by rifek
Mon May 4th, 2026 at 06:39:30 PM EST
So the Tangerine Latrine (TL) has announced Project Freedom, assigning US Navy ships to escort shipping through the Strait. One might hope there was an actual plan here, but for the Epsteinth time we are being graced with something TL pulled directly out of his ass during yet another all night Twitter on the Shitter fest.
In reality this just can't work. I'll start with a couple of useful links:
Can US navy 'guide' stuck ships out of Hormuz?
Golf cheater makes war plans on the 18th hole
- These articles lay out the numbers, and they ain't pretty. There are about 2,000 merchant ships stuck in the Strait. The US Navy has about 20 ships in the area, most in the three carrier groups and the littoral support group, with a few independently operating destroyers. We like to pretend the entire Arleigh Burke Class can do anything we tell it to, but that's just top level Quatsch. You need escorts/frigates for this work, and we did away with ours years ago (The only frigate in the US Navy is the USS Constitution, and I don't think it counts.) The last Knox Class was decommissioned over 30 years ago, and the last Oliver Hazard Perry Class over 10.Very few of our destroyers can actually conduct convoy duties. Jonathan Hackett in the Al Jazeera article estimates there are perhaps 12 such ships. We can't project the force this "project" requires.
- Even if we could, would it get the results? Would the underwriters commit to coverage of ships running a hot Strait, even with the US Navy riding shotgun? The answer to that is a big, fat "NO!"
So here we are, still stuck, for now and the foreseeable future. All because TL is just a guy who can't say "No" to Booboo and his ilk.
