A U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz went into effect Monday at 10 a.m. EST at the direction of President Donald Trump, but in a matter of hours, the blockade was breached without incident by at least four Iran-linked vessels, BBC reported Tuesday.On Monday, Trump said that he had instructe...
Everyone is reporting on these ships making it through the strait which is still under Iranian control. Few seem to mention the part in the Gulf of Oman where the US is actually implementing its blockade. The poster child, Rich Starry, mentioned in the article, did this a few hours after clearing the strait, still far from the Arabian Sea:
That sure doesn’t look like a ship breaching a blockade without incident.
It’s too early to say how this will play out on a larger scale but for these specific ships a lot of reporting is really fucking misleading at the moment.
So you think a ship that was moving at maybe 5 knots/hr instantly turned around and in less than 30 minutes accelerated past 50 knots/hr?
I don’t know where you’re getting any of that from. It was travelling at 8 knots before and after the turnaround. The bit in the animation where it slows and drifts almost due south is actually marinetraffic not having AIS data for that period so it just interpolates between the two known positions. Maybe I should have made that clearer.
That turnaround period is also close to
3.5(edit: 2.5) hours, not 30 minutes.According to the same data the ship is now close to the Strait of Hormuz that it passed through yesterday; it seems pretty clear it did not get where it wanted to go.
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The gif shows no data (dimmed icon) from 08:49 UTC to 11:10 UTC so I had my maths wrong and it’s 2 hours 21 minutes, apologies. Still a lot more than 30 minutes. The AIS data also generally comes in less frequently than every minute so there’s some unreliability there.
As I said, according to the current data the ship definitely kept going back up towards the Strait since I posted, so what’s more likely, it kept going on its current course and spoofed its AIS for nearly 12 hours, or that it turned around?
The fact that you are measuring speed in knots per hour invalidates your point.
Please use a correct measurement, and try again.
So you think a ship that was moving at maybe 5 knots instantly turned around and in less than 30 minutes accelerated past 50 knots?
I find that reasonably unlikely, unless it is a naval ship. I don’t think cargo ships go that fast unless empty, and highly motivated. Possibly not even then.
Do we have a reliable source for this data?
Most naval vessels can do just over 30, if that. Cargo vessels spend most of their life below 10.
50 knots means there’s some fuckery afoot.
I was under the impression that navy ships could go much faster, but didn’t because of wear and fuel consumption. I recall hearing about 60 knots, but I wouldn’t place even a small bet on it.
Same for cargo ships, to a lesser extent. If an empty one felt a need to move, I’m sure they could get a little speed to them. But they aren’t built for it, and “saving money on fuel” is their prime directive.
Although, as someone noted elsewhere, there don’t seem to be any actual measurements of speed. They turned around, and cranked the throttle, but we don’t know how far they were going in either phase.
I’ve read claims that some nuclear aircraft carriers can go a lot faster than 30, but I suspect that’s bullshit.
There’s also a phenomenon known as hull speed, where a displacement hull vessel takes an exponential amount of power to go slightly faster once you hit it. They’re also not going to have an engine that’s massively more powerful than they need, just in case.
50 knots would outrun pretty much any large vessel on the planet.
Sure, but the gif doesn’t show 50 knots. The gif doesn’t show any speed actually, so I really don’t know where the 50 number comes from. But on the tracker the speed was 8.1 knots. Fast for a tanker, but totally believable.
My source is marinetraffic.com. Other AIS trackers also corroborate it.
From the sounds of it the OP and most other articles are based on similar armchair research looking at trackers so I think it’s about as reliable as we’re going to get.
…that…that is the correct measurement
I think per hour is already a part of the definition of knot (hence 50 knots not per hour). I think they are just being pedantic.
I’m being accurate. “Knots” is “nautical miles per hour,” as you correctly described.
All you’re doing is being a grammar nazi to someone who at most said the equivalent of “$30 million dollars”, which is technically, thanks to the dollar sign, “thirty million dollars dollars”.
You knew what they meant. I knew what they meant. Everyone knew what they meant. There was absolutely zero ambiguity, so you just come off looking like a prick.
I know what I’m about.
Being a prick is not a reason to be proud.
If we are being really pedantic. Knots is a measure of distance, and the fact that people have been using that wrong for several centuries does not turn a rope tied at one point into a time-changing object.
I believe the current terminology is nautical mile (distance) and knot (speed).
We’ve only been sailing for “several centuries.” How long was it a measure of distance before people started using it wrong?
People have been using knots for a few millennia.
No, it isn’t. A nautical mile is a measurement of distance, a knot is a nautical mile per hour.
The way language works is that people use things and they become correct.
There’s things I hate, too, like “yea” now being a spelling for “yeah”. But it’s useless to fight it.
I think there point is that knots is not a measurement of distance over time so you can’t technically travel in knots per hour.
Ostensibly knots per hour would be acceleration, which makes little sense in context
And knots per hour per hour would be a measure of ever-increasing acceleration, so this is getting out of hand quickly now :)
Oh I agree jerk can get out of hand really quickly. But the real fun comes when we get into snap crackle and pop.
For anyone who is unaware, I leave this here for your viewing pleasure.
A knot is a nautical mile per hour, I’m not sure how you’ve reached the conclusion that’s not distance over time.