Sea Control - Sea Control 599: The Tanker War

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Thomas M. Duffy is a retired American diplomat and naval officer writing as an independent researcher. His interests are naval history and maritime strategy. Tom’s assignments over his 38-year overall career with the US Government included service aboard USS Cochrane (DDG-21) during the Tanker War and as a maritime strategist in the Pentagon with the US Navy’s Strategic Concepts Group (OP-603). After joining the Foreign Service, he served primarily in the Middle East, including as the first State Department Foreign Policy Advisor (POLAD) with the US FIFTH Fleet in Bahrain and as US Consul General in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Tom holds a BA in Government from Notre Dame and an MA in War Studies from King’s College, London. He is a graduate of the US Naval War College and taught about strategy at the US National War College. J. Overton is co-host of the Sea Control podcast and edited the essay collection “Seapower by Other Means: Naval Contributions to National Objectives Beyond Sea Control, Power Projection, and Traditional Service Missions.” Links - Tanker War in the Gulf: Operation Earnest Will, Diplomacy and Seapower in Practice Stop Phrasing Military Moves as ‘Deterrence’ Tom’s Linkedin page

All right, welcome aboard Sea Control fans. Tom Duffy joins the program to talk about his chapter, NATO Maritime Strategies and Naval Operations Since 1985, Multilateral Naval Arrangements in the Tanker War, which is included in the new book from the ispk sea power series titled guardians of the north atlantic now sea control isn't really a breaking news podcast of course but at times the stars align and due to the incredible breadth of experience and expertise amongst our listeners and the general relevance of the content we cover we get some really great folks on who can bring us some history takes that certainly rhyme with the present at least if not to repeat it so I'm really happy to have Tom on today. We're recording this on March 13th, 2026. It's about

two weeks into a conflict between Iran and the U.S. and Israel, titled Operation Urgent Fury. Right now, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. We just had several oil tankers attacked and badly damaged by Iranian forces. And just for context, I originally reached out to get some guests on who had written essays for this collection. That was about three weeks ago. And And so this would have been just a cool, like, hey, the tanker war, that's an interesting historical tidbit. Be interesting to, you know, share that with the folks. It's become a whole lot more relevant now. Tom here not only wrote a chapter on that for this book, but he also wrote a whole book on the tanker war.

So we're going to talk about some of the similarities and some of the differences with that conflict between that and today's Operation Urgent Fury. So after all that, Tom, please tell us a little bit about yourself. Hey, good morning, and thank you for having me. So I'm Tom Duffy. I've just written this book on tanker war, Operation Earnest Will, diplomacy and sea power in practice, which sort of sums up my career. So I joined the Navy. I was commissioned via ROTC into Notre Dame into the 600 ship Navy. I was a surface warfare officer, which I'd always wanted to be ever since I was a kid.

And I was posted to USS Cochran in Yokosuka, Japan, where I was their fire control officer. And in 1987, we participated in a short notice deployment to the Persian Gulf after the Stark incident and what became Operation Ernest Will. I left the Navy. I did a degree in war studies at King's College, London. It's hard to get a degree with a job in war studies. I rejoined the Navy and worked with Ops 603, the Navy Strategic Concepts Group, revising the maritime strategy after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While at King's, I did my master's degree on Operation Ernest Will. And then while in the Pentagon, I took the Foreign Service exam and joined the Foreign Service. So I left the Navy, joined the Foreign Service, keeping my reserve commission.

I ended up spending 32 years in the Foreign Service. I started off helping to chase Pablo Escobar over on Bogota, Colombia. But I went on to really specialize in the Middle East. A couple of tours in Saudi Arabia. The last is the U.S. Consul General in Jeddah. I also served in Jerusalem, Iraq. And I was the first State Department foreign policy advisor, POLED, to the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. And then I finished up by teaching about strategy at the U.S. National War College.

