An Update on the Latest Iranian Incident
The Pentagon has now released its take on the cause of the incident.
The SECDEF earlier today said that that the US craft entered entered Iranian waters “due to a navigational error”.
I’m guessing someone’s career is toast about now.
Category: Military issues, Navy
under this administration that means promotion to who ever was the Captain of the boat
bhwhahahahahahaha. !!!!!!
Dude, shut up.
Never…
What Wrong with my Humor, Old and Tired. LMAO !!!!! (Smile) it’s Friday!!!!!
I think he means “Don’t give them any ideas.”
I know Lol…
since my retirement from the army in 2013.
I can’t think of a time when so much STUPID,,, has become the normal.
and to think I was fighting like mad to stay in.
I’d say WTF is the problematic leadership issues infecting our great military
but it starts at the Top.. 🙁
a really Close Battle of mine, told me at a awards ceremony before being flown to Lewis to out-processe my beloved Army that I was Lucky
that he was
Thank You. Bill M for reminding me to keep my trap closed and to use my OPSEC.
I love the line in the comment section, something along the lines of “McHale’s Navy was more squared away than this one.”
I can imagine the career carnage may reach flag officer rank before the dust settles on this one.
If I remember right, we heard it here yesterday in a comment on the earlier thread. TAH for the news!
Yep. Reuters also broke the story yesterday, but I queued this up for this AM vice posting it immediately.
I really would like to know if the boats were really in Iranian waters or if they were Iranian claimed, but not internationally recognized, waters. There seems to be a lot of maneuvering room past Farsi Island no matter what. Wouldn’t they pretty much hug the coast? If that’s what they did, then they would have to drift an awful lot to be in violation of Iran territory, claimed or not.
How in the fuck do you get lost with maritime GPS units? Or were those broken and they decided to go out on a “3 hour cruise” without an alternate means of navigation?
Next thing we’ll see from the Navy/Administration is that it was a “offensive movie” or some other bullshit that made the crew go off course and get captured.
Jeezuz…
Very Easy Brother, You let the LT take the lead, have him ignore the Navigator, and either he ignored the Chief or the Chief was ineffectual.
As the LT probably said. “I all my YEARS in the Navy” I have never got lost.
Yep… heard that before from Marine Corps 2nd LT’s…and if the CPO was not able to “extricate the LT’s head from his cranial orifice” before this shit went sideways, he needs to just turn in his anchors.
“The most dangerous thing in the United States Marine Corps is a Second Lieutenant with a GPS”.
HMCS(FMF): comments yesterday from someone who had served with the individual indicated that the LT in question is damned arrogant. Not all that much his NCOIC could do if he ignored their advice and gave direct orders to the contrary – which is my guess regarding exactly what happened.
In the Army, this would have been an example of “you bet yer bars” on the LT’s part. Let’s see if the Navy handles it similarly.
like a know it all LT. so you give them a sniper check…
Hondo, here is the vexing part. The LT cannot be CO of both Boats. He could have been the Mission Commander, but the other Boats CO has a ton of say as to what is going on. This is no different than a foot patrol with a 5 paragraph order for movement presented to higher that must have all the bells and whistles and check marks before anyone leave the pier. Did they hit their pre-set points and Comm into HQ?
Hondo… I’m hoping that they do. There is probably more to this than what we know know right now.
I just wonder what the LT’s FITREPS look like – if his arrogance had been noted on paper before this incident?
Seeing this happen makes me glad that I retired when I did… and breaks my heart for where the Navy, and the military in general, is headed.
And is he related to John Kerry, you know, the one who spent Xmas ’68 in Cambodia while listening to Pres. Nixon’s speech….
If you are afraid of losing your Anchors then you do not deserve them in the first place. That is why you were given them in the first place. To put them and you nuts on the line for your Junior Troops. Imaging having your crew on their knees, hands on their heads in front of the world.
Oh, I’m with you on the anchors… and I did it more than a few times when I dealt with LT’s and LCDR’s that were department heads that thought they “knew it all”. I just remember seeing too many new CPO’s before I retired “playing safe” with their anchors – too many did not want to speak up for fear of the DIVO or DH using it against them when it came time for fitness reports.
Let’s see…
1) Cause international incident (during presidential election runup)
2) Have that incident broadcast by the press all over the world
3) Jeopardize Commander-in-Chief’s pet project
4) Make US look bad
And above all
5) Make Navy look bad
I predict a very short career with the phrase “LT, come in and close the door behind you” heard many times over 🙂
GPS, position indicators, navigation charts, preplanned routes and more?
Jamed, GPS spoofed and then mousetrapped when they stopped to sort it out.
If you take a look at the location of Farsi Island on a map, you would have to go quite a ways off course to get within 3 miles of it if you were following a sensible plot from port to port. Something smells.
Internationally-recognized territorial waters since 1994 have extended 12NM, or to the midpoint of a channel where the channel is shared by two nations’ territorial waters and the channel is less than 24NM wide.
While the US is not a signatory to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (it became effective in 1994 when the 60th nation ratified it), it’s my understanding the US does generally acknowledge that provision as valid.
