The reports of attacks on commercial ships came after the US said it "eliminated" 16 Iranian mine-layers in the area. Elsewhere, two drones were downed near Dubai airport.
Mines, USVs (the suicide kind and the mine-laying kind), UUVs, Speedboats, drones, rockets, missiles. Before you shit-talk speedboats Iran has already tried and succeeded at attaching limpet mines onto the hulls of US ships (kinda as a joke/exercise) before this.
Oh and all of this is in tunnels, not sitting around on the water surface waiting to get blown up.
I’m not sure if you’re making a joke that the rockets are the explosives or if they actually have rockets they launch that are like cluster munitions that drop a bunch of mines in to the water.
As far as I know, they have the capability to deploy minefields by rocket from long range. I’m not sure if we’re talking the bigger MLRS or the smaller ballistic missiles, but it’s certainly possible.
However it’d be interesting to know if its also possible for naval mines… which are a few magnitudes bigger and also usually rely on an anker (ofter heavy) to stay in position.
Given the high weight I’m sceptical if a naval minefield can be achieved by missle transport.
A missile could carry something as light as nothing or as heavy as ISS modules. And anchors don’t even have to be that heavy, they just need to be denser than water and generate enough friction with the bottom to keep whatever is attached from moving too far.
Though they could even use catapults or trebechets mounted to the backs of trucks to mine it.
I’m going to have to look into it further. If it’s a drifting mine, it could be a lot more compact and still do a lot of damage to ships. They would be less effective in theory, but all they really need is for the strait to be nominally mined.
“drifting mine”
That’s a nightmarish thought. Those will go everywhere, wash up on shore, go out into the Indian Ocean, whatever. I really hope that’s not what’s going on here.
Straight’s closed because of drones
Mines.
Most of their mine laying vessels are at the bottom of the straight at this point.
Mines, USVs (the suicide kind and the mine-laying kind), UUVs, Speedboats, drones, rockets, missiles. Before you shit-talk speedboats Iran has already tried and succeeded at attaching limpet mines onto the hulls of US ships (kinda as a joke/exercise) before this.
Oh and all of this is in tunnels, not sitting around on the water surface waiting to get blown up.
They can mine it remotely with rockets.
I’m not sure if you’re making a joke that the rockets are the explosives or if they actually have rockets they launch that are like cluster munitions that drop a bunch of mines in to the water.
As far as I know, they have the capability to deploy minefields by rocket from long range. I’m not sure if we’re talking the bigger MLRS or the smaller ballistic missiles, but it’s certainly possible.
I know that for land mines this is true.
However it’d be interesting to know if its also possible for naval mines… which are a few magnitudes bigger and also usually rely on an anker (ofter heavy) to stay in position.
Given the high weight I’m sceptical if a naval minefield can be achieved by missle transport.
A missile could carry something as light as nothing or as heavy as ISS modules. And anchors don’t even have to be that heavy, they just need to be denser than water and generate enough friction with the bottom to keep whatever is attached from moving too far.
Though they could even use catapults or trebechets mounted to the backs of trucks to mine it.
I’m going to have to look into it further. If it’s a drifting mine, it could be a lot more compact and still do a lot of damage to ships. They would be less effective in theory, but all they really need is for the strait to be nominally mined.
“drifting mine” That’s a nightmarish thought. Those will go everywhere, wash up on shore, go out into the Indian Ocean, whatever. I really hope that’s not what’s going on here.
Did they identify the source as drones? It says unknown projectiles, so Anonymous Intercepting Devices. AIDs, if you will.