The USNS Big Horn, a Henry J. Kaiser-class replenishment oiler, "ran aground" off Oman today. I'm curious how it ran aground backwards, damaging the rudder and flooding the engine room.
My theory is the Russians torpedoed it in retaliation for the NATO-led strike on Toropets.
First of all, the consequences. While USN aircraft carriers are nuclear, their escorts are absolutely not - and fleet oilers are rare assets in the modern US Navy. There were five fleet oilers on that side of the planet - one in the Mediterranean supporting an amphibious group, one in the Indian Ocean supporting a carrier group (the Big Horn), and three in East Asia supporting another carrier group and two amphibious groups. Which means that a US Navy task force - one of five deployed - has just been effectively taken out of action for lack of fuel for the next several weeks until a replacement can be worked up and deployed from CONUS. Of course they can come in to port to refuel in the meantime but that's going to both curtail their operations and dramatically increase their vulnerability - and the specific task force in the lurch right now is the one covering Iran and Yemen.
The USN only has sixteen fleet oilers in total, of which ten are actually deployable right now (six are in shipyards undergoing maintenance). These ships are large, slow, practically defenseless against sophisticated attack, generally not closely escorted, and serve as key load-bearing pillars underneath the American naval combat groups that underpin the Rules-Based International Order. A sophisticated targeting analysis on the USN would reveal that they are some of the highest "campaign value" assets the USN owns.
One just got hit in the stern and taken out of action for the immediate future with the kind of damage pattern I'd expect out of a wake-homing torpedo... perhaps one fuzed to detonate with a bit of standoff so as not to blow the thing's whole stern open, sink it, and create an environmental disaster and incident over the threshold of retaliation. These ships are manned by civilian MSC mariners and are entirely dependent on escorts for ASW coverage - escorts that do not appear to have been present. The crew wouldn't have even known they were under attack.
Two more things should be noted:
(1) MSC mariners are professionals and very good at their jobs, far better at ship-handling than military sailors who, like everyone else in the military, are astonishingly young and inexperienced for their level of responsibility. They do not make stupid mistakes.
And (2) for a "grounding" incident the Big Horn did not remain aground but was last reported as being afloat and anchored.
Now to the why. This incident happened, very conveniently, a week after the destruction of much of the large Russian ammunition depot at Toropets. Given the depot's location relatively close to the NATO-run Baltics (and quite far from Ukraine), the fact that a number of hardened ammunition bunkers were destroyed (and some intact bunkers showed significant cratering on their roofs), the clearly large number of weapons impacting, and the Russian MoD's rather ominous silence about the incident, the obvious conclusion is that the attack was the work of NATO. Likely not the American part of NATO, but some element within NATO nonetheless seeking to start a war.
Which brings me to my conclusion. These incidents are strategically symmetrical to the point they suggest a deniable, highly considered, and tightly calibrated response by the Kremlin.
The attack on Toropets was hardly a crippling blow - two years into the war, Russian industry (and that of its allies) produces thousands of tons of munitions daily at commodity prices - but it certainly represents a significant inconvenience to the Leningrad Military District's operational plans to deal with NATO's Baltic redoubt for the next several weeks to months, particularly given the SMO in Ukraine has priority for ammunition resupply at the moment.
Well, the damage to the USNS Big Horn is hardly a crippling blow to the US Navy - the USN has nine more ships that could cover and can call upon allied assets if need be - but it certainly represents a significant inconvenience to CENTCOM's operational plans to deal with the Russians' Iranian redoubt for the next several weeks to months, particularly given that East Asia is the USN's clear priority at the moment.
See the pattern now?
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