This is the first time I actually have the gumption to write a diary. I’m growing frustrated with some of the rhetoric concerning the recent dust-up between Iranian and US vessels, such as referenced here. Some Kossacs (with notable exceptions, of course) have been talking right out of their collective derrières on this subject and it’s annoying the piss out of me. As such, I would like to give a little first-hand insight as a vet of the US Navy who spent quite a bit of time in the gulf in 1997-1998 (please recall that we’ve kept one carrier group--a minimum of 7+ ships--present there since the first Gulf war).
First and foremost, the US Navy is huge, the Iranian navy is tiny and the Iraqi navy was decimated during the first Gulf war. There is very little threat from them or anyone else out there in that warm pond. What threat there is stems from USS Cole-type attacks and a number of precautions have been developed to prevent the likelihood of such an event ever occurring again. People seldom discuss this, but the Cole attack should not have occurred by the very rules the officer on deck was under. Specifically, because it was unknown if the small boat in the Cole incident was hostile or otherwise, a proximity warning should have been issued in multiple languages over the PA system with noncompliance leading to a nonlethal assault most likely via the EXTREMELY high pressure fire hoses accessible throughout the ship. Pretty effective deterrent, that.
These confrontations essentially amount to nothing more than war games. During the Cold War, Russian and US naval ships would engage in this type of activity on a very common basis, the general idea being to keep the other force at a heightened state of alert. It’s a type of continual, low-level psychological warfare wherein no one gets hurts, per se, but more incidental deaths occur from folks being too tired and just plain beat down to perform their jobs adequately as they’ve had to stand extra watches, man 50-cals up on the deck instead of grab an extra bit of sleep, forgo proper maintenance of their equipment, decide between proper grooming and an extra 15 minutes of sleep, etc. Small ships, such as the one I was on are disproportionally harmed from being understaffed by the very nature of their design.
I was an EW3, Electronic Warfare Technician/Operator Petty Officer Third Class (a long title meaning "peon who sits in dark, looks up numbers and mops decks." You can see a picture of our usual workday here. I utilized a piece of equipment called the SLQ-32 which, among other functions, was a passive radar receiving unit. We used it to receive in signals, interpret those signals and, from that data, determine type of radar, uses, type of ship, etc. It sounds far more interesting than it actually was. In any case, there was an entire week or so where an Iranian vessel was playing a similar game, utilizing their target acquisition radar (which has a very distinctive sound) to keep us at a heightened state of alert. Everyone in combat had to keep their eyes and ears open; everyone—especially us three EWs—had to stand another watch rotation or extend the rotation. The type of radar they were using had a signal that would start out slowly, then build to shorter intervals: blip.....blip.....blip....blip....blip...blip...blip..blip..blip.. Imagine wearing headphones and hearing this, always intermixed with a static-filled background of various commercial/civilian broadcasting sources punctuated by that clear, rhythmic mechanical ping. They never let it get too close, but we all knew what could be the result, what would end up happening if that signal ever went delta: a steady tone denoting "target locked and firing." I would calculate winds once every thirty minutes, planning on that (what felt like) inevitable moment when their guy kept his finger on the button just a bit too long and we had to whip around into favorable winds, fire chaff, then haul ass to the edge of the cloud to return fire. That never happened and we all knew, intellectually, that such an event was about as likely as us actually having a positive effect with the sanctions we were out there enforcing. That’s disingenuous—lots of folks thought we were doing good work—but we all knew that an Iranian vessel was pretty damned unlikely to attack in that manner. Please also note that we would NOT fire on that vessel until it became clear that they were going to do so. Yeah, if we happened to I’m sure it would have been spun to sound like we did nothing wrong, but there are plenty of people in the way of that 19 year old firing a wayward shot. Only experienced folks get to man the 50s when they’re staying locked and loaded; in stand down conditions, they’re merely there with a box of ammo at their side and even though loading only takes a couple second, someone will notice.
The reason I bring this all of this up is to establish that there’s a heightened sense out there, an underlying "no it’s not going to happen but fuck it really could, couldn’t it?" sensibility that wears on each person the longer they’re out there. Now, this all happened to my ship after we had been in the Gulf for about two or three months. We were fresh as hell compared to the poor guys out on the water right this moment, who have done back-to-backs, who have parents, friends, wives, husbands and kids at home with whom they’ve pretty regular but still intermittent contact because the ship keeps having to go dark for this or that reason.
