and how Press Tv and the internal Iranian news agencies report on this. I bet if they do they will present it as the US ships firing on innocent fishermen.

    This particular boat might even have been without a warhead. The purpose would be to create an incident showing the US firing on oh so innocent civilians to cause the publication of news stories to in turn cause the western public to give less support for military action. That would be in line with the goal of Iran’s current wave of internet propaganda.

  5. The last report I saw said they were Hindu fishermen, they didn’t explain what Hindus were doing in the Gulf in a small boat.

    Small light and maneuverable has been used a long time, but in Naval actions they have proved to be less the satisfactory, we are still working on them and the idea of small fast boats that are also cheap appeals to politicians.