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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Trump boldly went and told us:
| There had been “good and productive conversations” with Iran. |
Iran said
So we were left wondering who Trump had been talking to. Turns out:
| Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, has emerged as the key interlocutor between the United States and Iran, with Egypt and Turkey encouraging the Iranians to engage constructively, the officials added. |
How did he get picked as the Super Sub?
| Field Marshal Munir is believed to maintain close ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, putting him in a position to pass messages between the warring sides, they said. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Borry wrote: | | How's the recruitment going? |
Actually I was thinking about that. I decided that my younger self would probably do it if the money was off the charts. But that might not be necessary.
Today's tankers are crewed mainly by Filipinos and my guess is they would 'stay with the ship' if the owners and captains thought it worth going through. (If they got repatriated instead they might end up being attacked by Chinese 'coastguard' ships in the South China Sea.)
In the U-boat infested north Atlantic, merchant marine crews (of all nationalities) were expected to work as normal. They got a small amount of what amounted to danger money and, in the case of British sailors, were not subject to call-up. Norwegian and Greek crews (the second and third largest national components) had little choice since their home countries were under occupation.
Interestingly, the survival rate for the Second World War convoys was not far off the '1% sunk, 2% damaged' I estimated for the Hormuz Strait.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Pakistan ... has emerged as the key interlocutor between the United States and Iran |
The Iranians will have to stop slipping pourboires to the Baluchi separatists. And where does Pakistan get its arms from? Mmm, let me think...
But then again, when it comes to Islamic states getting nuclear weapons under the counter, Pakistan is an ideal honest broker.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Interestingly, the survival rate for the Second World War convoys was not far off the '1% sunk, 2% damaged' I estimated for the Hormuz Strait. |
Your survival rate may go up or down.
| The Arctic route was the shortest, most direct and quickest route for supply convoys to the USSR, though it was also the most dangerous. About 3,964,000 long tons (4,028,000 t) of goods were sent via the Arctic, of which 93 per cent arrived. |
Assuming that means 7% sunk (or DNF as they say in F1 results) - no idea what the damaged percentage was.
What would it be in the Hormuz Strait? It may be swings and roundabouts. Shipping there would be much easier to detect than in the Arctic. But (the USA will tell us) it will be much better protected by them than us Brits could manage in WW2.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Why are the Arctic convoys a more-appropriate comparison than the Atlantic convoys?
The German successes in the Atlantic were mostly due to the U-boats and torpedoes. Only a few were from the air, the long-range Condor aircraft were mostly used for reconnaissance and comms to the subs.
The Iranian air force will not be using many subs or flying many aircraft.
Whereas the Arctic convoy interceptions, from the German point of view, were far more effective. As they were able to use far more land-based aircraft, closer to home. To not only attack from the air but provide better direction and control of their subs.
These days, it's not aircraft we have to be concerned about, it's the missiles and drones. The Iranians still appear to have enough guided missiles to be a very big nuisance. And it's still an odds-on bet that they are getting satellite imagery from Russia and/or China.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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While we (and many thousands of others) have been watching the USAF flights into Middle East air bases, most (perhaps naturally) have been focused on what men and materials are being flown into the area.
What is only slowly become apparent is how many US people are being flown out of the area on the return flights.
| While Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, for example, were often targeted in suicide bombings and other attacks, neither the Taliban nor Iraqi militias possessed the kind of ballistic missile capability that Iran has. |
Yes, those rag-head suicide bombers with IEDs were a serious risk, but with limited impact.
| During the war in Iraq in particular, the United States built up its bases there and in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now, the war in Iran has made all of those bases vulnerable — to the point where service members can’t really live or work there for extended periods |
Here's something noted here earlier:
| The public was blocked from an accurate assessment also due to open source satellite image firms agreeing to censor their own data and imaging. |
"The public" means US/UK/EU public. The public in Iran probably has a clearer picture than we do.
| Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage |
US bases outside a c.1,000 Km radius are much busier e.g. Chania on Crete.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Interestingly, the survival rate for the Second World War convoys was not far off the '1% sunk, 2% damaged' I estimated for the Hormuz Strait.
