If you want to go even further, I have seen on another site, justification for blowing up a school full of children:
“Well they all would have grown up to hate the United States and fight them anyway.”
That’s what we’re dealing with with a segment of the American population right now.
It doesn’t matter. While you have to respect a surrender signal if it’s offered, there’s absolutely no requirement to wait for one. I don’t think subs have much if any capacity to quarter prisoners anyway.
I would reiterate that submarine warfare has always been called out for being sneaky and unfair for this exact reason, and it’s been adjudicated in actual war crimes trials, and has never been judged a crime as long as the agreed-upon prize rules are abided. And that allows for instant destruction of a confirmed military vessel with no hailing or quarter. That’s just how it is.
And I think we all should reflect on what Dena would be doing right now if it had been allowed to escape, arm, and provision. Iran is threatening civilian vessels (illegally) in the Strait of Hormuz. That’s definitely a war crime that threatens people who had nothing to do with this conflict.
Denounce the illegal initiation of this war, denounce the bombing of the girls’ school, by all means denounce the other dozens of Hegseth war crimes that are certain to come out. But please save the fucking tears over the poor helpless wandering Iranian combat frigate. It’s completely misplaced and inappropriate.
Do you people get at all that different situations are governed by different laws, jurisdictions, rules of engagement, professional norms, and work procedures? Jesus fucking Christ, this is getting stupid. If you think civilian policing and military operations are the same thing, I have no idea how to even talk to you.
And you need to understand that we are trying to process the actions of a POTUS that has gone full rogue by the assassination of a head of state during negotiations and then taking out school children and known unarmed naval vessels in international waters without benefit of calling for a quarter.
The use of the term war crime is a term that lay people might use to describe his overall actions. Not a by the book definition. Would you prefer crime against humanity?
If we go the way of military logic, which is correct, because this is a war, then I would like to point out that the best outcome for the attacking forces is not “the more military deaths, the better”, but “the more wounded and disabled, the better”. Dead soldiers just lie there and rot, wounded soldiers have to be looked after, consuming enemy’s ressources.
The calculation may change in maritime warfare.
Quoted for truth. Or, as Joan Manuel Serrat used to sing: Nunca es triste la verdad, lo que no tiene es remedio. The truth is never sad, it’s just that you can’t help it.
But if the USA had wanted, they could have captured the ship instead of sinking it, and that would have even had advantages. Sinking the Dena was not the war crime, the whole Special Military Operation is. It was just unnecessary dick-swinging and middle finger up-sticking. Fully in caracter with the current USA regime.
Unless you take the ground after the battle, in which case enemy wounded become your problem.
Frankly, I’m impressed with your patience thus far.
Yet you refuse to cite any laws/jurisdictions/RoE/professional norms/work procedures supporting your personal opinions. You are describing nothing other than your preferred interpretation.
You really are a repulsive being well worthy of being ignored. If I had forgotten that, thank you for reminding me.
One of the things that seems to be entirely lost here is that the idea of a submarine accepting the surrender of any ship is entirely impossible. A Los Angeles class submarine has a crew of about 120, in close quarters. Submariners are used to a practice called hot-racking, which means that up to 3 people share the same bunk, so it’s still warm when you get in it. Where on earth would they find the room for over 200 people? Who would be responsible for overseeing them to ensure that they didn’t overwhelm the crew and take the submarine? How would they get them from the surface ship to the boat? (And FWIW, the Mk 48 ADCAP torpedo is wire-guided and can be shut down after it is fired as long as the wire hasn’t broken)
One of the other subtleties that’s being missed is the reason it was a submarine that was tasked with sinking the ship in the first place. That in itself indicates that there were no other assets within a reasonable distance to deal with the ship. The submarine was likely in the area for a completely different mission and just happened to be the closest warship. There is a reason that a US submarine has not used a torpedo in anger since WWII - the mission has changed drastically since then. Firing a torpedo immediately compromises the position of the submarine and since stealth is the primary mission, that is not an optimal outcome. It may well be that the attack on the Dena compromised the submarine’s original mission and forced it to leave the area quickly. We probably won’t know these details for a long time (if ever) and there is a reason that the submarine has not been named - doing so would reveal its location and compromise any further tasking. We probably won’t know which boat it was until they are back in their home port.
HMS_Irruncible has given you all tremendous insight into how military operations are carried out, and has done so patiently and carefully. Modern naval warfare looks nothing like a WWII movie.
We’ll just go ahead and make everyone hate us.
Which is an excellent reason to use some other sort of ship for this particular mission.
On the captured ship, of course. You find some place on the captured ship to lock up the prisoners, you send over a skeleton crew, and you actually ease the sub’s own bunking situation.
We had no other ships anywhere within the thousands of miles it would have taken this ship to get back to base? Bullshit.
