Great Power contentions

[Furunculus]

Ukraine just sank Russia's battleship (cruiser).

BTW, spmetla, do you buy now that a swarm of Iranian ASM could sink a carrier in the Strait of Hormuz?

this was always possible, and has become formalised in doctrine as the Royal Marines and USMC reconfigure away from mass over the beach to distributed operations. the risk from large and long range ASM's pushes vulnerable amphibious ships too far off shore for it to be their main role.

but the Moskva sinking appears to be incompetence rather than obsolescence:

https://twitter.com/alessionaval/sta...29987101175811

there are counters to all these problems, and they simply require that you use naval assets in a different way than was true before. but then it was ever thus; although lip-service is often paid to the military as a learning organisation generally, the ones that win wars do so by evolving their operation faster than their adversary can adapt to.

in the case of hormuz, not only is the threat growing but the importance of the gulf is diminishing. so, the US simply won't put capital assets there in future. it is notable that the UK's indo-pac strategy focuses on Oman rather than Bahrain. the Royal Navy's Indo-Pac role should be seen as 'guardian of the SLOCs' rather than 'guarantor of the Sheiks'.