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The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

theguardian.com

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Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#31

Post by pearlsontheroad »

d3ckard wrote: post #10
redwood wrote: post #9

Everyone's an expert 19 days into a conflict that was absolutely foreseen in comprehensive United States military planning. People need to have some patience. What's clear is it the way this is being executed is a complete reboot of how prior Middle East conflicts were executed which suggests major ownership of prior problems and learnings applied

Yes, especially murdering a school full of girls during the first days seems like a perfect example of extensive planning and preparation.

It should be investigated as a war crime.

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#32

Post by redwood »

d3ckard wrote: post #10
redwood wrote: post #9

Everyone's an expert 19 days into a conflict that was absolutely foreseen in comprehensive United States military planning. People need to have some patience. What's clear is it the way this is being executed is a complete reboot of how prior Middle East conflicts were executed which suggests major ownership of prior problems and learnings applied

Yes, especially murdering a school full of girls during the first days seems like a perfect example of extensive planning and preparation.

Has anyone ever claimed that wars don't involve mistakes. That wars are not hell, that wars are somehow a good phenomenon associated with the human species? But has anyone not naive argued that wars are not sometimes necessary to achieve objectives?

I genuinely wonder what point you have here other than to remind us of these fundamental human truths. And if so thank you. But I would ask you what would you be doing if you were making the policy decision?

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#33

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

redwood wrote: post #9

Everyone's an expert 19 days into a conflict that was absolutely foreseen in comprehensive United States military planning. People need to have some patience. What's clear is it the way this is being executed is a complete reboot of how prior Middle East conflicts were executed which suggests major ownership of prior problems and learnings applied

> Everyone's an expert 19 days into a conflict that was absolutely foreseen in comprehensive United States military planning.

Military planners foreseeing things doesn't mean much if their commander-in-chief ignores them and substitutes his own uneducated, unplanned feelings for their analysis.

> What's clear is it the way this is being executed is a complete reboot of how prior Middle East conflicts were executed which suggests major ownership of prior problems and learnings applied

The problem is that what they are doing has resulted in failure to keep the strait open. Whether they learned the wrong thing, or applied the wrong lessons, or did not learn anything at all, is an exercise left to the reader.

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#34

Post by kvuj »

defrost wrote: post #27
kvuj wrote: post #11

> “We don’t know who their vendors are,” he said, adding that beyond a few steps in long chains of subcontractors, “nobody actually knows who’s providing these metals, these minerals, the parts. And it just becomes a maze.” So how can you predict the impact on the US defense industry? How can you predict it will be strangled? What the hell is this shitty article that doesn't use a single hard number? No graphs, no pr…

It's more or less a near direct do over of the original source from Westpoint Military Academy. The Chokepoint We Missed: Sulfur, Hormuz, and the Threats to Military Readiness https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-chokepoint-we-missed-sulfur-ho... It's reasonable to assume that a fuller version exists in which Morgan D. Bazilian and Macdonald Amoah lay out the background data which Lt. Col. Jahara “Franky” Matisek et al have…

Those are some serious qualifications and the linked article shows quite a few examples, but I would still like to be shown data instead of a appeal to authority.

Maybe I'm just used to high quality reporting on the subjects I read like Irrational analysis or Chips and cheese where a minimum of 10 graphs are needed for any deep dive.

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#35

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

redwood wrote: post #30
defrost wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You dropped an /s Tell us more about US minesweepers and the comprehensive United States military planning. What, no minesweepers in the region? Need help from other allies that have been insulted and told they're not needed for five (non consecutive) years? Great planning.

Minesweepers require comprehensive dominance of the littoral region with total suppression of firepower from the enemy before they can be applied. We are in the suppression phase before those assets can be brought into the region

How did the plan to eliminate littoral defenses and avoid or eliminate mining, before it disrupted shipping, go?

What's that? Some of the new Littoral Combat Ships, infamous for falling apart and needing frequent repairs, have been moved from their assigned middle eastern stations to an entirely different theater for maintenance because the CiC started a war that made their middle eastern ports unsafe [2]? Oh, those were specifically ones configured for minesweeping [2]? Great planning.

Here's some reading about how the head of the entire armed forces failed to plan for this:

> Before the U.S. went to war, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told President Trump that an American attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. [0]

> but Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout if Iran were to respond to US-Israeli strikes by closing the strait. [1]

> He told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait—and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it. [0]

> “Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.” [1]

0 – https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/iran-oil-horm...