Well, fantastic. It is, I can't think of a better guy to have on right now about this. So thanks again. Reminder, all opinions on the podcast are our own, not necessarily those of any organizations we are now or may have been affiliated with in the past. But actually, before I get into that, could you just go over the Stark incident? Some of us remember this, some of us may not, but it also, I think, has probably some relevance there.

So when you. Yeah. So this is my wake up call. Right. So there I am in the war room of the USS Cochran. And this is before the Internet. Right. So we're getting our news from like stars and stripes. And we're reading there in the coast. And we read about Stark getting hit in the Persian Gulf. Like we had no idea that we had ships in the Persian Gulf, you know, other than the long standing Middle East force. And we got smart in a hurry. So we had a short notice. We had a four day notice that we were going on deployment to the Middle East and off we went. So the Stark incident is really interesting. It happens before the actual naval operation. It's an accidental attack by the Iraqis, but somehow the Iranians take the blame for the whole situation. But it's what really focuses the United States on the fact that we have an operation going on in the Persian Gulf. So it's kind of like when the Reuben James gets torpedoed in World War I or the Panay gets hit in the Yangtze River. These incidents which bring America's attention that, hey, we've got sailors and they're out doing stuff and some of them are in real harm's way. Places most Americans couldn't find on a map if they had to.

They're like, hey, we didn't know. Yes. It's probably worth reviewing the tanker war itself. We're about to start there. Yeah. So the tanker war for the United States just runs from 1987 to 1988. But that war is a subset of a much larger war, the Iran-Iraq war, which begins in 1980. So in September of 1980, Saddam invades Iran.

He gets bogged down. The war drags on. It starts to look like World War I. There's trench warfare, mass charges against machine guns, gas and chemical warfare. And the longer the war drags on, the economics become more important. So the economies of both Iraq and Iran, they depend on oil exports. So Iraq attacks Iranian tankers. Iraq doesn't depend on tankers to ship its oil.

It has pipelines, but the Iranians don't have any pipelines. They can only move their oil by ship. So there aren't Iraqi tankers to hit. And Iran instead starts to attack tankers of ships supporting Iraq, of countries supporting Iraq, such as the tankers belonging to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. in 1986 so the war's been going on for six years at this point kuwait asked both the united states and the ussr so remember this is a cold war fight the union of the subjects still around yet the kuwait asked both the us and the ussr to reflag some of the tankers in an attempt to keep the iranians from attacking the tankers the russians say yes immediately that yes galvanizes

the united states and we agree to do it on the condition that the kuwaitis would drop their request to the russians so when they say it re-flagged the tankers that's like this this is flagged under some flag of convenience would be a ship and then they run up the u.s flag so exactly and so you know in theory anybody could re-flag a ship anybody could flag a ship under u.s colors um you'd have to have a u.s master you'd have to meet coast guard regs right hoops you'd have to get through and it's expensive to do so right so commercially countries don't generally do it uh so it's not a in theory any country could do this um it's just we make it so difficult that people don't right but then but then once that happens then they're under protect

then they become sort of u.s you know so this is the kuwaiti thinking right sure right and so this subsequent so we agree to reflag the ships and if we have our ships running around our war zone we're going to send convoy escorts and that whole thing now becomes operation was called Operation Ernest Will. And it's interesting. So the initial faith is in deterrence because nobody believes that the Iranians are going to fire on a US ship. Just as a sidebar, you know, we Americans believe as sort of as an overall concept, we believe deterrence works, although we don't know deterrence works. An October 2025 proceedings article to which I draw people's attention with it. I'll drop that in the show in the links here. But back to the Gulf. Yeah. So

It's 1986, early 1987. U.S. war aims are really limited and they're really clear. So the Reagan administration says, hey, we're doing this to maintain free flow of oil, to keep Russians away from the Gulf, and to come to a sort of – to help facilitate an end to the Iran-Iraq war with, quote, no victor and no vanquished. So essentially nothing about regime change, no matter how desirable that might have been, or unconditional surrender. And that's not just in contrast with the current fight, but it's in contrast with later wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, you know, a regime change war is an unlimited war in a maritime strategy sense. But Ernest Wall is not that. It's not seeking regime change. It doesn't seek the change of the Iranian regime, no matter how attractive that might be.

