Everybody just be careful, now:
A US warship has arrived in the Georgian port of Batumi carrying the first delivery of aid supplies by sea.
Russian forces are still in control of the military port of Poti, to the north of Batumi, after Moscow withdrew most of its combat troops from the country…
Meanwhile, a train carrying fuel has exploded after hitting a mine near Gori, Georgia’s interior ministry said…
The destroyer USS McFaul is reported to be carrying supplies such as blankets, hygiene kits and baby food. The supplies will be unloaded by a floating crane as the port is too shallow for the ship to dock.
Two more US ships are due to arrive later this week.
“In January 1898, the (USS) Maine was sent from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, to protect U.S. interests during a time of local insurrection and civil disturbances.”
My Coastie pride compels me to note that the USCGC Dallas is in the Black Sea as well.
In 1898 the USA wanted to go to war with Spain over Spain’s oversea territories. What does it want today?
Freedom of movement on the seas, Mahan had a few dictums contingent upon this, well not contengent but easier.
Interesting about the train. It implies it was a Georgian train. Wonder who set the mine.
Too bad McFaul is a Flt I Burke and doesn’t have a helo det to unload the supplies.
Piece last week about Ukraine (Yushchenko) flexing – albeit rather meekly – about restrictions at Sevastopol (now a leased base for the Black Sea fleet). Glad to see us in those waters, with high vis. Nothing but good will come of it. Oh, and say a couple extra missile bases. And maybe a Naval Air Station in the area.
What were they thinking?
XBrad, look at it the other way. A crane is likely far more efficient than a helo – you’d use the crane before the helo, you’d use the helo to make deliveries from the docks to the refugee camps, FOBs, etc.
Use the helo only if you’ve no crane, rather. Who’s buying the avgas? Who’s bringing the avgas (JPx, whatever)? Are you competing for it with hospital gennies?
But yeah, nasha lutcha, heh, heh. How does this one ship compare in combat power with the Russian Black Sea fleet or with any other regional power? With the others coming, do we own the Black Sea or just our 200nm radius’ worth of it? Will there be an amphib? Carrier = pwn3d.
And go home, SS-21 crews. We just put a well tested missile defense what, 100nm outside of Russian soil?
Yes, what WERE they thinking?
nichevo, I’m just guessing here, but I bet the Russians have orders of magnitude more SS-21s (and everything else) than we do SM-3s in the entire inventory. I bet SS-21s don’t cost $10 million either …
nivcheko,
If it was a Flt IIA Burke, it would have its own detachment of helos, complete with its own fuel, which would not compete with any generators ashore. The detachment would be self contained.
And there ain’t a heck of a lot of humanitarian supplies on board. It’s a destroyer, not a freighter. There just isn’t space to put much on board. Destroyers are very used to taking supplies on board by helo. Offloading them by helo wouldn’t be a big stretch.
I don’t even know if the McFaul has an ABM capability. Even if it did, I suspect that the SS-21 is so short ranged that they wouldn’t have the reaction time to detect, track, classify, prioritize and engage in time to intercept.
As to whether any amphibs would be used, they are certainly better equipped to move cargo, but my understanding is that there are none nearby.
nichevo novovo nyet.
Not only a well tested missile defense, it’s backing up what Condi Rice said about Poland, without directly making the comment to Russia about Georgia.
“It’s also the case that when you threaten Poland, you perhaps forget that it is not 1988,” Rice said. “It’s 2008 and the United States has a … firm treaty guarantee to defend Poland’s territory as if it was the territory of the United States. So it’s probably not wise to throw these threats around.”
Summary over on my site of Ukraine’s response as well…
Perhaps we should land a detachment of Marines to go and retrieve the Humvees that the Russians so thoughtfully secured for us.
What were they thinking? Maybe that we’re still the last best hope for mankind.
Godspeed McFaul. God bless the Officers and crew of McFaul sailing in harms way.
Let’s hope that the USS McFaul doesn’t have a fire in a coal bunker that causes the ship to explode.
My fear isn’t the McFaul being the Maine, but the Caucasus version of the Stark or Liberty. Doubtful the Russians would be crazy enough to shoot at one of our ships “by mistake”, but they did just invade a neighbor and they clearly don’t think we should be anywhere in the neighborhood. McFaul’s crew is no doubt on their toes.
Andrew,
I think you are guessing (and I am assuming), but that is not the point. The arrival of one American ship turns the Black Sea into an American lake.
Could they flood Aegis? Sure, and they could flood the Polish missile defenses and the Czech radar. The strategic calculus however changes.
The SS-21 is one of the Russians’ “power moves.” They aren’t competent to do round-the-clock PGM strikes from a global C4I network at 30,000 feet, with any misses being a news event. They proved this. They admitted it. They broadcast it, in a language not of words but of deeds.
They dropped somewhere between twelve and 50 bombs on a critical node of the BTC pipeline and missed every time. They lost four jets doing so and in other airstrikes, against a rag-tag fugitive ADA network. They said, in “bombski,” exactly what I proclaim. They said, “Boom! D’oh! No, we aren’t competent to do round-the-clock PGM strikes from a global C4I network at 30,000 feet. Hella thugging though once the locals lay down though, da?” Maybe we jammed them, but either this is the case, the PGMs just don’t work, or they so obviously don’t work that they sent Su-25s to drop iron bombs on a key POL node. I refuse to believe that they were shooting at the Georgians’ feet to watch them dance. Russians don’t warn.