Now, that’s our side. Think about the guys in the other ship, the ones who are watching their nation consumed by a political ideology that they don’t necessarily agree with (remember that the Iranian public tends to be a pretty interesting sort in this respect) but who are obligated through history and religion and family to be part of it. The look outward and see these bastard invaders, the ones who propped up one government only to help it fall, tooling around their traditional sailing grounds and enforcing sanctions that hurt the whole region economically. I recall one vessel carrying figs that we had to turn back because, at the time, the sanctions were such that the nation in which those figs were grown wasn’t allowed to export them via that waterway. I’m sure they turned by the time they were able to get them out of there by land, and even then the whole region’s market was saturated and costs were ridiculously low.
So it’s a hotbed--lots of tensions mixed in with a bit of fear. We later passed by the Iranian vessel that was playing games with us and manned the rails in dress white uniforms, intentionally not issuing any type of signal, dipping the flag, etc. while they watched, almost in a daze, from the deck of their ship. I was up top with a giant lens digital camera, snapping pictures of their radar array in an attempt to gather whatever data was possible, so I got to see the "enemy" a little more up close and personal than some of the other folks. Here we were, the tiniest little boat in the Gulf (well, smallest to have traveled independently) and we dwarfed their vessel. What a disheartening sensation that must have been. Plenty of the guys on my boat whooped and hollered after we had passed them, a big show of force to these little sand n***ers (and yes, the term is used pretty often; I think it was in an effort to dehumanize this nebulous "enemy") and their near-constant catcalls over the civilian radio of "morge be emrica" ("death to America") and "fuck you baby killer emricans."
As the sole person to speak Farsi* on my ship (and, even at that, very badly), I had a little different perspective. I was shaken from my rack at "o'fucking dark thirty" one night after standing watch, cleaning and painting and assisting with helo landings as part of the chock n’ chain crew. I was tired, but the person waking me up--a good friend of mine--said "Dude, Kevin, they need you to translate." Oh hell... Boots on (I hadn’t bothered to get out my clothes), grab my notebook assembled last time we were in port with a real Farsi linguist filled with those words I don’t know (weapon? I only know how to order a nice kebab!), a quick second to splash water on my face, run out to have a couple drags on a cigarette and then back up to the deck. I listen to what they’re saying: the officer on deck is repeating, again for the who knows how many-ith time, "This is United States Naval vessel..." only to have a far too fast response come back in rapid-fire Farsi (a touch of Arabic accent? They’re using a w sound, not a v. Should I be worried?) basically saying, as best as I can gather "We’re friends. No one speaks English. I’m sorry. Please don’t shoot. We have no oil, only..." Only what? Don’t know. I jump on the coms. "En Neroo-yee Emrica ast." I tell them we’re the American Navy (United States is too damned long and I'm too tired at this point to remember it), but I realize that the way I’ve said it basically means that this is it--we’re all there is. I figure they’ll get the point. "Alhamdulillah!" comes the response, followed by a ridiculous onslaught of Farsi like an insurmountable linguistic wall. "Ahasteh, lohtfan!" Slow, please! We work, for about thirty or so minutes, and arrive at a nice peaceful accord. He even tells me a joke at one point, which I politely laugh at even though the meaning is completely lost on me all the while wondering what in the heck the officers are going to think I’m saying to this guy. They were doing nothing wrong, they answered as many of the questions as I could coherently ask and all information checked out. That’s when the officer on deck decided to go over and inspect and no, I wasn’t invited (I asked immediately. "I think we can handle it. Thanks though.") Thank god he had to ask the CO, though, as he was denied. All things cleared. They went on their way, we went on patrolling and I got two more hours of sleep while dreaming about the day I would finally leave this damned organization.
It’s a hotbed out there. Things will happen, of course, but please read these reports with this in mind: this has been our MO, and the MO of other nations, since the advent of the Cold War. This is how things are done. It’s all a high-stakes game and we just hope and pray that none of our fears blow up in our faces. The other guy’s thinking the same damned thing. Forget the grain: keep your salt lick with you at all times.
*Please forgive me if my Farsi is completely off, as it might be. It has been a few years and those skills are dusty.