William J. Luti
“We’re not in an armed conflict with the Houthis,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh recently stressed, and “part of why we are in the region is to bolster our deterrence.”
Such words aren’t assuring for our Navy ships in the Red Sea, which have been fending off missiles and attack drones fired by the Iran-backed rebels for the past several months. Yes, the Navy’s boast in an Army-Navy Game day video that one of our destroyers is 22-0 against Houthi fire is impressive and a testament to the skill of our Navy crews. But if the scoreboard flips to 100-1, Americans will demand to know why Iran didn’t feel all that deterred by our naval deployments and why our sailors were injured or killed.
Actually bolstering deterrence requires the political will to impose a cost that far outweighs any gain the Houthis could hope to attain. Anything else is posturing that puts our sailors on the defensive and in harm’s way.
Fortunately, we know how to re-establish deterrence. We’ve been here before.
On April 14, 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts was hit by an Iranian mine while escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The explosion lifted the ship out of the water, ripped a 30-foot hole below the waterline, destroyed a 15-foot section of the keel, and seriously injured 10 sailors.
As recounted in Bradley Peniston’s gripping account, “No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf,” the crew welded steel plates and strung cables to keep the ship’s stern from breaking off in a heroic case of damage control.
Four days later, at the direction of President Reagan, the U.S. Navy, in combined surface-ship and air attacks, engaged the Iranian Navy in a daylong battle named Praying Mantis.
When my crew and I manned up for the early launch from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, we didn’t know the ensuing fight would become the largest naval and air battle since World War II.
Praying Mantis remains a case study in strengthening deterrence. Our victory kept Iran’s navy at bay for more than two decades and helped change the course of the Iran-Iraq War, which had upended the region for eight bloody years. Iran never laid mines in the Gulf again.
Like the eponymous insect, our retaliatory strike was swift and savage. Our mission required the destruction of two Iranian oil platforms that served as staging bases for attacks on Gulf shipping and sinking one of two notorious Iranian frigates that had targeted merchant-ship bridge crews with machine-gun fire.
My squadron of EA-6B Prowler electronic attack aircraft was tasked to shut down Iranian fire-control radars and communications so our aircrews could safely reach their targets.
The battle’s opening salvo damaged the oil platforms with naval gunfire and explosive charges. Iran responded by sending into the developing fray two F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft, a guided-missile patrol boat and a swarm of armed Boghammer speedboats.
We dispatched these threats unrelentingly. One Phantom was damaged, and both were chased off by surface-to-air missiles. The USS Wainwright and USS Simpson sank the patrol boat with missiles and naval gunfire. A-6E Intruder aircraft attacked the Boghammers, sinking one and damaging others. The remaining boats fled back to base.
Later that afternoon, an Intruder piloted by Cmdr. Bud Langston took fire from the Iranian frigate Sahand, which had sortied from port in reaction to our earlier strikes. He and his crew returned fire with missiles and a laser-guided bomb just as a missile fired by the USS Joseph Strauss hit Sahand. Another Intruder and A-7 Corsairs arrived overhead, delivered a barrage of missiles and bombs, and set the ship ablaze.
Several hours later the Sahand rolled over and sank. Boldly, if not foolishly, its sister ship, the Sabalan, arrived on scene and fired at another Intruder, piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Jim Engler. He and his crew returned fire with a single laser-guided bomb down the stack, exploding the frigate’s engine room. A remarkable feat.
As other Enterprise air-wing aircraft began their bombing runs, Reagan called off the attack after Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe said, “We’ve shed enough blood for one day.” Iran later towed the severely damaged Sabalan to port.
Iraqi ground advances in April coincided with Praying Mantis and the USS Vincennes’s accidental downing of an Iranian airliner in July. The combined effect convinced the ayatollah that the risk was too high to keep fighting. Iran was exhausted. By August the Iran-Iraq War was over.
Now history repeats itself. The multinational naval task force deployed to escort Red Sea shipping amid Iranian proxies’ hostility is a welcome step. But if the Biden administration wants the Houthis to stop, it should remember that Houthis can’t fire missiles and drones they no longer have.
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