It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Overhauls are Falklands Part 1, The Spanish-American War Part 4, LCS Parts one, two and three, A visit to Texas, and for 2025, Orbital Missile Defense and Carrier Operations Parts one, two and three.
Comments
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/china-can-sink-the-navys-13000000000-ford-class-aircraft-carrier/
Curious what your thoughts are on this (other than it's a rather blatant "fund us" ploy, which makes this feel like an approved leak).
My first encounter with "National Security Journal" was last year, when Google pushed me a notification about an article discussing how the Boeing X-32 would fare against the Chinese J-20. I don't know if that was AI slop or just someone being extremely dumb, but it has made me extremely suspicious of anything published there.
The leak went to the NYT, so... (I don't have a subscription). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/08/opinion/us-china-taiwan-military.html
At the moments, my thoughts are "I'm not sure I'm supposed to look at that, because it seems like the underlying documents are classified". With a side of "my brain is full, and likely to remain so for a couple days".
Could Russia provide any material naval assistance to Iran in the current ... whatever it is?
Being an ally of Russia hasn't meant much this decade. Armenia, Bashir al-Assad, Iran (June 2025), Venezuela have all discovered that when Putin says Russia stands behind you, he means a very long way behind. So I don't expect Russia to be providing Iran with AA missiles, fighters, or surface to surface missiles: they don't have any to spare.
But maybe torpedoes and mines? Ukraine doesn't really have a navy to use these against. Are the Russians likely to have enormous stocks of torpedoes and mines left over from the Cold War? Would these be something Iran could use?
Does Russia even have the logistics to get assistance to Iran?
Russia can ship stuff to Iran across the Caspian sea: Russia has a big inland river/canal network with ports on the Caspian.
In WW2 Iran was a major supply route for supplies to the Soviet Union (why the Brits and Russians occupied Iran in 1940). The railways are still there.
So yeah Russia could, they're still exporting stuff around the world.
@Hugh: I think Russia definitely could send materiel to Iran (transhipping through the Caspian, as you note, would be pretty easy, and I'd bet they still have plentiful stockpiles available), but I'm not sure they can send anything that would be useful. Iran should have plenty of mines/torpedoes to use (unless they've all been destroyed, which would be impressive). What they don't seem to have is delivery platforms right now (to say nothing of moving anything from the APOD/SPOD where Russia drops them off to the front).
Very much a knock-on wood situation, but given how stressing an environment the Persian Gulf was assumed to be throughout my career, I will note I remain very pleasantly surprised that we have not suffered any ship losses in action down there. Turns out decapitating multiple echelons of leadership greatly impacts their ability to effectively coordinate attacks, who knew!
Related: I wonder what Van Riper is thinking these days
Also does the stuff Russia has available in theory share any components in short supply with the stuff they use for their special military operation?
Blackshoe:
Wondering why the simulation hasn't been reset.
@Blackshoe, the lack of USN ship losses can almost entirely be explained by the USN staying well away from the Persian/Arabian/Middle Eastern Gulf. AFAIK, two US destroyers (Mason and Truxton) went through the Straits on May 4th and a third a little later. All three came back out May 7th, escorting two US flagged civilian ships. That's it for USN operations in the Gulf.
And no, I'm not saying the USN should be in there. Since 1914 if not earlier, distant blockade has been the sensible choice for a powerful navy.
Van Riper might be thinking that hey, the USN did learn from the exercise.
I know a guy who served under Van Riper in that Millenium Challenge. He notes that they totally cheesed the simulation, including FTL bikes ("And so, two days into the simulation, they put us in the 'winners circle,' and didn't let us play anymore"). But what takes the cake is Iran literally building a speedboat army (fast attack ships, as Trump keeps calling them). My friend has convinced a lot of people to do a lot of very dumb stuff in his life, but this time he wasn't even trying!
He's still in the service, burning the midnight oil right now. (And he corroborates the NYT leak I mentioned above, at least when it comes to our aircraft carriers and China).
Iran is currently stealing Iranian ships, so, it looks like Fog Of War is in effect. https://nypost.com/2026/05/08/world-news/iran-seizes-us-sanctioned-tanker-carrying-islamic-regimes-oil-in-gulf-of-oman/ (Note: after 20 minutes of the Iraq War cost the entire command structure of the Iraqis, the Iranians turned to a more feudal (decentralized) command structure. Unfortunately, this means nobody knows who's in charge, and people have different ideas as to "what to do").
National Security Journal's chief editor has ZERO online presence, but is also known for heading that other very reputable defence journal, 19FortyFive.com. The other editorial staff include journalists from Warrior Maven and Sandboxx. I think that's enough to go on.
Harry Kazianis is pretty online and active on Twitter, at least (pretty sure I follow him). He's a useful data point of a certain perspective (one that I would 100% expect to support "Carriers are useless".
As far as the actual article, three thoughts: 1. Lot of words for what is essentially a wrapper over the NYT's articles 2. You'd need to know what the simulation parameters were to really understand what they mean. 3. China has been able to sink CVs since they got tactical nukes. That's different from being able to execute it.
Polite Request: An article on how drones effect naval war. How to defend. How to use them for attack. How ships will change when attack-of-the-500-drones becomes a thing. How drones can improve to make them more effective.
I cover some of this in The Drone Revolution and Drone Countermeasures. The short version is that we've had drones in naval warfare for a long time. We call them cruise missiles. The addition of slower, cheaper, worse drones has changed some things, but it's probably not the core of the threat to warships today, and it definitely won't be in 10 years as we get systems deployed to counter them.