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[-] halykthered@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago

The Cole was hit in port, not underway in the Red Sea. Also the merchant traffic in the Red Sea, especially where it gets concentrated down near the south, limits options for warship mobility that could absolutely allow determined actors get within striking range.

Yes, those ships, even merchents, do have capabilities and options for defense, but they're not invulnerable. Hamas came over the wall in fucking paramotors. I wouldn't underestimate the levels of ingenuity a beleaguered, desperate, and angry people are capable of.

I'm not saying your points are invalid, I'm just saying the threat against any ship out there is above 0% and there probably aren't simple solutions given those involved and the environment.

[-] ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree with the Cole port bombing, but that doesn’t really change what I said. That just puts it further into context that Al Qaeda was barely lucky enough to hit an out of commission frigate in port, let alone one underway. Plus merchant shipping being concentrated in the south is insanely protected, UN air and naval forces based out of Dijoboiti would make any determined strike a pointless suicide mission. They would be shredded by Chinese, French, US, Russian, British, Korean, Japanese, etc ships and aircraft the second they entered protected zones.

I agree that no ship is invincible, but you have to be realistic. Yemen is not fielding top of the line warships. There’s only so ingenious you can be with speedboats unless they somehow build themselves as SSK submarine I guess.

There’s no simple answer to this, but to act like any sort of rebel force has any sort of chance at victory in a scenario like this is insane.

[-] halykthered@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

I wasn't trying to get you to change what you said, I was just adding context, flavor for discussion. We could discuss hypotheticals all day as well. With the way things have been heating up in the middle east over the Israel invasion, we may not have to wait long to see what could happen, to be honest.

Who knows, maybe they'll strike a ship near the Bab-Al-Mandab to lure out that multinational strike force from Djibouti straight into a minefield.

What out of commission frigate were you referring to? The Cole is a destroyer and was struck during inport refueling.

this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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