Their PGM capability is 1945ish. What they do have that works is ballistic missiles. They used a national strategic asset, the SS-21 IRBM, to assassinate a Chechen leader. This is what these missiles are for. If they want the pipeline badly enough, they would use one of these. Or if they target Saakashvili and decide to cancel his stamp.
Why haven’t they? Because use of these missiles would be an extremely threatening act that would send flaring red signals to the world that we have a problem here. President Bush would not be at the Olympics patting pretty girls (kudos, to be sure) if the Russians were flinging Satans at our guys, he would be in the deepest bunker in I suppose Japan, with a USAF major pawing through the football with him.
One strike would be enough, potentially, to set the world on fire. A flight of them sufficient to overload an Aegis defense?
They haven’t got the balls. As for cost, if you please. You should recheck your figures and and also consider the relative strength of the economies involved, and their manufacturing plants. Which do you think takes longer to build, an SM-2/3 or an IRBM? I know which is bigger…
XBrad,
You may be right about its capability; perhaps I assumed too much reading the words “Austin Burke” as regards its defensive suite. Though I thought it was a question of software upgrades and a replacement missile of similar dimensions. As for DATE cycles, you would have to explain to me why the SS-21 would be within our OODA loop. It would depend of course on ROE. But we have a potential to block their best spikes at the net, at least for a while. They certainly can’t afford to ignore that possibility.
Nonetheless, as for fuel: of course it would have its own bunkerage, but this would nonetheless be finite and non-renewing. Any fuel, in the presence of offloading facilities as seemingly provided, here, would be better used in work other than offloading. IMHO unless helos provide something special; say if the crane’s capacity were smaller than a Seahawk’s (?).
As for amphibs, certainly more useful in disaster relief, but I was thinking more in terms of the ability to operate say Harriers and AH-1s.
Mike,
I think that is a very good idea. Bear in mind though that the Russians probably aren’t very good Hummer mechanics. They might have been able to figure out how to clean and oil those M16s and M4s apparently left behind, though, so for safety’s sake we should see if maybe those haven’t been distributed as booty yet.
blackeagle,
Amen. When I said “they” I meant, as did my predecessor, the Russians.
ASM, Sh1fty,
That is why they sent a ship. This is known as a “tripwire.” Go ahead, attack a national asset of the United States and see what happens. Wear sunscreen.
The Russians have already used SS-21s in this fight. It wasn’t an escalation, as it is roughly similar to our ATACMS. We used quite a few in Iraq. We can hardly complain about the Russians shooting SS-21s.
Now, if they targeted the McFaul, that, of course would be another matter entirely. I just don’t see them doing that.
As I said, I don’t know if the McFaul is one of the BMD modified Burkes. Odds are it isn’t, but just happened to be closest. If it was a BMD ship, and the SS-21 was targeted at her or the vicinity, sure, she’d have a pretty good chance to engage. But if the 21 was aimed at a target well away, the chances go down quite a bit. The missile doesn’t have a long time of flight and you have to account for the interceptors time of flight to get to it. They may not have time. I’m guessing that the engagement envelope for a SRBM is fairly small.
As to the supplies the McFaul is carrying, it is only 55 tons, per AP news. Like 80 pallets. That’s what, one tank of gas? Maybe two?
Why should Russia want to shoot SS-21 at anyone? I do not see any bargain for Russia in it.
I don’t see them shooting any right now, but they did use them earlier. A typical target would be something like an ADA battery. They were using cluster munition warheads.
SS-21 is basically the successor to the Frog-7. So, yeah, more or less an ATACMS equivalent.
You might get it, but you’d have to be on a hair trigger for it.
Reuters reports the Moskva has put to sea for weapons tests http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LP442126.htm
“The fact that there are nine Western warships in the Black Sea cannot but be a cause for concern. They include two U.S. warships, one each from Spain and Poland, and four from Turkey,” Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for going after them. Not the Russians, not even Putin himself, but the oligarchs, the corrupt cleptocracy he has built his power upon.
No Marines, US Navy, or even CIA specops in here. I am for doing it the mean way: FBI, secret service, that CIA, IRS, SEC branches which look after money laundering and alike.
The Russian elite needs the West as safe heaven for its money, as refuge, as supplier of all those shiny little hings that make some fun, Lamborghinis, Haute-Couture, et al.
Pick out the oligarchs most close to Putin first (spare the rest and the half-way decent business). Unearth their dirty money (it will be in the West, safe from their master and their friends), jail their mistresses (or the best friend of her) if you find some cocain with them, or better even if you find hints on how they betrayed each other, make it covertly public, it will trigger some mischief. Find out what Mafia clan they are aligned with – everyone will have one for his comfort and security – and snatch their members whenever they put their feet in the West.
Don’t think John Wayne, think Hillary.
Sending a destroyer to show solidarity and re-assurance for the Georgians is fine and noble, but it won’t impress Putin. He knows that the West is not going to war this time.
The above however will create a lot more of “social dynamics” than comfortable and might shatter the oligarchy, giving room for somebody else.
McFaul? That was Jackalgirl’s ship! (Sonar Tech second class Kathy Woods) I think she’s gone ashore a year or so ago, hasn’t updated her blog, etc. She did have a link to Lex’s place on her blog.
You have to admire a nerd girl grad student who enlists in the navy on account of 9/11, and then keeps duplicate blogs in Esperanto and English, while qualifying for her ship’s pistol team and Junior Officer of the Deck!
She did complain about the yummy Navy cookies and sitting staring at the Sonar displays making her ass big
Newsflash: McFaul steaming for Poti to make a delivery.
Disregard earlier re: McFaul.
US embassy spokesman in Tblisi retracted his earlier statement