Sure. Wasn't that the joke at the time, I remember, was like, hey, we have good news and bad news. The Iranians and Iraqis are at war with each other. What's the bad news? One of them will win. we're like yeah what's kessinger who's sort of commenting at this point saying really the policy of the united states should be that it's just a pity that both sides can't lose right right okay yeah which is why the war it's unusual for a cold war conflict that it drags on for six years without any superpower involvement in a critical part of the world because nobody wanted to throw in their lot with either of these guys yeah uh so it becomes operation earnest well so it's interesting um it's a classic maritime strategy and all the major incidents are focused

on ships. So first is Stark. So Stark, again, the convoys happen after Stark gets hit, but she's there to help sort of set up the operation. And then once she gets hit, we plus up the number of ships that get sent out there. The convoys start in July of 1987. We are optimized for what the Iranians have been doing up to this point. So they've been strafing the crew quarters of tankers uh in some cases they'll come up on bridge to bridge and chat up the skipper and where you're going have a nice day and then they open fire on these guys and so we're optimized against warships um against dows against surface to surface missiles like silkworms but we weren't really focused on is mines and so the um the first convoy in july makes it all the way through

And the concept of operations is run past the gauntlet, so through the Strait of Hormuz, all through the gauntlet of the Gulf, deliver the ships under the Kuwaitis. And once you're in Kuwait Harbor, then it's Kuwait's problem. But before the convoy makes it into Kuwaiti waters, the Bridgeton, which is a reflagged tanker, hits a mine. uh and so the rest of the u.s escorting ships then sort of form this conga line behind the bridgeton because you know bridgetons can take 600 000 deadweight tons they can take a mine hit much better than say the 9600 ton uss fox and so they creep in um so that's the operation starts up but it's of note there's like 40 or 50 operation earnest well missions over the next two years in only one do the iranians attack the convoys and it's the first and so the u.s navy

he's prepared for the rest of this stuff. But in practice, the Iranians don't actually attack any other convoy. So we do have an example of a successful convoy operation occurring in the Persian Gulf. And we'll talk about some of the differences in a bit. But back to the war. So Britain happens to die in 87. Now we're optimized towards looking for mines, right? And we originally go to the, we don't have a lot of minesweeping assets. They're mainly in Europe. We go to the Europeans, ask for assistance. The Europeans don't want to get involved in a fight between the United States and Iran, and they demur. They change the minds eventually, but it takes a while.

But we are now optimized looking for minds. This is 1987, so Goldwater-Nichols has occurred just the year before. SOCOM is just put together in April of that year. So this becomes the coming-out party for SOCOM. Right, and this becomes the Goldwater-Nichols for folks. Google it, but it was the biggest, I guess, reform act since the National Security Act 1947, right? And it sets up the

combatant commands that we all know and love for the last, and jointness and those sort of things, right? It does. And so before this, this just would have been a complete Navy operation, but after Goldwater-Nichols and the standing of things like Special Operations Command, you're flying U.S. Army helicopters

off the back of U.S. Navy ships. These helicopters see an Iran mine layer, and they catch her in the act. It's Iran-Ajr. So this whole thing, there's a whole parallel operation toward what's well called Operation Prime Chance. It was all classified at the time,

so it wasn't in my master's thesis. But it's soft, and it's still starting really strongly. So they catch this wine layer in the act. We take her a prize of war. It happens the day before the late Ali Khamenei's address to the UN General Assembly.

