Red Sea / Houthi rebels situation

Caporegime
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It was a civilian vessel on a commercial contract. Unless we arm all our civilian vessels with anti missile missiles or anti drone stuff, train or have trained personal on each one then the hootys will have an occasional win.

We should however keep the bombing runs going.
What will it achieve exactly to keep doing the same thing that the Saudi's have been doing (and gotten bored of) for the last decade?

Unless we target Iran directly this is pointless and waste of limited munitions.
 
Soldato
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What will it achieve exactly to keep doing the same thing that the Saudi's have been doing (and gotten bored of) for the last decade?

Unless we target Iran directly this is pointless and waste of limited munitions.

We are interdicting deliveries where we can, we are restricting Iran where possible but hitting their clients in Yemen and in Ukraine is one current partial solution.
 
Soldato
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That's not going to work, despots, Marxist dictatorships, authoritarian Fascist regimes and all those other nasty horrible cosplaying nations only respect one thing, strength. It's important the UK and other countries who believe in rules based order stand up to these people and show this behaviour isn't going to be tolerated. If we don't then we leave anarchy in it's place.

The question you should be asking isn't how strong or poor are the UK armed forces but why aren't other Western countries helping?

Who made us the world police?

I mean, I wouldn't mind if we could back it up. In my mind, we are just painting a big fat target on ourselves because we can't carry through with any of our threats.
All we really have is a nuclear deterrent that has just shown itself to not work reliably. We has disposed of our nuclear weapons design and manufacturing capability now so we can't even produce a second deterrent or replace the existing one.
I despair, I really do. We are heading for disaster and these damn politicians won't do anything about it.
 
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Soldato
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Who made us the world police?

I mean, I wouldn't mind if we could back it up. In my mind, we are just painting a big fat target on ourselves because we can't carry through with any of our threats.
All we really have is a nuclear deterrent that has just shown itself to not work reliably. We has disposed of our nuclear weapons design and manufacturing capability now so we can't even produce a second deterrent or replace the existing one.
I despair, I really do. We are heading for disaster and these damn politicians won't do anything about it.

We make our warheads in places like Aldermaston. A nephew of mine worked there. Only the missile portion is subbed from the yanks. Which is probably why they have failures.

We have always been the world's police since Francis Drake, together with a few others. Coincidentally previous colonial powers in the main. Don't know why, it just works like that.
 
Soldato
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I really think that we have to stop projecting ourselves as a major world power. By that, really, I mean the politicians have to stop cutting our armed forces and at the same time continuing with the arrogant belief that we can go pushing other countries around!

We can not project ourselves in to the world any more. We have cut our armed forces to the point of almost complete dysfunction. It is ridiculous and we either have to stop pretending the empire still exists and eat humble pie or we have to reverse Osborne's dodgy accounting processes and increase spending on the armed forces.

Personally, I am in favour of doing both - increase spending (urgently) and stop acting like we still rule the waves.
Founder member of NATO, permanent member of the Security Council politicians/military top brass aren't going to give up on that sense of entitlement easily.
 
Soldato
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Houthis have caused their 1st fatalities it would seem, 2 killed aboard the Barbados flagged bulk carrier M/V True Confidence by anti-ship ballistic missile strike. Source: gCaptain article

Wonder if we’ll see an escalation in the response to these.

I think the only fatality situation that would cause an escalation would be: someone important gets killed, Americans get killed, or there is a large civilian casualty event, such as sinking a cruise ship and a thousand die. Most of these are unlikely as important people and cruise ships know to stay away from the Red Sea
 
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Soldato
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^^^ I think there will be further air strikes for sure. It doesn't really matter what nationality the victims are or what country the ship belongs to, the shipping disruption affects us all through increased cost of goods.
 
Soldato
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^^^ I think there will be further air strikes for sure. It doesn't really matter what nationality the victims are or what country the ship belongs to, the shipping disruption affects us all through increased cost of goods.

Few more airstrikes is not an escalation though, its more of the same
 
Soldato
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Interesting comment from a Chinese official close to Xi - Islam will be subject to "Sinicization".. Ie become compatible with the Chinese government and Chinese in character..

So I can see a couple of threads on this:
a) Anti-islamic entities will indicate that Islam (in total) is now compromised by the Chinese government
b) Islamic groups will have to comply with Chinese demands to maintain funding.
c) Long-term the Chinese government does not allow religions to wield any power or exist as a threat to the Chinese government.. you could read this as "China has announced the death knoll on Islam" and a backlash ensues.
d) Islamic groups will feel that they are victimised by Chinese interests, putting Chinese within the countries at risk, possibly resulting in expulsions as retaliation.. certainly see a number of summons for the Chinese ambassadors in islamic countries to explain themselves.
e) China doesn't want oil from the largely islamic OPEC oil based regions (insulting their religion is probably not a good idea).. and thus will become reliant solely on Russia (I see Russia's Orthodox Church next on the shooting list of Sinicization (read between the lines on that coupled with the larger Chinese 'defence' spending :D).
f) China are attempting to distance themselves from Islamic "terrorists" (specifically I think in terms of the Red Sea)
g) China's economy is being affected by the Red Sea issue.. and want a go to..

Now this high ranking official probably made a truss-ette mistake that will see a swift disappearance.
 
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Caporegime
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Interesting comment from a Chinese official close to Xi - Islam will be subject to "Sinicization".. Ie become compatible with the Chinese government and Chinese in character..

So I can see a couple of threads on this:
a) Anti-islamic entities will indicate that Islam (in total) is now compromised by the Chinese government
b) Islamic groups will have to comply with Chinese demands to maintain funding.
c) Long-term the Chinese government does not allow religions to wield any power or exist as a threat to the Chinese government.. you could read this as "China has announced the death knoll on Islam" and a backlash ensues.
d) Islamic groups will feel that they are victimised by Chinese interests, putting Chinese within the countries at risk, possibly resulting in expulsions as retaliation.. certainly see a number of summons for the Chinese ambassadors in islamic countries to explain themselves.
e) China doesn't want oil from the largely islamic OPEC oil based regions (insulting their religion is probably not a good idea).. and thus will become reliant solely on Russia (I see Russia's Orthodox Church next on the shooting list of Sinicization (read between the lines on that coupled with the larger Chinese 'defence' spending :D).
f) China are attempting to distance themselves from Islamic "terrorists" (specifically I think in terms of the Red Sea)
g) China's economy is being affected by the Red Sea issue.. and want a go to..

Now this high ranking official probably made a truss-ette mistake that will see a swift disappearance.
Isn't that just part of thier "re-education" camps stratagey for thier Islamic citizens already?
 
Soldato
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Isn't that just part of thier "re-education" camps stratagey for thier Islamic citizens already?

Yes and it's not any specific Islamic focus as it's also applied to other religions. It's more where globally / sovereign boundaries it seems to suggest it's extend the same concept out of national boundaries.
 
Soldato
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I believe the Houthis might have just taken things a step too far.


I guess it's easy to confuse Liberia flag with US flag ?
 
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