No More Shoot, Shoot Look?

I first encountered the US military term for firing air defence missiles from ships in Tom Clancy’s mid-90’s book, Executive Decisions, where he wrote about US warships escorting cargo ships through the Persian Gulf. What it means is that two missiles are fired at an inbound target and then the systems “look” to see if the target has been destroyed. This method was adopted because even modern targeting systems are not 100% certain of hitting their target so doubling up is a good idea.

Except when you’re short of such missiles, as the USS Gettysburg recently found when it got targeted by a large number of drones and missiles by the Houthis. The Gettysburg had already been in the news, and not in a good way. Last December 22, she mistakenly shot down an F/A-18 Hornet that was landing on the aircraft carrier, USS Truman, and then narrowly missing a second plane. After an investigation the Gettysburg’s captain was relieved and replaced:

The Gettysburg (CG-64) is a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, a veteran ship first launched in 1989. Sinking or heavily damaging a ship of this class could be presented as a major victory for the Houthis….At around noon, the ship’s crew detected approaching Houthi missiles, a dozen of them closing in from different directions. The problem for the Gettysburg was that, after a long deployment, it was running short of missiles, particularly the SM-6 (Standard Missile), the weapon that acted as its main defense against attacks by aircraft and missiles. The ship was due for replenishment in a week, but until then, it had to make do.

Sweaty palms time, especially for a new skipper, perhaps wondering if it was really the previous captain’s fault or if the crew was – and is – not up to scratch? He ordered two accompanying guided missile destroyers to take down four of the missiles that were trailing behind the first wave. This left only eight for the Gettysburg to deal with.

Still concerned about the number of remaining defensive weapons, particularly in light of the possibility that the missile attack might be followed by a wave of drones, the captain decided on a bold tactic… [firing] only single SM-6s at the closest six Houthi missiles. Since the probability of a kill from any single interception is a little over 90%, there was a distinct chance that one would get through and have to be dealt with by short-range missiles or Phalanx anti-aircraft cannons.

But it worked. All six were splashed and then the captain decided to throw the dice again in hoarding his SM-6’s by using Sea Sparrow missiles, which aren’t supposed to be used at longer ranges, to take out the last two missiles – and that also worked.

A good day for the US Navy and especially the Gettysburg.

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ARGO in Venezuela

I haven’t written about Venezuela’s many problems for some years now because the situation seemed to have frozen into a hopeless one where Maduro’s hold on power was not threatened, least of all by the Biden administration. I did know that there had been some decent opposition at the last “election”, which was fraudulent even by the standards of Chavez’s days.

What I didn’t know was that Maduro went after the opposition party workers, because being trounced 70% to 30% in open vote counting means you’ve got traitors in your midst who know you’ll cheat but are going to make it impossible to do it in secret.

He got something like 1000 dumped into his prison cells, but five managed to get into the Argentinian embassy which promptly granted them asylum. Maduro then threw the Argentinian diplomats out, and Argentina got Brazil to take care of the embassy. Then Maduro threw them out, and the hostages were left behind, desperately waiting for some kind of help, trapped for 15 months without water or electricity in a state of siege.

Maduro’s government had placed permanent check points surrounding the embassy, while his security forces took control of a private house neighboring the residence.

It sounds pretty tight, which makes this exfiltration all the more amazing. Presumably, like the ARGO operation, we won’t find out how they did it for years in case those methods have to be used again. Certainly Maduro’s opponents – including the retrieved hostages – enjoyed gloating and rubbing his nose in his failure, like Thor Halvorssen, a Venezuelan filmmaker and full time human rights activist:

Under the noses of Maduro’s feared intelligence services, several political prisoners slipped out of Venezuela in what appears to be a major exfiltration operation. This isn’t an escape… it’s a breach. A regime that tortures and imprisons thousands can’t even guard its own cells. The dictatorship is cracking and weak. If innocent people can be exfiltrated they can also seek the capture of those for whom there is a major reward.

Exactly. The U.S. has Venezuela penetrated, which means Maduro can’t even trust his secret police. Another related aspect of this that’s interesting is that Trump kept his cards close to his chest – which means Maduro can’t be exactly sure that his senior people won’t be on the receiving end of some Soleimani-style treatment at some point in the next four years:

All the talk that President Trump had abandoned the Venezuelans in favor of business deals with Maduro and considered the opposition “weak” was complete rubbish. Trump may have allowed that kind of talk to go on, but only to deceive Maduro. An operation of this kind takes intensive planning and practice, as it is highly failure-prone, and requires airtight secrecy.

I’m sure the Argentinians had a bit to do with this also as they gleefully showed an earlier picture of the hostages at their embassy.