So it happens the night before his speech. And so he's up on the put him in New York City, and he wants to talk about all this stuff about Iran, and people are looking at all these pictures of Iranian mines on the ship, like, hey, what's going on? It was a disaster, any way you would write it, for the Iranians. Anyways, to the Iran, so that happens in September. But, you know, again, we think the Iranians are going to be deterred. We're not, it doesn't really work that way. The Iranians just find different ways to attack us. And so in October, the Iranians launch a silkworm missile towards Kuwait Harbor.

it hits the CIL city which is another reflight tanker this gives us a policy quantity because once the ships are in port there's Kuwait's responsibility not ours but the Kuwaiti Iranians weren't even targeting a US ship they just pickled off the circle and it happened

to hit the CIL city but the focus then becomes now what do we do and so this becomes a response called Operation Nimble Archer so farther on down the Gulf we sortie a bunch of destroyers and we blow up some oil islands um but the iranians are still not deterred so a couple weeks later they launch an invasion of

saudi arabia in kuwait they land command was on the beach and they're going after the oil facilities and the desal facilities and such now up in the northern persian gulf now they're looking out for mine layers uh we have these barges with all this all these special boat units and mark three patrol boats and such and um and we have some ffgs and stuff that are working on covering these guys and uh you know the soft just doesn't stick around in the barge right and so they want to set up the versions of like maritime listening posts and so they do one at a place called middle shells buoy which is in the middle of the persian gulf uh they run into this huge iranian marshalling force that's about to support the commandos on the beach and they get this

firefight with these guys so they have these you know army helicopters lighting off on the these Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy guys. The Iranian command, thanks to the whole operation, has been compromised, and so they pulled the forces back. And so, meanwhile, so this happens in October. For the next couple of months, the focus shifts back to the land war between the Iranian and the Iraqis. Remember, this whole thing shifts aside, Joe, up north.

But then in April, the Iranians, for reasons we don't know, decide to restart mining, and they hit, And the USS Samuel B. Roberts hits a mine. So Roberts is commanded by Paul Xavier Wren. It's the pre-commissioning crew and pre-commissioning skipper on the ship. So as you know, you know, pre-com crews are the best we have. They really know the ship because they've taken it from the shipyard. And Wren is just a maniac for damage control.

It turns out where U.S. Navy damage control has significant foreign policy consequences. because you know what the iranians are trying to do is provoke a mass casualty event to have us leave the gulf like we left beirut 1983 after the bombing of the embassy and so when they later modeled the roberts getting hit by a mine they kept running simulations and she kept sinking immediately and taking her crew with her um it's kind of like what you saw with the at the recent iranian frigate you have this this big explosion keel breaks and the ship goes down and um it was a combination of luck and the skill and dedication of Robert's crew that kept her afloat. So they do, they keep her afloat. It's a big problem, but they keep the ship afloat and they have injuries,

but no deaths. But we respond with Operation Praying Mantis. So our whole goal through this is sort of signaling and proportion and such. So our goal is to take out a couple oil islands and a one-for-one attack on an Iranian ship. It's war, it escalates. So we go after a couple oil islands, The Iranians start sortying out ships like one after another. They threaten us. We take them out. So by the end of the day, you know, our goal had been like one or two oil islands and one ship. And by the end of the day, we'd taken out half of their operational Navy, a couple of oil islands and a couple of aircraft.

So we've taken out a number of Iranian surface platforms and ships over the last couple of weeks. But those have been from the air. So praying Manchester was a surface to surface engagement. And it remains the single biggest service engagement we've had since World War II for the Navy. And that record still stands. There's a change in the rules of engagement during Praying Mantis. A U.S. ship, a ship that's not U.S. flagged but with U.S. citizens aboard gets targeted by Iranian small craft. They ask for help.

The request to go to help goes all the way to the White House. The White House says, yeah, do it. But up to that point, we'd only been rescuing ships that had an American flag. After praying mantis, we'll go after, if we can, any neutral ship that's being attacked. And so that sets up the stage for the U.S. Edson's incident. So in the meantime, the Iranians are now focused not on mining but on silkworms. So they put a bunch of silkworms on the Strait of Hormuz. We need a capable anti-aircraft missile.

