ANOTHER Connecting the Dots EXCLUSIVE

Jennifer Dyer, a retired Commander from U.S. Naval Intelligence, responds to readers commenting on her previous post:

I do not fully share NaCl’s view that our political message (that Iran must endure isolation until it plays ball) has gotten through to Tehran, but he brings out the important point that what we are already doing in the Gulf has a deliberate purpose in our national policy. If Iran cannot make us stop doing it — if we continue our policy of keeping the Gulf open to international traffic on OUR terms — then whatever points Iran may imagine herself to have scored are moot.

I do think, incidentally, that the timing of this little probe is related to the release of that execrable NIE on Iran’s nuclear programs.

Regarding what was in the boxes dumped by the IRGCN boat crews, no information on that has become available, as far as I know. It is a good question whether our ships would even have retrieved them, given the possibility that they actually contained explosives. There are ordnance disposal experts in the Gulf, of course. Retrieval of the boxes would more likely have been attempted by other forces. Laying explosives in international waters is, in fact, an act of war, so we would not lightly dismiss the follow-up operations on this incident. But I do not have further information on it. (My assessment is that the Iranians did NOT put actual explosives in the water. See the last paragraph below.)

NaCl is right to point out that the Phalanx 20mm close-in weapon system (CIWS) has been upgraded for use in surface mode, and most of our active combatant ships have now been fitted with the Block 1B upgrade, which includes a FLIR sensor for better tracking of small/non-metal-hull targets. Hopper and Ingraham would certainly have had the Phalanx Surface Mode (PSUM) upgrade. The M240 deck-mounted machine gun would be the better tool for firing warning shots, however. I certainly don’t want to leave the impression that the U.S. Navy has ignored the small boat threat — upgrading the Phalanx with a PSUM capability (undertaken in the 1990’s) was a direct result of fleet commander concerns about the unsuitability of our prior options for dealing with small boats. In the interim, before the Block 1B upgrade came into the fleet, ships were even fitted with deck-mounted 25mm chain guns as a temporary measure.

Training for tactical responses to small boats has been a routine part of fleet work-ups for the last two decades as well, and in particular the period since Desert Storm. Ship commanders typically spend considerable time drilling their crews in tactics for encounters both at sea and in port. The fact that our ships handled this incident without overreacting is undoubtedly due to the time we put into such training.

The point about the small boats is that they are a threat like mines, and some others in a similar vein: we may be as prepared and suspicious as it is possible to be, and if the enemy is ready to commit everything to a small-scale objective, he has a good chance of getting the job done. All three of our ships could have engaged their 20mms in surface mode, and if the small boat swarm were large and suicidal enough, a shoulder-launched missile could still get through. We should never be sanguine about this, but not every tactical setback is a crushing blow to our national power and interests. The reason we even have a Navy is that there are bad guys who want to do these things, and sometimes they might succeed.

Here is what happened the last time Iran tried something similar in the Persian Gulf.

Believe me, Iran has not forgotten this, even if we have.