Author: Michael

Commercial tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen to its lowest level in weeks as renewed US-Iran fighting raises security concerns for shipping companies. Reuters has reported that many vessels are delaying voyages or disabling their AIS tracking systems while transiting the region. The slowdown reflects more than war-related disruptions—it illustrates how even a limited military conflict at a single maritime chokepoint can reverberate through global energy markets, naval operations, and international diplomacy.

Read More

The Ford-Class Is Finally Copying the One Thing That Made the Nimitz Great: The Nimitz-class supercarrier got better with each hull, ten ships built over thirty-four years, each one improved on the last until the final ship was the finest conventional carrier ever launched. The Ford-class aircraft carrier began the opposite way, with a lead ship that stumbled through years of delay and public ridicule because the Navy tried to reinvent everything at once.

Read More

U.S. Central Command used Corsair unmanned surface vessels to attack Iranian targets on Sunday, according to Centcom.
The Navy previously used the Corsair to rescue downed Army AH-64 Apache helicopter pilots near the Strait of Hormuz last month. However, Sunday’s operation marked the first use of a maritime drone by the U.S. military in an assault on Iranian assets, the command said in a post on social media.
“Yesterday, using multiple one-way attack surface drones, CENTCOM forces successfully struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran.

Read More

Ukraine continues its long-range strike campaign against Russia’s fuel refineries as the Russo-Ukrainian war continues to escalate. About a week ago, Ukraine struck one of Russia’s largest fuel refineries, the Omsk refinery, located around 2,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Consequently, the Russian Federation has been hit by an ongoing fuel crisis that has severely affected motorists nationwide. Russian analysts expect the shortages to last until around September, when most damaged refineries will likely finish repairs.

Read More

The U.S. military will reimpose a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz Tuesday following a week of renewed fighting with Iran, U.S. Central Command announced Monday afternoon.
CENTCOM officials confirmed the blockade hours after President Donald Trump announced the measure, along with a note that the U.S. would charge all cargo traffic passing through the waterway a toll for providing what the president termed “the job of providing safety and security” in the waterway. The blockade of traffic “entering and exiting Iranian ports” will restart at 4 p.m.

Read More

With the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) once again closed to shipping because of the renewed hostilities between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran (over control of the SoH), an unprecedented volume of crude from normal trade was met by inventories, rerouting, and falling demand, cushioning the shock. Today, the challenge is no longer about finding crude oil. It’s a transportation problem that is creating an energy shock.

When the SoH first closed after the outbreak of the Iran War in February, many analysts predicted that crude oil would rocket to unprecedented levels.

Read More

On Monday, 13 July, Ukraine attacked Moscow with waves of drones for the second day in a row. The attack is part of a 40-day pressure campaign or “influence operation” announced at the end of June by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. These intense and sustained attacks are aimed at degrading Russia’s military logistics and economic stability by destroying critical infrastructure targets deep behind the front lines.

But in parallel, Kyiv is also fighting a war of nerves against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the elites around him.

Read More