And these are guided missiles, right? Is that cruise missiles, silkworms? They're big. So these are big, Fulcrums are big old Soviet designed 1950s liquid propelled surface to surface missiles. So they have like a radar, like a, but they'll just hit the first thing they see. They have a 2,000 pound warhead. So they're kind of crude, but if they hit you, it's going to be a real problem. So we take this extremely seriously.

So we want a good AAW platform up there. We send Vincennes. Vincennes is quite aggressive and it's patrolling. and ends up in a firefight with Iranian patrol boats when its helicopter comes under fire. In the meantime, the Iranians – remember, the Iranians have a bunch of U.S. kit, including F-14s. From pre-the revolution? Right. So in the 1970s, we're selling the Iranians everything. Sure. And we're only 10 years on.

Right. So F-4s, F-14s, Mark III patrol boats, which almost doesn't have a problem. So they have the same stuff that we have. It's a real problem for us. So we take the threat seriously. Vincennes Combat Information Center mistakenly correlates the internet, the identify friend and foe off an F-14 that was from the same airport as the civilian airliner.

The civilian airliner takes off. The Vincennes, which is already in the middle of a firefight with a bunch of Iranian gunboats. And while Captain Rogers, who's the skipper of Vincennes, has been under fire before, he's been under fire in Vietnam. The crew hasn't. And so it's, you know, the first time doing this.

They end up accidentally shooting down the civilian airliner. The Iranians use this as a pretext for ending the Iran-Iraq war. So the Iranian foreign minister later goes to the Security Council. They accept Security Council Resolution 598, which is the structure for ending the war. But they specifically blame the Bensen's incident. And they say, hey, what's essentially the United States is coming on the side of Iraq in this war. there's no way we can prevail against both of them and um and the war ends so we end up inadvertently ending the iran-iraq war so in some you know we achieve our goal do it a tragic

accident really well so we know it's an accident the iranians don't the iranians in this day some of them believe yeah we really shot down that airliner but in the policy sense and that's a you know as a campaign the united states we absolutely achieve our goals in operation artist will. We maintain free flow of oil to the Strait of Hormuz, which we kept going until last month. We laugh because what else can you do right now?

The Soviets never established a foothold in the Gulf. Remember, this is the Cold War started in two or three years to run and we don't know the Berlin Wall is going to fall. That's the policy goal. And the war ends. In terms of a limited war which uses the Navy and using force to achieve

foreign policy goals on terms of in favor of the United States is an absolute win. Wow. All right. So then, well, I guess that's all we have to talk about then. There's nothing relevant currently. All right. So let's, all right. So with that, I would say a few things we talked about.

We had more ships than different sorts of ships. The Iranian technology has changed. Our technology has changed. The geopolitical situation has changed. and then some ways come back to how it was. So let's go. I hardly even know where to start with the current things. I'll just say, go over the,

what are some similarities you see between then and now? And then we can go into differences, I guess. Right, so we'll do our classic War College similarities. Exactly. So similarities between Operation Urgent Fury and Operation Ernest Wall, you know, separated by 40 years. Same geographical area. Same players, but I'm going to put an asterisk

on the players point. Some of the same sea control threats. There's still missiles. There's still gunfire. There's still mines. Same political split with the Europeans and the Americans regarding on how best to deal with the Iranians. And in fact, that's the focus of my chapter in the ISPK book,

which talks about how the war starts back in 1987. We don't have any minesweeping assets. We go to the Europeans. They demur. secretary of defense casper weinberger's behavior during this point is is illustrative because he never loses his cool with the europeans and so he's patient he's like going this was a long time ago yeah he's going to his nato meetings he's very uh you don't think of cap the knife as being really concealing but he is towards the europeans on this and it pays off uh that it'll pay off

