Standoff in the Strait of Hormuz
The incident has popped up in the news again today, and as a former Sailor, I want give some insight on Naval procedures and common practice. I will say though, as a Sailor who spent his days and nights in an engine room, I don’t have all the answers to what happens above decks in a senario like this. Here is what I do know.
There is nothing unusual about a local navy coming out to meet our ships as we travel past their waters. The process is called shadowing and it is quite common. The reason being, international waters stretch 12 miles from the shore. With current technology, at twelve miles out, missles could reasonably reach the coast in about a minute or even less. That wouldn’t give us much time to prepare for an attack. So it is very common to shaddow ships as they pass to be prepared for something of that nature before that 12 mile limit.
Here’s what is not common and cause for alarm:
- The initial failure to identify themselves
- The speed with which they are approaching
- The proximity to our vesels
- The irratic movement
- The threatening radio transmissions
Now again, I spent my time in the engine room so I don’t claim to be expert on exactly how this process should work, but I can give you the overview. Normally, the shadowing boats would identify themselves and their intentions immediately upon approach. They would approach in a steady and controlled fashion, and a vessel of that size would have maintained a distance that looked like a dot on the horizon. I can’t tell you how far that would be, I can just tell you what I have seen. So all of the first 4 points are cause for alarm.
Now for the 5th point. It is being reported that the threatening transmissions may be a radio prankster. I would say to the msm, they put way too much weight on the transmissions. There is no doubt the radio transmission played a roll in this incident. However, if my first four points had followed normally procedure, the radio transmissions would have seemed very out of place and would have caused much less alarm.
With the report of this incident, we are being told there have been several others like it. The liberals and the blame America first crowd are all jumping to the conclusion that the Bush administration is making a case for war since this is the first time we have heard about it. My opinion is that the report is a matter of CYA. Had those boats come much closer, we would have open fire, and rightfully so. It’s much better to start talking about it now, incase we are forced to fire at some point, rather than have to go back and talk about how many times it happened before.