https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/stryker-attack-wiped-tens-of-thousands-of-devices-no-malware-needed/

Well? Are you going to cliffhang like that?

They’ve been having their engines fail with seawater in oil for a while now, among other failures you’re trying to rose-color over. The math remains unchanged.

They pulled minesweepers out of the theater right as they might have become crucially integral to the “plan” that has nothing to do with strategic thought.

It’s unlikely Stryker will release their own Secure Score to the public, but it seems like the Stryker breach occurred due to privilege escalation due to a lack of governance controls. MS 365 users should probably be fine as long as they’re keeping an eye on their device management.

Its likely that Stryker’s breach was likely due to their own fault since the breach occurred probably to a phishing attack or something that obtained an admins credentials. Microsoft 365 was not the vulnerability issue.

The littoral ships have been around for quite a while now, in the class that had the gearbox issue, that has been fixed, and the early hulls which would have been difficult to bring up to standard are in reserve. As I said in my other post, there isn’t a volume demining problem at this point in time. The fact that too much was spent on procurement is a general US procurement issue, its not an active service issue.

IMO no military can ever guess what its dimwit political leadership will do and at some point the equipment has to be modernized and changeovers have to occur.

The T-64 began its design process circa late 1950s, T-64A entered service circa 1967 and its first combat engagement was 1992. ie if you don’t fight a war, your gear doesn’t get “proven”. This is the opportunity that will allow littoral ships to prove useful or not.

At this point in time, actual estimates of mines laid vary between 10 and 0, and estimates of sunken known minelaying ships to be something like 14. The resources required to enforce a fully closed strait doesn’t exist, its just a passage that is currently too risky for commercial insurance.

The US has more than one integrated MCM platform, including helicopter and remote submersible based systems, none of which hard require either littorals or avengers to be present. The main threat is not mines, its speed boat based drones and actual projectiles including actual antiship missiles. All an avenger can do against those threats is float there and take hits, casualties and sink.

I would not expect that swarming sea drones is an easy task, nor are they particularly cheap and I would also expect that such a swarm would be visible being prepared on the coast, which would invite all sorts of counters, not limited to aircraft or missiles/shellfire from the navy.

Launching individual sea drones stealthily is much more feasible, which is why the attack pattern looks like it does, most at the bend, but some all up and down the iranian coast.

Littoral combat ships have been marred by serious engine defects, shortened replenishment schedules and have no history of achieving anything significant in any theater yet. They’re expensive comparatively for what they are and have no track record of volume success in de-mining anything at all, anywhere. They may be theoretically capable to do that but it’s certainly not going to be as effective as a purpose-built minesweeper FLEET of smaller vessels in coordination that already existed there. Mines can be laid in an afternoon to meet your description of ‘proper’ minefield that would take _months_ to remove. LCS have never been tested against significant drone attacks, and as capable (theoretically) as Bofors guns might be against such threats attacking the ship _itself_ they’re next to useless for theater protection. Certainly a sufficiently sized swarm of inexpensive drones would be expected to achieve hits against a much, much more expensive ad hoc minesweeper role. It’s a jack of trades and an expensive one that’s never been tested, lest of all significantly damaged or having achieved a significant objective requiring ASAP minesweeping. Having so few of them as we do increases the chance that one being damaged or disabled would severely compromise the minesweeping role in theater. The longer the strait remains closed, the more incompetent the administration looks as the western economies all share the burdens. LCS isn’t going to dent that outcome if Iran successfully mines it.

They still float, weren’t rusting to death, and were capable minesweeping craft in-theater as opposed to whatever they’re hastily bringing in RN to replace them, after the fact, because Trump apparently didn’t consider the ramifications of the Strait of Hormuz before he set it on fire at Bibi’s beckon.

Littoral combat ships have never been proven minesweepers at volume in an active theater scenario. Avenger class vessels are exactly that, and already there. Making the point about the mindless timing of their withdrawal from theater RIGHT AS THEY BECOME CRUCIAL ASSETS because of a decision to go to war (of choice) should be obvious to most, but I’ll cede that you sure don’t seem to get it.

Littoral ships are also riddled with shakedown issues and are vastly more expensive than projected, so your particular points of choice to try to explain away this tactical blunder in a war (of choice) rife with strategic blunders as far as the eye can see are pretty evenly self-blunted. Bravo sir, you could be Trump’s next Secretary of Doing War Badly, you’ve got the posturing down pat.

Couldn’t agree more.

Littoral ships have no problems operating in deep water. They are not designed to engage true deep water navy ships in combat is all, ie they can’t hold deep water by themselves against a real navy. For that there is the rest of the US navy and navy airforce, and they have already sunk most of the Iranian navy.

The main danger isn’t mines, ie to set a proper minefield that would requires a proper minesweep to clear, requires a minelaying ship to sail uncontested through the area. For what can be placed now, the remote mine removing submersible that the littoral ships can bring is sufficient.

The current danger from Iran is not navy ships, its fast attack boats, and sea drones which have similar performance to fast attack boats. The avengers have .50cal machine guns which are only intended for defensive purposes. Equivalent soviet 12.7mm guns in the russian black sea fleet has proven very unreliable at defeating Ukrainian sea drones. At best all they have done is occasionally protect the vessel they are floating on, and can do nothing about drones targeting other vessels.

What the littoral ships have is a 57mm automatic bofors, in an unmanned, fully stabilized, computer controlled radar guided mount. Which is probably the best solution to asymmetric drone and boat style naval warfare currently available.