re: Official US/Israel vs Iran war thread

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USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) Wasp-class amphibious assault ship coming into Norfolk, Virginia as USS Tortuga (LSD 46) Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship and USS Cheyenne (SSN 773) Los Angeles-class Flight III 688i (Improved) attack submarine head out - March 13, 2026 SRC: YT- ThimbleShoalsShipwatching

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Hegseth says the Navy is performing better than expected.

He says the Navy had a comprehensive plan for the Strait of Hormuz.

He says we have the best warships in the world.

He says we have enough munitions.

All of that can be true.

And yet the Strait is still closed.

The real problem isn’t capability. It’s capacity.

The U.S. Navy has 74 destroyers. Roughly a third are in maintenance and another third are between deployments. That leaves about 24 ready ships for the entire planet.

Those ships aren’t sitting idle waiting for Hormuz.

They defend carrier strike groups, support amphibious forces, and cover global commitments.

The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group in the Caribbean ideally should have several destroyers. It reportedly has one.

Another amphibious group in Okinawa likely has only one as well.

Carrier groups consume even more.

Traditionally you’d assign three destroyers and a cruiser to protect each carrier. But the cruisers are being scrapped, so destroyers now fill that role too.

The Ford reportedly has 4 DDGs.
The Lincoln has 3.
The George Washington in Japan likely has at least 3.

Now we’re down to roughly a dozen destroyers left for everything else the US Navy does worldwide.

And that’s before anything goes wrong.

The fleet structure makes things worse.

We eliminated most of our smaller frigates & we’re scrapping the cruisers. So destroyers are forced to do everything from missions too small for them to missions too big.

Then there’s physics.

Warships can’t teleport. A destroyer’s top speed is under half the average highway speed. Moving them across oceans can take weeks.

Each destroyer carries about 96 vertical-launch missiles. But they aren’t all air defense. Roughly 1/3rd are Tomahawks, a third anti-submarine, & 1/3 anti-air.

That leaves about 32 air-defense missiles per ship.

When those run out, the ship has to sail to port to reload. The Navy eliminated most at-sea missile reload capability, so the round trip.. transit, reload, & return.. can take weeks. During the Red Sea operation typically 3 weeks.

In practical terms, a destroyer escorting convoys may spend most of a month cycling through reloads.

So your “12 destroyers” quickly becomes something closer to three on station at any given time.

3 ships. Roughly 96 air-defense missiles total.

If Iran can launch 97 per week, missiles or drones, they overwhelm the defense.

Yes, destroyers also have backup systems like their guns & CIWS. But those are last-ditch defenses.

CIWS literally means Close-In Weapon System. Close is the key word.

To use it effectively, the destroyer has to stay very close to the merchant ships it’s defending. That shrinks the defensive umbrella and forces convoys to be smaller.

Small convoys don’t move much oil.

The Strait of Hormuz is about 100 nautical miles long. A destroyer could sprint through it in roughly three hours but convoys move at the speed of the slowest ship.

Supertankers average about 12 knots.
100 nautical miles at 12 knots is about eight hours.

Then the escorts have to turn around and bring empty tankers back out.

Even in optimistic scenarios, say one destroyer protecting four supertankers carrying two million barrels each, you’re moving roughly eight million barrels per convoy cycle.

And that assumes no mines, no drones, no delays, no damaged ships, no orders from cautious admirals.

With two destroyers taking serious risk while one reloads CWIS & fuel at sea… & everything going perfectly, you might move most of the oil.

But my napkin math has more assumptions than a block of dollar store Swiss cheese.

Option 2

Pull the carriers, send the airwings to Dubai airport & free up 7 destroyers for convoy duty.

But carriers without air or DDG would have to go far from shore around Africa to get home.

American supercarriers sailing home empty cover wouldn’t exactly project strength.

P.S. that’s why we ?? need Battleships. Large guns = wider umbrella and lots more ammo/fuel storage.

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