U.S. warplanes and attack helicopters are ramping up assaults against Iranian drones and naval vessels in an escalating military effort to clear the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that Iran has effectively closed to most Western shipping, American officials say.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that low-flying Air Force A-10 Warthog planes were “hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft” operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the contested sea lanes. The A-10 was developed to provide close air support for U.S. ground troops but has been repurposed to strike ships at sea, he said.
General Caine added that some regional allies, which he did not identify, were using Apache helicopter gunships to “handle one-way attack drones,” one of the most potent weapons Iran has used to strike neighboring Arab countries and their energy sites across the Persian Gulf.
American commanders are scrambling to accelerate plans to thwart Iran’s ability to use a lethal combination of mines, missiles and armed drones — or the threat of using them — to bottle up most maritime traffic that transits the strait, causing skyrocketing oil prices and rocking the global economy.
The stepped-up attacks over the strait’s sea lanes are just the latest effort by the United States to reopen the waterway, which is about 21 miles across at its narrowest point. Earlier this week, the military’s Central Command said that fighter-bombers had dropped several 5,000-pound penetrating bombs on underground missile silos near the strait.
Some 2,200 Marines on three warships, armed with helicopters and drones, have cut short a patrol in the Indo-Pacific region and are steaming toward the Persian Gulf region, where they could be used to help clear the strait or seize Kharg Island, Iran’s oil hub in the northern part of the Gulf.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
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