President Donald Trump talked about an “armada” of U.S. naval power that is “waiting for orders.” As a matter of fact, the center stage of that stance is an advancing dispersion of Arleigh Burke-type guided-missile destroyers- ships intended to transit between the presence and pressure without altering theaters.
Eight Burkes are placed around the eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and approaches to the Strait of Hormuz that provide a web of sensors and missiles that can be tightened or relaxed. The location is important since the Strait of Hormuz is a small point of energy export and trade; the Navy will not have to seal the waterway to influence conduct in that area. It simply has to make Iranian planners believe that any efforts to intimidate shipping can be promptly countered in various directions.
The destroyers are important as they reduce the decision time. All the ships include a mix of the Aegis combat system with vertical launch cells capable of integrating long range land attack weapons and layered air-and-missile defense which enables commanders to “swing” between defensive protection of high-value units to offensive attack on fixed infrastructure. Tomahawk cruise missiles are the most transparent tool of this flexibility since they can be deployed offshore, bypass air defenses, and at flight where they can be updated and even in flight retargeting as well as loiter-like capabilities which augment operational choices once launched. The Block V upgrade will also increase resistance to navigation and better performance on hardened or moving targets, features which will be more relevant once the adversary scatters radars, mobile launchers, and command nodes.
That is a strike capacity that is coupled with air and missile defense in the same hull. Ships that are through the chokepoint like USS McFaul (DDG 74) have ballistic missile defense setups that can cover a carrier strike group and protect the infrastructure within the region. The armament may consist of SM-6 to shoot down cruise missiles and aircraft on terminal, and SM-3 interceptors to shoot down some ballistic threats in the midcourse. That mix that applies in the Hormuz operating area is not about flawless protection, but about depriving Iran of a clean, repeatable way of coercion.
This operates in one incidence, namely the U.S. The Fifth Fleet reported it had prevented an Iranian night attack on two tankers off the Gulf of Oman with a destroyer escorted by maritime patrol and unmanned surveillance. It is not a “navy-versus-navy” it is a battle against procedures–who has the ascending ladders, who can get into sight quick enough to shift the calculus of his opponent, and who can gather information about the techniques and the regulatory measures of his opponent.
The same environment is strained by the fact that Iran is also focusing on unmanned systems. Tasnim stated that the Iranian army was supplied with a batch of 1,000 drones of destructive, reconnaissance and electronic warfare, which are designed to work on the land, sea and air levels. Regardless of their respective quality, drones augment the volume of tracks a destroyer will be compelled to categorize and assign a higher priority, particularly when Tehran can combine it with decoys, sensor systems on the coast, and sporadic maritime provocations to elicit response.
To Washington, the appeal of destroyers in this theater is that it provides an opportunity to have control of escalation without being dependent on forward basing. Massive Tomahawk volleys can be switched off in a few hours and defensive positions switched by ship without proclaiming another operation. It is these qualities that make the force posture imposing that will render it delicate: a heavy missile-defense and strike infrastructure around Hormuz can prevent, but it also provides additional points of contact in which miscalculation or intentional “testing” can become entrenched into a course of action that was not intended by either side.
The engineering fact is simple. Arleigh Burke destroyers are designed to maintain speed radar, command-and-control and deep magazines are combined in a platform that is able to stay on station and change missions rapidly. That is the message in the shallow waters off Iran.
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