I would be surprised if a small number of these transfers weren’t to unmanned underwater vehicles meant to demonstrate the capacity to run blockades with logistics using UUVs.
I would be surprised if a small number of these transfers weren’t to unmanned underwater vehicles meant to demonstrate the capacity to run blockades with logistics using UUVs.
Answer my question, what the hell gives Iran the capacity to go toe to toe in the sonar/signals intelligence arena subsurface with a navy like the US Navy?
Absolutely nothing! It’s an excellent point.
Look I could keep this up as this kind of thing is basically my catnip, but to explain further why Big Hose, submarine cables/pipelines are buried. And also LNG is 1/2 the density of water. (Large tanks of LNG will float, which makes them very fun in floods if they get ripped off their mounts!)
Russia is already fairly adept at the sabotage of static marine infrastructure, burial helps, but 5 meters max is only a deterrant which underlines how an asymmetric naval power can manage to threaten static marine infrastructure even when wildly outmatched and under surveillance.
This fascinating technology that will certainly help however! Thank you for sharing this thing looks cool af.
When the target becomes a moving, transient subsurface vessel however, that ability of an asymmetric naval power being able to reach out and reliably apply force vanishes. The option is still there to spam mines but that isn’t any more effective against UUVs than it is surface vessels, if anything it is less effective.
Oh good grief. Yes, sure, they and china have done plenty to sabotage marine cables. Civilian cable, however, is not generally guarded. The solution to someone dragging an anchor between Sweden and Lithuania is international sanctions; the solution to someone doing it between Qeshm and Ash Sha’m is to blow the ship up. With missiles. Just… the idea that hundreds of large moving vessels would be harder to find than a Big Hose buried at the bottom of the sea is just. Really, really wrong.
Additionally, you would need more submarines than currently exist to make this even slightly viable just to make up the difference for the US’s import thru the straight. And not only is the US *the world’s largest producer of LNG, the amount of LNG it imports through the straight per year is approximately Three Santiago’s worth. Which is both practically nothing in scale, and would require 30,000 round trips, or 82 6-hour round trips every day.
For context, china would need… uh… Napkin math says, using the largest Narco sub ever recorded (which was only semi-submersible) it would take 22 THOUSAND 6 hour trips per day.
Seriously, this is dumb. Even Big Hose is dumb. Having a whole bunch of unmaned submersible SCVs running your vespene through a sea-mine infested strait is a ridiculously unworkable idea. Why would anyone even want to do this? If you can field that many UUVs, surely you could just build a regular pipeline instead of all this Wile E Coyote nonsense.
Why?
So, how many pipes currently run under your house/apartment/van/whatever?
I dont live in the ocean?
A shocking revelation!
To borrow your own words:
But seriously, If you’re already trying to dodge the question, seems pretty clear you can see where this is going.
Static infrastructure is far more vulnerable and easy to find than moving subsurface vessels? I don’t understand why you can’t grasp that.