later in that the Europeans gradually see a common threat from the mines. The Iranians become indiscriminate in how they're laying their mines and their mines are really crude, so they can't differentiate who they're hitting. They're these pre-World War I designed contact mines. And so as the Iranians start to sow areas with these and they start hitting all sorts of ships, the Europeans realize that they face a common threat. Your other key actor on this, and this is you know this is why it's history not political science right uh the role of people of individuals

becomes really important here yeah part of it's weinberger's activities as secretary of defense the second is the existence of barbara thatcher is the uk prime minister because she's just won the sweeping reelection in uh in uh july of 1987 or the summer of 1987 uh she sees reagan going President Reagan going through the agonies of Iran-Contra, she's worried that a split between the Europeans and the Americans with regard to Iran will just embolden the Russians. And so the Royal Navy becomes the first one to sort of switch positions on this. And so they do a complete 180 turnaround on their view on minesweepers. It's just funny to watch the British spokesman try to square that particular circle. But what happens is because of Thatcher's decision,

she leads the way, the rest of the Europeans follow suit. And by the end of the war, there's extensive cooperative mind-sweeping activities going on between the United States and the Europeans. And to go back to at this point, the Royal Navy is just a few years off of some real kinetic operations in the Falklands there. So they've also got some, I guess, legit maritime naval warfare going on that we didn't see for a long time, I suppose. Absolutely. I think those are the primary similarities here. All right. Now and now, for much time we've got, what are some differences? So I said, after the same players, so it's the United States and Iran, but the players have different roles.

So in 1987 and 1988, Iran was principally focused on Iraq and arguably it was pulling its punches with the United States. So they had silkworms that could hit our ship. So remember, I said we didn't have a single Operation Ernest Wolk convoy attacked other than Bridgeton. And it wasn't that they didn't have the means to do it. they had a bunch of silkworm missiles and they could have done it. They chose not to. And I think they did that to avoid having the United States come in on the side of Iraq. So they were specifically not antagonizing us. Well, that's no longer the case.

The politics in this fight are completely different. Second, we've announced that our goals are regime change and unconditional surrender. War aims are really important. The economist made a great line last week that you know, quote, war aims direct the campaign, they define the sacrifices the state imposes on its own people and the enemy, and they determine when the fighting should end, unquote. That's a good war college quote there from the economist. Yeah, that's very good. So, you know, in maritime strategy terms, again, Ernest Well was a politically limited war. Urgent Fury, when you start talking about unconditional surrender and regime change,

become a politically unlimited war. So those are two, you know, from Clausewitz and from Sergillian Corps, but those are completely different wars. They unfold in a completely different fashion. Some other differences. Improved in different weapons, like drones. We're really seeing the impact of drones.

I think we have to be careful on this. This is another war college. This is a character of war change, not a nature of war change. Right, right. Our beloved Navy and our brethren tend to bore sight on the technology and not so much focus on the politics of the wars.

right the drones are important and they're going to affect how things they already are affecting but you know it's still a war yeah what's governing all of this is the war this is a character of war change not a nature of war change uh so but there are different weapons to keep in mind uh you have i think the iranians are also using uh manned surface vessels uh big threat we didn't see that we are ready for will earn as well but didn't have to face was you know dows with mines and weapons and such i mentioned that's something they have to worry about now so Just like small boats that don't look, sort of like probably what attacked the coal back in the day. If you're a watchstander out there in the Gulf right now, like, good luck.

Yeah, you got a lot of contact, yeah. Like every contact is potentially hostile, and the Iranians have already shown they're going to use these things, so it's a much different picture for these guys. On the other hand, you know, one of the things about Ernest Wells, we never struck a shore, and that wasn't that we weren't thinking about it. And so the U.S. leaders at the time, the military leaders, kept coming back with targets on the Iranian mainland, Iraq, Iran's naval headquarters, silkworm launching sites and such. When we did things like a nimble archer and praying mantis, and the political leadership kept turning it down, and they confined the attacks to sea. So Ernest Wall is an interesting fight. It happens completely at sea. It's a joint fight, but the whole war is at sea or on the air, it's over the sea. So it's a fascinating maritime strategy question. We're way beyond that with Earth and Fury.

