#deployment-impact

#deployment-impact

The economics are hard to ignore. Shooting down a drone with AeroVironment's LOCUST laser system costs less than $10, using just two to five seconds of laser energy. Compare that to the interceptor missiles currently used against Iranian drone swarms, which cost orders of magnitude more and are in short supply across allied arsenals.

A 'workable system' of transit and shipowner confidence in the security of the transiting vessels is essential. This includes availability of insurance for transiting vessels, facilitating commercial trade financing, and sustained outbound vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz.

Retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson criticized Hegseth's rhetoric, stating, 'That's a necessary end to achieve goals through military force - you have to kill people to achieve them. That's not the end. It's a weird obsession with death for the sake of it.'

"I'm struggling a lot. I'm really scared for my situation, for my son's situation as well. I'm just very desperate to get out of here." Hoda Muthana, one of three American women in the camp, highlights the dire conditions and her fears.

Kayla Stewart, a Marine veteran, shares her experience of sending care packages to her daughter, who is deployed in the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. She expresses pride in her daughter's choice to serve but also the anxiety of having a child in a wartime situation, stating, 'Never in a million years would I have thought I would have had a child in a war time situation.'

The U.S. has discovered that air superiority and missile defense systems designed to counter tens/hundreds of aircraft and missiles is insufficient against asymmetric attacks of thousands of drones.

The continuing closure of the waterway is deeply damaging and getting global shipping moving is crucial to ease cost of living pressures. Iran is believed to have laid at least a dozen mines to prevent oil tankers and other vessels from passing through the strait.

The deployments could help provide Trump with additional options as he weighs expanding US operations, with the Iran war well into its third week, Reuters reported on Thursday, at the same time further entrenching the US in a foreign war, the like of which he had repeatedly promised never to do.