Monday 16 September 2019

Saudi: Feels Like a Classic Scenario

Did We Say 'Gas and Power Prices Up' ?  Oh yes we did.

But it looks as though we ain't seen nothing yet.  Live by the drone, die by the drone: and bombing Saudi oil facilities, whether by Yeminis or Iranian proxies, is the stuff of classic scenarios for it All Kicking Off.

Several major economies on the brink of recession ... China widely felt to be a lot less robust than they'd be keen to have you know ... Europe thoroughly distracted ... Hong Kong in turmoil ... wars and rumours of wars ...

Yes, a classic scenario.  Hold onto your hats. 

ND
Oil price:  instant reaction


18 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

Tom Clancey's World War Three classic. Red Storm Rising, beginswith a large scale terror attack on Russian gas fields.

dearieme said...

Drones of Mass Destruction. Quick, let's attack Shitholia.

Anonymous said...

These hats. Are they made of tin-foil?

Anonymous said...

One thing that makes a hot war with Iran less likely than in the past is that the USA is now much less reliant on imports of oil. Also, Trump isn't likely to start a full-scale war when he has an election coming up nest year. Nor is he a warlike person.

The Mullahs in Iran have been involved in a low-intensity war with the USA since the beginning of their regime. It may warm up a bit, but I think it will die down, as it has before.

Don Cox

Anonymous said...

I'm intrigued by these drones - who made them, what are their capabilities and how many of them have been produced?

It can't have escaped people's notice that as far as Wiki knows, Yemen produce zero drones but Iran do - seems too convenient for words, doesn't it?

We're more or less accustomed to the unpleasant reality of a Reaper cruising for days five miles above an area of interest before some 21 year old in Utah or Cambridgeshire presses the tit and takes out some bad boy or wedding party, but this seems an altogether smaller-scale (though highly effective) setup. Mind, a bright teenager can create a gun platform without too much difficulty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBBC-xL_MTg

I see the Chinese have sold attack drones to Saudi, and they've been used in Yemen.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/pentagon-is-scrambling-as-china-sells-the-hell-out-of-armed-drones-to-americas-allies.html

Thud said...

Post attack pics show uncanny accuracy, drones? I'm not so sure. I too think it will get noisy for a bit and then quieten down again.

E-K said...

"There are countless useful ways a drone can be used. Mounting a gun on it is not one of them."

Sounds useful enough to me.

rwendland said...

Anon @ 10:26 pm: "Yemen produce zero drones but Iran do" - that's not what Jane's Defence Weekly says. They report on the Houti's press/public display of their missiles & UAVs in July 2019. They say the Houti missiles/UAVs displayed are a bit different to the Iranian ones some claim they are (?modeled after). eg 1) engine mounted on top, rather than inside, 2) smaller and a bit shorter. 3) using a Czech TJ-100 jet engine (designed for ultralight airplanes) rather than an Iranian engine.

https://www.janes.com/article/89746/yemeni-rebels-unveil-cruise-missile-long-range-uavs

From what I've read, the Houtis seem to have a small industry building missiles & UAVs. Maybe helped a lot by big uncle, but made/assembled in Yemen.

dearieme said...

I'll know it's serious when someone sinks a US Carrier Strike Group.

Presumably these are lingering at some safe distance from shore. But the safe distance might well exceed the operating radius of their planes, since the drone need only fly outbound. This means that such Carrier Strike Groups are obsolete - as they probably have been for some time but now it may be undeniable.

BlokeInBrum said...

I don't know a great deal about the region, but I can imagine that a couple engineers and some University educated programmers could knock up a viable, semi-autonomous drone out of off the shelf parts.
The parts, the know how, the control gear. Everything is within the range of the enthusiastic amateur or hobbyist.
A well funded, semi-state, organised group shouldn't find such a task too difficult.
The only question that worries me, is why haven't we seen a lot more of this kind of thing?

Nick Drew said...

History of warfare has been characterised by a new weapon sweeping all before it, until it is trumped in its turn by something else

that said, right now I wouldn't give a carrier group in the China Sea more than 15 minutes after outbreak of hostilities

(and that was 100% obvious when G.Brown beggared the armed forces to have 2 carrers built in his constituency ...)

Raedwald said...

Yep - drones are the equalizer that negates mil-ind complex billions with low tech garage assembly. The Turkish drone even uses a modified german diesel motor - they must be knocking those things out for next to nothing these days

the great difference between US drones and insurgent drones is control - the US has sat control everywhere, insurgent drones only have a max of 100km of guided control and after that they're GPS guided. However, as any yottie knows, GPS accuracy is +/-3m these days - more than accurate enough for a drone packed with half a ton of C4 to be flown into an oil refinery. Or a moored carrier.

So I guess our carriers are safe so long as they stay say 150km from land at all times and keep moving. Until the insurgents start building robot homing subs, anyway ...

BlokeInBrum said...

I think the trick is to be able to get your drone to do what you want in an hostile e.m. environment. Back in the day before GPS, inertial guidance was the thing and flying nap of the earth to avoid ground to air interdiction. Nowadays, optical guidance using visible spectrum or I.R. would be doable using visual landmarks as waypoints. The computing power to do that can be held in the palm of the hand nowadays.
Shouldn't be long before people are being assassinated by hunter killer drones searching people out within an area using facial recognition.

Anonymous said...

The only conclusion I have about middle east geopolitics is everyone lies to help support their agenda.

There's a good chance that this was drones, there's also a chance that this is disinformation and it wasn't drones.

Either way I think this demonstrates sanctions are working on Iran and they are getting increasingly desperate - popcorn time for the next few months to see how this escalates.

Anonymous said...

"sanctions are working on Iran and they are getting increasingly desperate"

Isn't it the Yemenis, not the Iranians, who are being bombed to bits by the Saudis (with US/UK hardware)?

Whatever hit those tanks came from the west, not east or north-east, and weren't picked up by the radars which I assume are scanning the Gulf area 24/7.

dearieme said...

"Whatever hit those tanks came from the west, not east or north-east": drones can manoeuvre, you know.

Things have advanced since the V-1.

Nick Drew said...

Things, maybe yes

Human beings, ...

Anonymous said...

dearieme - I know that, but I assume there was no way they could have come from Iran, given the amount of surveillance by people just itching for a causus belli.

I see the massive damage to Saudi output will be fixed by next week, not the months we were led to believe, btw.