Hacker News Reader

Comment by kev009 | Hacker News Reader

Conceivably, the 50 tankers per day could move in batches with the protection of a Destroyer. It's hard to imagine a credible surface or subsea threat with current fleet presence so it's basically a question of missile defense. Some constellation of vessels can indefinitely secure the zone if any powers that be with a suitable Navy desire it, and there are at least a few that have plausible capabilities.

View on HN

How is a single destroyer going to protect 50 oil tankers at once? Oil tankers are almost comically unsuited to warfare and you don't need missiles to penetrate their non-existent defences, they can easily and cheaply be taken out by drones. Here's Ukraine doing just that for the Nth time last week:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5ll27z52do

As the friendly article says, the US military has no idea about how commercial shipping works and how hard it will be convince anybody to transit through an active war zone.

How good is an Iranian navy really? At this point, seriously asking, why is there anything left of an Iranian navy? If we're in a shooting conflict that's a war not a war, why would they not be going after anything that could be considered a blockade? I'm going with these guys didn't have a real plan, and that block the straight is something they actually didn't consider so nothing in place to counter. It's Keystone cops

Ukraine's entire navy was sunk in the first 3 days of the war, and 4 years later Russian Black Sea fleet knows to stay in port as more than half of their ships have been sunk by Ukrainian missiles and drones.

The don't have a navy per se, just speedboats fitted with missiles, whatever is left of it. Enough to drive the insurance costs sky high and interdict tanker traffic through the strait. Also their navy port is right next to the strait, I wonder why.

See this comical propaganda clip:

https://youtu.be/GKJHaODzP-0?is=QRf8HkFJ0O4Amx3v

They also have Shaheds.

How is a fleet of speedboats not a navy?

"A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a state's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare;" --wikipedia

Also, comical is a great description. I was aware that Iran has a speedboat navy, but wtf that video?! How much is AI? The shot with the giant flame throwing rockets flying slower that the speedboats is hilarious. I guess perspective is everything??

I guess you could call a fleet of dinghies a navy as well by that measure. Anyway, they no longer have their navy, because according to Trump it was, uh, 'knocked out'.

What they do still have however, is enough Shaheds to interdict tanker traffic through the straight.

Iran doesn't need a navy to sink cargo ships going through the Straight of Hormuz, they just need a handful of guys in the mountains with a stock of rockets or drones.

Not congruent to what I wrote: Why would the batch size be 1? Must it be the US military? What anti-drone capabilities do Destroyers have or could be made to have?

If the tankers are primarily for the benefit of Asia and not the US do you risk bringing additional parties with a grievance into your conflict?

> Must it be the US military?

When the action you are talking about is, for anyone other than the US or Israel, signing up to become a co-belligerent with the US & Israel in their war with Iran? Yeah, the realistic options for who might do it are pretty limited.

Seems tinged in political fog. For instance, if China wants tankers to have safe passage they can present diplomatic arrangements with the other players (US&Israel and/or Iran) indicating they are there for escort only. Belligerence would not be up to them if they were forced to defend their merchant escort.

Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, and Saudi are all US allies and they all rely on the Straits for exports. If they can't sell oil/LNG, they will be in much bigger trouble than their customers, who have other suppliers to choose from.

The simple solution seems to be to put the Trump fortune up as insurance collateral. If he's so confident that the war's such a good idea, he needs to put some skin in the game.

So now we know the true purpose for Board of Peace membership dues

You have to convince three sets of people to move any tanker through the Straight:

- the crew - the company - the insurer

The company has an obvious reason to take on some amount of risk to move a vessel through the Straight. However, both the crew and the insurer will be quite risk averse, so the Navy would need to demonstrate a very high success rate in intercepting both missiles and shaheds to convince those two other groups to say "yes".

The missiles destroyers have are not the kind you want to use to shoot down shaheds. The economics don't work out in the long run. Same for AIM-9s. There are some new guided pod rockets that likely break even, but they are new.

https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/06/typhoon-spotted-rocket...`

Seems like a great way to have the destroyer's air defense overwhelmed/depleted by shaheds while IRGC drone boats and speedboats attack from the surface. Then you have 50 insurance claims against the US treasury.

And now you have a US navy destroyer in torpedo range of the shore.

If Iran makes a nuisance of itself for long enough, I expect a coalition naval task force will go and open the strait back up.

It's less about "opening it up" and more about the tanker companies feeling there is enough safety. With the Red Sea instance, they didn't start running ships until the Houthis said they were done.

The feeling of safety in this scenario would be provided by the assurance that anyone who tries picking on a tanker would be stomped into the ground by a destroyer.

except that history shows otherwise, as relayed in the submission

Reply on news.ycombinator.com