Redstate

scaremongering is the new black

By streiff Posted in War — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

TIME Magazine’s cover story this week is entitled “What War With Iran Would Look Like (And How To Avoid It)”. Leaving aside for now the parenthetical phrase and the assumption that war can be avoided or that avoiding war might be undesirable given the potential costs, TIME goes on to scaremonger an impending attack.

The first message was routine enough: a "Prepare to Deploy Order" sent through Naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two minehunters.

The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said be ready to move by October 1.

A deployment of minesweepers to the east coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed, but until now largely theoretical, prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.

Read on.

The TIME cover story ($ and not worth it) throws in a tidbit that is missing from the promo on the CNN website:

But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf.

The Army Times provides further information on the story:

The Time report said that the notion of deploying minesweepers anywhere is telling, and could mean a blockade of a place like the Strait of Hormuz, north of Oman and south of Iran, a small opening through which almost half the world’s supply of oil passes daily between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

“Coupled with the CNO’s request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed — but until now largely theoretical — prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.”

Let’s take them one at a time.

One of the miracles of this age is that the internet allows people who actually know something to evaluate the writings of reporters who rarely know anything. In this case, a retired submariner, Bubblehead, looks at the ship deployments.

Interestingly, it mentions "two minesweepers and two minehunters" -- I wasn't sure there was that much of a difference between the two existing classes of Mine Countermeasures ships, but let's assume for the sake of argument the Time meant "Osprey-class MHC" for minesweeper and “Avenger-class MCM" for minehunters (although it could be vice versa). Time makes it seem like a big deal that we're sending minesweepers (or hunters) to the Gulf, without bring up one salient point: we already have 4 of them stationed there! Yes, that's right; we already have 2 Osprey-class MHCs (USS Cardinal and USS Raven) and two Avenger-class ships (USS Ardent and USS Dextrous) forward-deployed out of Bahrain.

OK, so we already have four minehunters there -- it still sounds scary to be doubling our force, you might say. It might be, if it wasn't for the fact that the two Osprey-class ships currently in Bahrain are being decommissioned in Dec. '06 and being transferred to Egypt. So, it looks like rather than doubling the force, we're just replacing the ones that are already there but leaving. Since all the Osprey-class ships are to be decommissioned by the end of 2008, I wouldn't be surprised if the two "minesweepers" that got prepare to deploy orders were the Cardinal and Raven, who are going to "deploy" to their new owners in Egypt -- which means we'd still just have four minesweepers in the Gulf.

And what about the cruiser and the submarine that were mentioned? Well, it turns out that Navy ships, especially since 9/11, do "surge deployments" all the time -- this search of Navy NewsStand returns almost 300 hits for surge deployments, including ones for USS Memphis, USS Columbia, and USS Louisville from this year.

So the deployment order may or may not be significant but it is not so out of the ordinary that one should be surprised.

Relooking the war plans? If I were Chief of Naval Operations and had access to news sources I might be thinking that the situation with Iran doesn’t look all that great right now. I might be asking some smart guys in my war plans shop to pull out existing operation plans for the Straits of Hormuz and make sure that they are up to date. In fact, if he wasn’t doing that I think we’d have real reason to be concerned.

I don’t pretend to know what our strategic intents are in regards to Iran. I do know this. A war will not be preceded by the deployment of a cruiser, a submarine, and two minesweepers. Carrier battle groups will start showing up in the Indian Ocean. B-2 bombers will sortie from Whiteman AFB, probably to Diego Garcia. F-15E squadrons will disappear from Seymour Johnson AFB. Ammunition ships and fleet oilers will take to sea. AWACS aircraft will deploy.

While I don’t object to TIME writing this drivel, or to the Iranians reading it and being forced to evaluate its veracity, it does point to the abysmal level of defense reporting in American journalism, the non-existent level of research done before reporting on military matters, and how little credence should be put in anything printed on military operations.