1 – https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/12/politics/hormuz-trump-adminis...

2 – https://www.twz.com/sea/u-s-navy-minesweepers-assigned-to-mi...

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#36

Post by defrost »

kvuj wrote: post #34
defrost wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more or less a near direct do over of the original source from Westpoint Military Academy. The Chokepoint We Missed: Sulfur, Hormuz, and the Threats to Military Readiness https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-chokepoint-we-missed-sulfur-ho... It's reasonable to assume that a fuller version exists in which Morgan D. Bazilian and Macdonald Amoah lay out the background data which Lt. Col. Jahara “Franky” Matisek et al have…

Those are some serious qualifications and the linked article shows quite a few examples, but I would still like to be shown data instead of a appeal to authority. Maybe I'm just used to high quality reporting on the subjects I read like Irrational analysis or Chips and cheese where a minimum of 10 graphs are needed for any deep dive.

> but I would still like to be shown data instead of a appeal to authority.

Sure .. 18 years ago you could have logged into the W.Australian mineral intelligence company Interria and seen such data - that business was sold to Standard & Poor and portaled there (and updated) for 14 years or so - recently it's no longer visible .. but such several such databases do exist .. I guess you just need the contacts and an account for access.

You can ask S&P, Rio Tinto and other majors, the Colorado School of Mines, US Military, the Chinese companies that were leaching data all those decades, ROSATOM (Russian Uranium) peers that track other minerals, etc.

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#37

Post by franktankbank »

yabones wrote: post #12

It's kind of funny how the US military, the largest single consumer of fossil fuels on the planet, didn't consider that disrupting the largest source of fossil fuels would impact them.

Does it consume oil flowing through the strait?

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#38

Post by [deleted] »

redwood wrote: post #32
d3ckard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, especially murdering a school full of girls during the first days seems like a perfect example of extensive planning and preparation.

Has anyone ever claimed that wars don't involve mistakes. That wars are not hell, that wars are somehow a good phenomenon associated with the human species? But has anyone not naive argued that wars are not sometimes necessary to achieve objectives? I genuinely wonder what point you have here other than to remind us of these fundamental human truths. And if so thank you. But I would ask you what would you be doing if…

[deleted]

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#39

Post by maxglute »

shin_lao wrote: post #24

You will always find a report that goes in the way of the narrative you want to push. The goal of these reports is to poke holes and build scenarios. It doesn't mean it's going to happen. This article elevates a niche bottleneck into a headline risk. - Sulfur matters but we have many substitutes, stockpiles, and alternative supply chains. - 20% of global oil passes through it, but the US doesn't depend on it, will hu…

Meanwhile MENA oil continues to flow to PRC, so it doesn't hurt PRC more. High oil prices hurt US disproportionately more for the simple reason oil is higher % of US energy mix (~40% US vs 20% for PRC), and due to refinery mismatch, US not oil independent and needs to pay spot for imports, i.e. Canadian crude. It also it hurts US productive partners more by inflating input prices, which PRC circumvents with continued cheap RU energy and more significantly coal to petchem stacks that makes PRC coal much cheaper industrial input than oil after $70/80 barrels, lower than every oil benchmark. Like huge segments of PRC industry literally just gained 20-30% and growing discount on inputs vs essentially every other industrial power that relies on crude for inputs, i.e. basically everyone else without PRC's contingency coal stack got considerably more fucked than PRC.

Until even greater disruption that meaningful takes barrels from PRC to the point of degrading mainland, i.e. after SPR runs dry, PRC suffers significantly less than US while gaining more industrial competitiveness. But, at current level of disruption, i.e. still relatively lack of, PRC wins on essentially every domain.

Re: The strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

#40

Post by piva00 »

franktankbank wrote: post #37
yabones wrote: post #12

It's kind of funny how the US military, the largest single consumer of fossil fuels on the planet, didn't consider that disrupting the largest source of fossil fuels would impact them.

Does it consume oil flowing through the strait?

Does it matter when oil is a global commodity?

Countries reliant on oil coming through the strait will have to find other sources, pushing prices up, unless the USA implements price and export controls on producers in its own soil that will reflect in the USA's economy which is very reliant on oil.

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