ships are sailing and oil is flowing and nukes are being fueled
weird little snips of news piled over the last week:
the US navy is still heavily out - the USS Truman has joined the Enterprise in the Gulf, where they should overlap for a few weeks if the Enterprise does a normal length tour. Though Navy is saying the Enterprise is wrapping up and going home for christmas.
Bunch of helicarriers and landing ships still out there also, although a couple are now headed home.
The paranoiacs at Debka.com keep insisting that the USS Nimitz is in the Gulf, but she just returned to San Diego a few weeks ago. I think this must be one of their "security insiders" getting "the Nimitz" and "a Nimitz class" carrier mixed up.
The Nimitz has been at sea, off California, but there have been clear stories in local news of Nimitz crew on shore this month.
But, NBC news San Diego seems to have a "Nimitz deploys" tag cut'n'pasted into their local news video, because it keeps popping up in google news linking to random local stories from them, and several valley local newspapers keep saying the Nimitz is deploying, she should not be deploying until spring.
That said, all the carriers afloat are out, exercising, still. Which is mildly peculiar.
Oh, and China refused the Kitty Hawk group entry to Hong Kong. That is not nice.
No anomalous number of attack subs out now though.
Then there is this story from Reuters
"The U.S. military has stepped up chartering of tankers and requests for extra fuel in the U.S. Central Command area, which includes the Gulf, shipping and oil industry sources say.
A Gulf oil industry source said the charters suggested there would be high naval activity, possibly including a demonstration to Iran that the U.S. Navy will protect the Strait of Hormuz oil shipping route during tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme.
The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) has tendered for four tankers in November to move at least one million barrels of jet and ship fuel between Gulf ports, from Asia to the Gulf and to the Diego Garcia base, tenders seen by Reuters show."
...
"Apart from the time charter, MSC has also tendered for commercial tankers to move 235,000 barrels of marine diesel from South Korea to Jebel Ali and Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates and 310,000 barrels of JA1 jet fuel from Bahrain to Mesaieed in Qatar. Both tankers are required in November.
A separate requirement is for a tanker to move 147,000 barrels of ship fuel from Singapore to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, close to the Gulf and Arabian Sea."
(h/t late sunday night kos diary).
The Kossack claims this is not enough to support an all out strike, but is several times the normal supply. One interpretation is that the US is planning a demonstration-in-force; another possibility is that Israel will attack and the US anticipates heightened defensive operations.
If there is just the USS Truman down there and one MEU they really don't have enough ships and planes in place to burn all that fuel. Weird.
On a different note, Froomkin at the WaPo claims that Cheney pushed OMB to put a billion dollar top-up of the US strategic petroleum reserve in the '08 budget, despite the current high prices and the push to find something to cut.
Maybe he just wants to keep prices high, or he anticipates a probability of a short sharp shock in prices and supply constraints - doesn't do much good unless it is only for a short time though.
Why all this concern?
Well, the Russians called in the IAEA to inspect and seal the shipment of fuel for the Bushehr reactor - it is finally actually for real probably being sent to Iran. Which puts the time for the reactor to turn on mid/early summer 2008.
That is a potential red-line for anyone wanting to pre-empt Iranian capabilities, Bushehr would be one of the top three targets and they would want to hit it before it is fueled. Gets very messy otherwise.
If the Iranians want to break with the Russians, they could get a few Pu-239 nukes very quickly by reprocessing the Bushehr fuel after a short burn. Would be pretty blatant, but they could do it quickly.
Oh, and the Iranians claim they can make low enriched fuel pellets for their 40 MW research reactor now, it too could burn U-238 to weapons grade Pu-239 if they get if finished and fueled. Take some time to get enough Pu for a bomb though.
BUT, we're not done yet:
there was a really weird story in the Times of India claiming Pakistani nukes are under US physical control and have been for years - if even half-true, it'd be disastrous news to come out for Musharraf, it would not be popular within Pakistan. In fact the simplest explanation is that it is India trying to stir things up.
On the other hand, it could explain the really weird "free nuclear deal for no quid pro quo" that the US administration tried to give to India the other year. Since the US has been giving Pakistan assistance with securing their nukes.
Other question that springs to mind is "who" is securing the nukes, in the unlikely event the story is true.
It'd have to be special forces, at least a platoon on site at all times per site, and there are by all accounts several sites. So really, more like a half company or full company, per site or pair of sites.