I am no SJA/JAG but reading the Law of the Sea it spells out pretty clearly the right of transit etc and military vessels under flag. Boarding and taking the crew is a violation although I am sure Iran would use the loop hole of a imagined threat. Besides since when has Iran followed international law or treaties.
Just for the heck of it, I went into Google Maps and measured the distance from Farsi Island to the nearest non-Iranian landmass. Almost 67 statute miles. Seems like enough room to move around in without running into the Iranians. Just makes really, really curious about what happened.
I’ve also been looking for info that Iran has made claims about this part of the gulf that are not internationally recognized. I seem to remember reading something about them claiming 27nm from Farsi Island. Of course, I can’t find it.
So, why the story of the loss of propulsion? How many more stories will we get on the reason as people shuck and jive to try to stay off the radar?
Navigation errors get people killed, as evidenced about 25 years ago tomorrow.
I agree something smells awful here… and also the BBC reported that our government almost within a 2 hour period had called to inform and apologize to the Iranian government…
what are the odds of that happening???? NOT !!!!!
The question remains how did all GPS and nav systems on both boats fail as well as the age old map? The other part is the Law of the Sea, under international law they had the right of transit and should not have been boarded or the crew taken. Of course without all the information it is hard to say what happened. No matter what the photos and video Iran released are clearly wrong and no doubt meant to embarrass the Navy and the USG.
With two boats, and two sets of GPS and duplicate navigation aids, this story from the SECDEF stinks. I’m willing to bet a dollar to a doughnut that the Iranian “navy” was claiming waters that it (and everyone else) knows isn’t theirs, but they claim it anyway, just because they can. And America is weak.
Not that we’ll ever know the full true story in our lifetime.. .
It is actually the Navy of the Army of the Guardians of the Revolution, or IRGC Navy, as opposed to the IRIN which is the Iranian regular navy. Confused yet?
Geezo Pete! Is anyone recalling the Pueblo besides me?
If it’s correct, that the LT is/was an arrogant toad, fine, do something about him. Perhaps a few weeks in the Bosun’s locker cleaning heads, chipping paint, and learning some humility would be a fitting job for him. I wouldn’t fire his ass. That won’t change his attitude.
I do want to know more. I’m sure that the entire story will be dissected in the press, but this is just another bit of stupidity all around. Haven’t ever seen this many fuckups during one WH admin.
Article on the LT: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3400530/Navy-lieutenant-apologized-Iran-27-year-old-Chicago-Facebook-page-videos-firing-weapons.html
This thing stinks.
Just like every other fucking thing this pukeface admin does…
Why does Benghazi sound vaguely familiar in this instance…
Another mission compromised by the no spines in the Pentagon or higher up???
It just stinks, at least nobody died in it…
Depends on how you look at it. One career is dead in the water, and two boat crews are going to have serious morale problems, if nothing else. Nobody may have died, but I’m guessing there are some emotional stress-fractures to be had out of this.
There was no innocent or transit passage here. There is no way that passage through Iranian waters was the most direct in a transit from KNB to Manama for that type of vessel. Iran does make some strange archipelagic baseline claims, but nobody respects the claims and regularly ignore the radio challenges. The Republican Guard spends a great deal of effort challenging vessels that enter their waters in the traffic separation schemes. They do so over bridge to bridge, in English. And they ALWAYS start the challenges when you are well outside 12 miles. I do not recall any official traffic separation schemes in the area of Farsi Island, but it has been many years since I was there so can’t be perfectly sure. Ships with medium to deep draft can’t really go between Farsi and Saudi waters and the east side of Farsi there is no need for a separation scheme, though I think we had a well defined track there because Iran makes that strange archipelagic claim. But many Navies, including the U.S. are tasked by higher authority to regularly exercise the right of innocent and transit passage. Again, I doubt it was the case here. It is normally done by big decks under escort, or by independent steaming small boys. We used to put our helo in the air and fly it up and down our track so that we were busting their territorial water, and ADIZ at the same time. They started responding by flying their P-3 up and down our tracks at low altitude causing plenty of pucker. Like many of you I have some trouble with the official story. The route from KNB to Manama is dotted with oil wells and buoys with racons. It isn’t a particularly difficult route to navigate, even without GPS. And the last time I was there, these boats were doing that run daily to come up to ABOT and KAAOT. I noticed that the article remarked on the difference between this speedy resolution and the case of the British Sailors who were held for two weeks. For perspective,… Read more »
^^^^Another great thing about TAH is being exposed to the complexities in which our sister Services operate. OSC(SW)’s post here is a perfect example. Very interesting.
Thanks, Chief. In this day and age, a few hundred yards, or even a mile, I might get.
50 miles? Geddafugouttaheah.
Chief, were you crew on one of those boats? If so, will they always have ammunition for the guns on board? I saw some press reporting that they didn’t have any ammo which raised my eyebrows about 10 feet off my head. Didn’t make sense to me.
Paraphrasing Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, White Sox announcer, after a home run costs the Sox a game:
“And this lieutenant’s career … is ovuh.”
Yep “He gone.”
A toast. To the Iranian navy, bottoms UP.
WHOOOOSH!!!!
One away, sir!