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.
So a bit over 10,000 trips with the largest public UUV (which is a single prototype) to replace a single Santiago-sized ship. And the Santiago is roughly 1/2 the capacity of a QMAX LNG tanker. By my napkin math, you’d need 1300 trips per day with the Orca XL to replace the volume of natural gas the US imported thru the strait before it was closed.
I’m not saying you’re exactly wrong, just that circumventing a blockade with this for energy supply isn’t reasonable. The max capacity per trip is one small propane truck’s worth of fuel. You could absolutely use this to transfer fuel to something like a clandestine group for power generation or what-have-you, but in no world would using these for LNG supply on the scale of even a single ship be viable. Seriously, if that’s the goal you could just pile BBQ Propane tanks into a Los Angeles sub and transport 10x the fuel - without burning any diesel.
(Edit: Additionally, the Orca’s reported top speed is 15km/hr. At that speed, it would take at best 6.5 hours to run the blockades - and that’s a conservative estimate of the size of the Iran-controlled zone.)
Truly, a much better solution would just be a long hose.
I don’t think the objective would be to fully circumvent the blockade but rather reduce the growth of existential unsustainability a full blockade of energy supply creates, it is a mitigation strategy not a full blown replacement and I absolutely think the US military industrial complex + US fossil fuel industrial complex could manufacture enough unmanned subtankers to make this feasible as only one example of a power that might do this. I.E. ~100 8 ton UUVs would be a massive project but I think that scale or larger is entirely possible in classified contexts. Still not enough to rival/“replace” shipping as you point out, but it is enough to change the tactical calculus and balance of power.
They don’t have to be very capable, they just have to float below the surface like “narco subs” do.
It is trivially easy to cut a long hose, on the otherhand what can pirates and long range missiles do against big slow dumb UUVs travelling 10 meters below the surface?
Or, and hear me out: Big hose.
Immune to sea mines, easily buried, doesn’t rely on a fleet of hundreds of small, easily identified vessels full of pressurized hydrocarbons that you will be continuously hooking and unhooking from tankers on either end of the strait, where Iran could clearly see what you’re doing and just like… put out a couple nets.
(also no. No, Big Hose is not trivially easy to cut. It is in fact very difficult to do that.)
A hose would be THE MOST vulnerable solution possible what?
Also Iran can’t see into the ocean, in this war the US navy owns the ocean beneath the surface wholly and entirely, there is no reliable way for Iran to locate or hit subsurface vessels in the strait other than spamming mines which if anything unmanned vehicles are already the safer solution to use in mined areas.
If the US is not doing this it is entirely because of incompetence, which is admittedly very possible for this administration.
For one, I am SURE this is one of the first strategies Ukraine suggested to Gulf powers they entered into security agreements with, it is the logical extension of unmanned vehicles to wartime logistics in a naval context.
No, it’s trivially easy for them to do that. That’s why we can’t have Big Hose.
With what tools can they see beneath the surface into the ocean?
Not to detect a hose or structure but a moving transient thing?
My goodness, what a good point. Looks like Big Hose is back on the menu, boys.
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!)