So we've already taken out a bunch of targets on land. So, you know, a big threat we worried about with Ernest Well was these missiles. Well, we've already taken out a bunch of land-based facilities that could have threatened the Straits of Hormuz. It doesn't mean we've taken out all of them. Sure. I'll go back. Look, for years, putting your State Department hat on, what do you think was the – it's hard to look back and say what were they thinking. But what do you think the political decisions were in the 80s to not attack land targets?

I mean, I can't guess some of them, but it's fascinating. So Admiral Bernson, Hal Bernson, is the commander of Mideast 4, right? And his oral reminiscences are really good to take a look at on this. And he's talking about this, that there was a lot of discussion about, you know, we should take this to the fight. And they weren't talking about regime change, but they were taking it a lot more aggressive. But he points out that the Reagan administration had a lot of, you know, things to worry about. And the last thing I needed to worry about was another major war with Iran. And so they, at that point, is Cold War still going on?

You got Iran-Contra happening at the same, again, Iran-Contra hearings are happening at the same time this is going on. You know, you have the Russians, heaven knows what, all over the world, right? So they want to sort of limit what they have to worry about. Now, also, you know, our hand wasn't forced. Now, had we lost a ship with 300 sailors, like a silkworm from some place, that would have been different and it's interesting there's some speculation so praying mantis uh and so this is the one that's in retribution for robert uh in april of 1987 the battle where we lose um you know where the iranians rather lose all these ships uh there are reports of silkworm

missiles being fired at u.s navy ships in the you know there's a an active discussion among people who follow this in which uh the regular mission is suspected of underplaying the role of those silkworms in april because they didn't want to be forced into responding with something like this it sounds like they had their hands full the Iranians didn't cross the line that would cause them to have to do it and so in practice they never ended up striking on land unlike urgent fury

where we're all over the place wow that's that's a good background another key difference here is the greater worldwide economic impact so during Ernest Will we never shut down traffic actually never stopped through the Strait of Hormuz

and it was also an oil glade so oil was trading really low sure um and uh so you know i knew there'd be a an economic impact on the shutting of straits of hormuz i didn't realize it was going to be this big sure um and i don't know if the iranians realized it was going to be this big either but the uh effect of this seemed to be um really uh sort of shaping the evolving iranian strategy on this but anyway so there was some economic impact but nothing like we see right now you have the international national energy agency saying this is the biggest oils disruption ever right and so this is all

shaping up to have the kind of economic impact you saw from the early 1970s from the oil embargo with all the nasty economic follow economic follow-up consequences from there so big difference um you know it's interesting one of the challenges for the administration is going to be that the u.s navy force structure now is completely different right that you mentioned 600 ship navy which we never quite got to but we got pretty close right so it's interesting we got to 594 ships and the peak was 1987 yeah it's frigates we have 119 frigates yeah and how many we got right now it's the zenith of the operations zenith the oliver hazard perry class the ffg7 which was it was intended for convoy operations we had a lot of them uh so today's navy is what 234 we

have no frigates uh we would have to depend upon burks the arleigh burke destroyers maybe some littoral combat ships but remember our focus in earnest will is nothing but convoy escort right so strikes on land and such those are backup operations but our primary focus is convoy escort so this time around we don't have any frigates uh the small boys we do have the small combatants we do have are all urgently tasked on other missions that are uh you know arguably more um pressing uh so they don't have the same number of ships the composition of the ships is different uh it's a um it's a big challenge you know convoy escort is a numbers game as you saw you know you should read these world war ii points sure and it's interesting

though when we were combating somali piracy later you know in in the first decade of this um century we also had a problem with asset numbers and we realized that the smart thing would be convoy ships um but we didn't have enough numbers we came up with the international recommended transit corridor in a different way so there's different ways of doing it and i'm sure the navy is thinking about it but it's um the the convoy operations that work so successfully in operation earnest well might be really difficult to replicate this time all right well is that do you think primarily to speculate a little is that mostly ship numbers or does the technology now that the you know iranians bring to bear was that make make that a little less relevant do you think

