The convoy idea is so dumb that I can’t believe anyone said it out loud. Effective strategy against commerce raiders, which Iran explicitly does not have. Might as well offer to mount a CIWS on tankers and hope your insurance premiums will see it as a wash (they won’t). Makes as much sense as suggesting you counter drones with cavalry.
If I was one of those oil companies, I’d say sure. You staff the tanker with your people and you insure us for any losses incurred. Also, put an upfront amount of insurance money in escrow.
But we’re not risking lives, merchandise, and equipment. You want the oil that badly. You move it. We’re just going to raise oil prices to cover our losses in the meantime, so we’re fine.
Oh they tried this, admin offered to pay oil companies for damages and move it themselves. Little catch there is tanker ships take half a decade or longer to build. The companies cannot afford to roll the dice on losing one, even if they’ll get reimbursed for the ship. They lose capacity ($$$) waiting for the replacement.
Yeah, losses would wouldn’t just be the cargo and the ship, it would be a decade long hit to earnings. And I’d want to see money for all of that, in escrow, before I moved an inch. Trump is famous for not paying his debts. I’d want all that money secured upfront.
It’s not just normal insurance cost either. These ships take years to replace. They also have to insure against the multiple years worth of profits and loss of market share.
The Shahed-136 uses a MD550 engine, spec sheet says that’s 50 horsepower. An actual horse has a peak output somewhere between 10 and 15 horsepower[1] so it should only take 4 or 5 horses to match/exceed the Shahed’s strength. Seems reasonable enough to me, it’s simple math.
Stevenson, Robert & Wassersug, Richard. (1993). Horsepower from a horse. Nature. 364. 195. 10.1038/364195a0. ↩︎
The larger the convoy becomes a more attractive target, as a single salvo of missiles has greater chance of bypassing missile defences and hitting any target.
Plus they have drones or missile boats, which would be harder to defend against. You can do missile defence in a radius around a ship, but now there’s obstacles and small fast moving targets that only need to land 1 hit and can use blind spots.
So I guess you need 3+ navy ships to form a perimeter and guard a few tankers at once.
But now there’s mines, so your perimeter becomes another vulnerability, you’ve increased the surface area where mines can be.
So now you can add more navy ships to get better geometry but it’s a much higher cost.
Also, the US lies about what it is going to do all the time.
In fact, there is a big fat lie right in this article in which the US claimed to have already escorted a ship through despite the fact that they simply did nothing of the sort.
Would you be willing to stake the economic future of your company, the lives of your staff, and millions of dollars of equipment and product on the promise and competence of these guys?
The convoy idea is so dumb that I can’t believe anyone said it out loud. Effective strategy against commerce raiders, which Iran explicitly does not have. Might as well offer to mount a CIWS on tankers and hope your insurance premiums will see it as a wash (they won’t). Makes as much sense as suggesting you counter drones with cavalry.
If I was one of those oil companies, I’d say sure. You staff the tanker with your people and you insure us for any losses incurred. Also, put an upfront amount of insurance money in escrow.
But we’re not risking lives, merchandise, and equipment. You want the oil that badly. You move it. We’re just going to raise oil prices to cover our losses in the meantime, so we’re fine.
Oh they tried this, admin offered to pay oil companies for damages and move it themselves. Little catch there is tanker ships take half a decade or longer to build. The companies cannot afford to roll the dice on losing one, even if they’ll get reimbursed for the ship. They lose capacity ($$$) waiting for the replacement.
And USA doesn’t build those ships.
Who does build those ships?
China and South Korea, but mostly China.
Yeah, losses would wouldn’t just be the cargo and the ship, it would be a decade long hit to earnings. And I’d want to see money for all of that, in escrow, before I moved an inch. Trump is famous for not paying his debts. I’d want all that money secured upfront.
It’s not just normal insurance cost either. These ships take years to replace. They also have to insure against the multiple years worth of profits and loss of market share.
Exactly. It’s the ship, the goods, the lost earning over many years, severance for staff that won’t be used, etc. It would be mess.
I also wonder how clean up for a spill would be handled. Currently that’s managed by Iran and the vessel that spilled pays.
Also, if they sink in a bad spot, they’ll physically block the strait. It’s a narrow corridor that’s navigable.
Insurance companies won’t touch it.
Of course. The US government would have to insure it. No private company is touching that with a 10 foot pole.
No company is going to trust insurance from this administration though. That’s the problem with having a Trump who famously never pays his debts.
Which is why I said insurance in escrow.
Trump is famous for stiffing people. I’d want that money paid upfront and held in escrow by an independent financial firm in a neutral nation.
If a ship gets hit, escrow pays out for the oil, the ship, and the loss of future earnings. If the ships never sink, the money goes back to the US.
Which couldn’t happen since the gvt is scrambling to get the money to prepare for tariff refunds
Not drones exactly but this is a sound straregy in the early civilization games
The Shahed-136 uses a MD550 engine, spec sheet says that’s 50 horsepower. An actual horse has a peak output somewhere between 10 and 15 horsepower[1] so it should only take 4 or 5 horses to match/exceed the Shahed’s strength. Seems reasonable enough to me, it’s simple math.
Stevenson, Robert & Wassersug, Richard. (1993). Horsepower from a horse. Nature. 364. 195. 10.1038/364195a0. ↩︎
The math on the convoy doesn’t make sense to me.
The larger the convoy becomes a more attractive target, as a single salvo of missiles has greater chance of bypassing missile defences and hitting any target.
Plus they have drones or missile boats, which would be harder to defend against. You can do missile defence in a radius around a ship, but now there’s obstacles and small fast moving targets that only need to land 1 hit and can use blind spots.
So I guess you need 3+ navy ships to form a perimeter and guard a few tankers at once.
But now there’s mines, so your perimeter becomes another vulnerability, you’ve increased the surface area where mines can be.
So now you can add more navy ships to get better geometry but it’s a much higher cost.
Also, the US lies about what it is going to do all the time.
In fact, there is a big fat lie right in this article in which the US claimed to have already escorted a ship through despite the fact that they simply did nothing of the sort.
Would you be willing to stake the economic future of your company, the lives of your staff, and millions of dollars of equipment and product on the promise and competence of these guys?
After a decade of trump you still can’t believe he would say something like this out loud?