Risk the lives of our people to try to find a place to lock other people up on their own home turf?
Um, yes? If you don’t want to risk the lives of our people, what you do is you don’t attack.
That is patently ridiculous. Firstly, who on the submarine’s crew are you going to do without? Secondly, how many men does it take to form a “skeleton crew” on a 1500 ton frigate AND still have the resources to oversee 200+ prisoners. Yeah, that’s gonna be pretty much the entire crew of the submarine. It isn’t the age of sail where 5 competent men can form a prize crew.
Have you ever been in the Indian Ocean? Do you have any concept of how long it takes a ship to change its operating area? Plus, the US Navy is not the 600 ship force of the Cold War. The waters around Sri Lanka are about 1800 nm from both the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Hormuz, and over 2500 nm from the South China Sea. That’s a minimum of a 4 day transit for any ship in the Navy at flank speed, which is impractical without the ability to refuel. We’re talking a 7 day transit for an oiler.
You have a couple of F-18s buzz it, fire a few bursts from their guns over the bow, and order it over the radio to sail to a U.S.-controlled port or be sunk. If it accepts, you have the sub trail it, and if it alters its course by an inch, sink it.
What exactly are you asking a cite for? I’m speaking from my experience with Army officer training which includes instructions in the laws and conduct of war. Yes I’m characterizing what’s in manuals and literature in order to make it more accessible to you. If that’s not helpful then I’m sorry. I thought you were interested in learning why things are as they are, I didn’t realize you want your own opinions approvingly read back to you.
If you’re stupid enough that you can’t understand the difference between describing reality and celebrating reality, then please do go ahead and exercise the block feature, because we’re unlikely ever to have a successful transfer of information.
The distance from Sri Lanka to Iran is 3900 km. You telling me that with our astounding satellite capability we are not capable of tracking this ship until it came closer to some surface ship that COULD have accepted the surrender? Or we lacked communications ability to direct the ship to go wherver we directed - possibly torpedoing it if it failed to comply?
Yeah - really unfortunate we don’t have any flying vehicles that coulda gotten personnel there.
This seems to be what those supporting this action are ignoring. It isn’t that we lacked any alternatives. It is that we CHOSE this particular action. With no apparent weighing of the benefit to be gained, against the cost in domestic and international opinion.
You talk about the vast distances, without acknowledging that this unarmed ship had to travel those same vast distances, through a large military force, before it could pose a harm to anyone. But the opportunity arose, so we chose to sink this ship, killing some 80-90 crew. USA! USA!
This and the analysis that follows would be very astute and insightful were it not that we are dealing with the Trump/Hegseth military.
The disparity between the Iranian and us military is overwhelming. Two thousand miles away from any enemy ships there is no danger of revealing the subs position it will be long gone before anyone could respond. Iran is effectively under blockade and there is no way that this ship could have made into into an Iranian harbor with out being intercepted by ship capable of taking it into custody. Much like the war itself the ship wasn’t sunk out of necessity. It was sunk because sinking it was was cool.
“Hey dude, I just took out a ship with a torpedo! Nobody’s done that in like 40 years.”
I agree with HMS-Irruncible that this isn’t technically a war crime. but it is definitely immoral. In moral warfighting, to the extent such a thing exists, the deaths of others are a regrettable consequence of achieving military aims. Under this administration they are the military aims. Its literally a video game to them. How many points can we score, and how cool can we look when we do it. They are all just pixels on the screen of no consequence. I would not be at all surprised if the white house to put out a video of Hegseth teabagging a corpse.
What is there to indicate that the school was actually a target?
Why? What do you think obligates a country at war to operate in a way to give a courtesy notice of attack to enemy belligerents?
I would like to understand exactly where this delusion is coming from. I can’t avoid the conclusion that people’s conclusions about the conduct of the war are colored by their perception of whether it’s a just or legal war.
If we were comparing this to naval warfare against Japan or Germany in WW2, nobody would bat an eye at the statement “US naval vessels are tasked with destroying every enemy ship they encounter that they’re able, making no attempt to capture the ship, unless they have other orders.” Of course we sink every Japanese ship until the war is over or there are no more Japanese ships. This would be totally uncontroversial, but since we (justly) do not like Donald Trump or his war on Iran, we’re confused about how war is conducted.
The argument “they could’ve been nice and tried to capture the boat” is I think a disease one acquires from watching the US war on terror, where there was underlying guilt that the war may not have been totally necessary, coupled with this liberal fantasy that you can wage war on a country with exactly the right combination of sensitivity and violence to make the people being bombed love you instead of hate you. That was a historical aberration, and it failed miserably. If you want a country to like you, start by not bombing them. Once the bombing starts, being loved is no longer on the table, and standard war conduct is the norm.