So a full battallion, including HQ and logistics, in Pakistan at all times. With rotation that is 2-3 battallions of special forces committed.
There aren't many special forces to spare. My guess would be US Air Force, maybe from the 1st Special Operations Wing - they ought to have experience in securing nukes, be available, and be big enough, with integral logistics. And they seem to have some unaccounted for commendations in recent years. But they, obviously, don't exactly announce deployments.
Or not. Just guessing. Probably bogus anyway.
Weird story though.
All of them weird.
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That Times of India story seems to say different things that the headline would imply. I am really confused.
it is single sourced to a "stratfor" article
stratfor is one of these private "security news" places, supposedly does a lot of private analysis for corporations and is used to leak information from some government places
erratically reliable, or occasionally unreliable
they are more blunt in the assertion that the US has physical control on the pakistani nukes, and there is a separate assertion that it is not electronic PALs or other indirect control - that it is people with guns on site.
'course they wouldn't last long if some pakistani army mechanized brigades took exception to the arrangement, but they might damage the devices before getting into real trouble
That the US Navy has ships at sea isn't information - they always do, so this is not a signal of anything.
The tanker chartering stuff, however, is more interesting; much more interesting.
And the Pakistani/Stratfor one appears to be a news story recycled out of blog comments˙
Well, it is unusual to see 7-8 carriers at sea that much for this long, they are exercising very hard, bringing the carriers who were in refit up to qual rapidly and turning around carriers who were out earlier this year. Just in case. Also they are keeping all the marine landing ships out all the time - not gonna be able to keep that up much longer.
The fuel thing is curious. But nothing else is moving, could be indicator of contingency planning on 1-3 month timescale.
The Pakistani story is somewhere between deliberately mischievous misinformation and speculation on just why the US seems so unconcerned with the Pakistani nukes given recent events. Threw it in because it was puzzling.
Hm. If I got my units right, an F-18 fully loaded, plus externals, holds 100 barrels of jet fuel!
Neat, makes the arithmetic easy.
So... if half the extra million barrels is JP-5, rest diesel, that is enough for about 5,000 sorties.
The USS Nimitz flew 4,500 sorties in 2005 in support of Iraq operations.
So this is enough for 6 months of "normal" operations for a single carrier.
Or about two weeks of intensive all out operations, if I estimate their turnaround abilitiy.
If the story about full fuel order of 8 million barrels of jet fuel is right, then that would support about 80,000 medium range sorties. That is a lot. It is consistent with a few weeks all out effort, or a full year of significantly elevated sortie rate.
I am bemused.
The Royal Navy is sending out the Ark next year; apparently she's likely to go with an all-heli airgroup ('cos having got rid of the SHARs we can't get a carrier qualified Harrier squadron together...sob...).
But between squadron fuel for a couple dozen Merlin choppers, and bunker charlie for a CVS, 1x T42, 1x T23, and at least one RFA, I reckon that might cover it.
So why are they sending her out...
To be ready to evacuate? To act as a buffer? Or to be there for moral support when balloons start drifting in the sky?
Do I remember that the French muttered about sending the de Gaulle out also next year? Or did they already do that, I forget.
Be curious if they overlap in the spring.
Other curious news items: I saw a story claiming there is a serious move to offer the Kitty Hawk to the Indian Navy when she retires! In place of the Gorshkov I infer.
And a Chinese official has pointedly made it clear that closing Hong Kong to the US Navy was not a mistake and that they are peeved, directly contradicting a DC communique on it being a misunderstanding.
Looks like the entire Bush administration Iran policy, not to mention the entire Republican primary I'm-tougher-than-you fight, has just been turned on its head by a single National Intelligence Estimate report. Hopefully we can stop all this insanity now....
Oh man, I hope so. I just saw Bush on TV explain that, well, he hadn't actually read the NIE (written in Jan I gather) when he was blustering this summer and autumn... and no one, allegedly, saw fit to draw his attention to the contradiction...
We may have just seen a palace coup, at least on foreign policy issues. We can hope.
It is also peculiar that the NIE basically says they shut the alleged weapons program when Ahmadenijad was elected, or thereabouts, which directly contradicts the rhetoric on the previous Iranian admin being amenable and the current one not, though the exact timeline would be interesting to know.