Misunderstandings between ships happen all the time. When you throw politics into it your got potential for some really stuff to wrong. No skipper worth a darn would allow his ship into a postition that might come into conflict with another. It looks (at best) like sloppy seamanship.
The original footage is 30+ minutes long. Best condensed video I can find is on Liveleak. At roughly 2 minutes, by the setting sun you can see the Iranian reconnaissance craft are west of the coalition warships with an apparently open horizon to west and southwest. Look at the Strait and you’ll see the Iranian boats were directly in the path of the Hopper as she approached the Persian Gulf.
As for the white boxes: they were confirmed through weapon sighting. If you look at the short form of the video I linked, you’ll see in the beginning the boats are just dots. It’s only after almost 20 minutes have passed that we can make out the color of the boats. There are probably no deck cams with the ability to zoom that far and weapons videos are released sporadically at best.
They were also confirmed to not be a threat :
This is simply a minor incident that our government is blowing up for political purposes.
Ordinarily I’d agree with you about this, but we mustn’t look at it in a vacuum. This was the third (and most opportunistic) act of harassment by the Iranians, and with or without the white boxes quite a provocative act.
But back to the white boxes, what if I told you once in relative proximity the sensor arrays on one of the coalition ships lit up like a Christmas tree? I have no doubt the boxes were harmless in the short term, but probes might have compromised the operational presence of any of the ships. Specifically, little white boxes might have trapped three warships in the Persian Gulf.
It’s a good thing we have countermeasures against this quaint sort of thing.
I wouldn’t believe you. Why would I ?
“Yes, I heard the orders, Admiral. Perhaps you didn’t understand me? We can’t move. There are boxes out there!”
“Good God, son, are they white boxes?!”
Please…put down the drugs and back away from the keyboard. Slowly…
-XT
Thank you for that.
I can certainly understand vehement disagreement with my attitudes about the Iraq war, but regarding the Iranian situation I don’t believe I have said much that was terribly controversial.
Only that you continue to treat any information coming from this administration as gospel. I find that to be “controversial” myself, and that is what pisses me off.
By the way, a full video of the incident is available online:
Bottom line from the summary posted there:
I don’t know what planet this blogger is on, frankly. He characterizes a boat half a mile away as pretty far - I was always trained that that was operating close indeed - that’s only 1000 yards.
When American ships are this close, you need to be really careful. Nautical stationkeeping is just about the most difficult thing you can imagine, and if you screw it up you have big hunks of steel smashing into each other at pretty high speeds. It happens more often than we’d like just within our own navy, and does kill people and damage an awful lot of our equipment.
Now the Iranians are screwing around in boats sufficiently unpredictably that danger signals have to be sounded (as mentioned) and I have to be reassured by you or this blogger because they’re only 1000 yards out?
Lunacy. And regardless of whatever is said from now on, this much needs to be said - half a mile is close, not far, when you’re dealing with ships. 200 yards is suicidally close, and this distance was mentioned earlier.
That’s fine. I’ll even defer to your opinion on the significance of relative distances between ships. However, that isn’t the point, or at least it isn’t the primary alarm that has been raised around this incident. It was that these boats issued a threat via radio and dropped white boxes in the water.
If you want to contend that the matter is of concern because the boats came within 1000 yards of the vessels, great. Make that case and sound that alarm. Just don’t embellish the matter with bullshit in order to get people’s concern up.
Well considering the fact that I expressed some concern early on in this discussion about the proximity, I think I’m fairly on record on that point at least.
As to the other stuff, well, verbal threats and “objects hazardous to navigation” and other things become a bigger problem with proximity, and proximity (and unsafe navigation practices) is enough of a problem all by itself.
I’m more concerned, frankly, that this is ramping up to be a pattern - the Whidbey Island fired warning shots against an Iranian boat in December. This only came out when this current stuff was reported. Given that we have a bit of history here with the Iranians at sea, I think we all should be concerned.
Navy sed last week this. Navy folk say they’re not too concerned about it, or are even much aware. I’ll be relocating soon and I’ve got some contacts; I’ll report how much this is worth caring about.