Your survival rate may go up or down. |
Neither the convoy figure nor my estimate will go up or down.
| The Arctic route was the shortest, most direct and quickest route for supply convoys to the USSR |
Sometime it was, sometimes it wasn't. I lumped it in with 'North Atlantic'.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Borry wrote: | | Yes, those rag-head suicide bombers with IEDs were a serious risk, but with limited impact. |
It's slowly dawning on the Americans that anything, no matter how limited, will impact majorly and negatively on the folks back home. This is the opposite of the Israeli attitude: anything, no matter how limited, will impact majorly and positively on the folks back home.
| During the war in Iraq in particular, the United States built up its bases there and in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now, the war in Iran has made all of those bases vulnerable — to the point where service members can’t really live or work there for extended periods |
Everybody has been discovering--the French in the Sahel, for example--that maintaining forts in injun territory is no longer a tenable policy.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
| The Arctic route was the shortest, most direct and quickest route for supply convoys to the USSR |
Sometime it was, sometimes it wasn't. I lumped it in with 'North Atlantic'. |
Note to Admiralty:
Don't put Harpo in charge of any navigation or planning. Leslie Philips would be a safer bet.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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These constant 'humorous' asides need to be supplemented occasionally with real, bona fide objections. Try it now re Arctic convoys.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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For real, bona fide objections, go back and read the post about the 7% loss rate.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Oh, I see. You weren't referring to the Arctic being the most direct and quickest route to Russia but my lumping it in with north Atlantic convoys of which the Russian-bound ones were a tiny proportion. You feel that reflects badly on my capacity for strategic thought generally. Glad we got that straight.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | You feel that reflects badly on my capacity for strategic thought generally. Glad we got that straight. |
Yes indeed. I have mentioned to friends at Shrivenham Staff College that AEL is an excellent place to look. For examples of "strategic" thinking from intelligentsia that can be catastrophically wrong and useless.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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President Trump is adamant that peace talks are going on, the Iranians equally obdurate they are not. This is not a light matter, the fate of the world can hang on such things.
For example, during the Second World War, the western allies were always fearful that Stalin would make a separate peace with Hitler -- and it might have been sensible to do so themselves to forestall him if he was. Naturally, Stalin held the equal and opposite position. The truth was neither side was doing so with any seriousness. (Though Stalin did apparently think about it at the lowest ebb of Russian fortunes.)
Equally naturally, the Germans weren't above encouraging such talk though, as it transpired, they wouldn't discuss peace with anyone until they couldn't because there was no longer enough Germany left to discuss.
But worrying about your allies is not all. There is the question of your own people. If fighting soldiers get a whiff of peace being in the air they become determined not to be the last fatality of the war and start favouring survival over gaining a few hard yards. The Home Front presents further difficulties. Contemplating peace can lead all too quickly to demands for peace.
Among the world's Commanders-in-Chief, past and present, only Donald Trump favours a policy of claiming 'peace is at hand' on a daily basis. But then he is, in many ways, a new kind of Commander-in-Chief. Very peculiar.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Pakistan is going to sell Trump the idea that there is a moderate faction of the IRGC that he can do business deals with.
This is exactly the same trick the ISI played on Donald in Afghanistan, where they sold him the idea of the so called moderate Taliban.
Back then Donald signed up to the US benefitting from a Rare Earths deal, with these Taliban moderates on condtion of the US leaving. The Taliban helpfully also signed on the dotted line, and simply waited to take over, humiliating Biden.
History hasnt been kind. The Taliban turned out to be not moderate after all, and the US never did see any Rare Earths. Pakistan is now fighting along the Pakisatan-Afghanistan border....
You would have thought that Team Trump will surely not fall for the moderate mullah trick twice. But who knows? After such a costly war, everyone is now hoping for peace, and this all to end.
Trump, for his part, really appears determined to administer the Strait, with a new moderate Ayaytollah, or anyone else that Bibi has just not put in a coma or assasinated.
What could possibly go wrong?
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