It's interesting. So, you know, I'm always cautious about, oh, drones have changed the face of warfare. Because I, you know, I'm old enough to remember, like, every five years we have something else that changes the face of war. I can speculate because I'm not on the bridge of a ship right now. We're both in the comfort of our own homes. So, you know, Berks are highly capable, but they're expensive. And you still don't want to lose these guys. They're facing a different type of threat. But when we looked at sort of the low end threats, the dows and mine layers and such, it would have been helpful, you know, would have been helpful if we sorted out our frigate production problems.

So this gets to discussions about, hey, can we bring the Europeans in? They have lots of frigates. At this point, you know, everybody seems to be working sort of unilaterally. So I saw the French are speculating about sending their own convoys through, which, by the way, is what happened in Ernest Will as well. the International Maritime Cooperation, Ernest Well, was almost all accidental. So while the politics were difficult in capital, once you got the sailors out in the area, they came up with these sort of rough and ready cooperation schemes that worked. But that's exactly what happened in 1987.

The French had sent out a task force that was specifically not, you know, at the political level, not supposed to cooperate with this, but on the water, the cooperation was actually pretty good. Nice. Man. All right. Tom, this has been, unfortunately, a timely and relevant topic, but also fascinating. Yeah. I think the biggest difference, again, we're in a shooting war now. This is way past deterrence.

It's unclear how this ends. I think Denzel Washington gets it right crimson-tied. And so he's actually having a discussion with Gene Hackman about Clausewitz. They're literally discussing Clausewitz and a boomer and a nuclear-powered submarine. And Denzel points out that, you know, the true nature of war is to serve itself, that it has its own escalatory dynamic. And I think Denzel got it, that statesmen, when we instrumentalize, they'll instrumentalize war to advance political goals. But once the violence starts, that war doubles back on the policymakers. Hugh Strawn points out that the dynamic and reciprocal nature of war shapes strategy more than strategy shapes war.

So war shapes strategy more than strategy shapes war. And that's exactly where we are now. wow i boy i would say mic drop with that one i don't know what else i have to say oh thanks unfortunately i wish this was uh yeah i wish all this was just a history and we were just rambling on about movies and things that happened in the 80s but this was fascinating talking to you um you've again you've got a whole book out on this which is again painfully relevant so in addition to the chapter in the ispk book um check out the your whole book on the tanker war which i'm going to link to um we also have a you can where can folks follow you online and i think

you put out a lot of stuff there is that on linkedin mostly it's on linkedin yeah at this point i guess i should put a website together but at this point it's just linkedin no good stuff i will uh i will post that on the show notes too i will post links to that book um and then uh you mentioned anything else you're working on right now sure so in 2009 so 20 years later 10 years ago. In 2009, 217 merchant ships were attacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden

and 49 of those ships were hijacked and the crews were held for ransom. By 2015, both those numbers had dropped to zero. Ships attacked and ships taken for ransom. So we went from 217 and 49 held hostage to zero and zero. This is that Somali counter-piracy

is another Navy success story. I think it deserves to be more widely known. And so I'm working on my next book, Fighting Pirates Off the Somali Coast, A Success Story at Sea, to be out by the end of 2027. Fantastic. I look forward to reading that and look forward to having you back on when we get closer to that. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me today. Thank you. Thanks for bringing this, again, really good stuff to light, especially amongst the folks who are Sea Control fans. And thanks to all the Sea Control fans I mentioned for joining us. I'll timestamp once more.

We're recording this on March 13th, 2026. So if, you know, whenever you're listening to this, things have changed. Hopefully for the better. All right. With that, we'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Thank you. We'll be right back.