The U.S. military possesses several capabilities that it could wield to combat naval mine warfare in the Strait of Hormuz.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy views the maritime weapon as a key pillar of its military strategy, according to a 2017 Office of Naval Intelligence report, and reportedly began laying mines in the sea passage last week.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Pentagon briefing Friday, however, that there was “no clear evidence” of mines in the strait. RELATEDAdm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, said Monday that U.S. forces destroyed storage bunkers for naval mines during a U.S.…

Introduction: A War of Hubris and Unavoidable Consequences I’ve spent decades analyzing the intersections of geopolitics, energy, and the arrogance of centralized power. What’s unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz is not merely a regional conflict; it is the final, convulsive gasp of an American military and economic model that has long been bankrupt. President Donald Trump, sworn into office in January 2025, chose this war. In my view, this decision was not born of strategic necessity but of desperate, flailing hubris — a last attempt to assert dominance in a world that has already moved beyond it. We are…

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) — The number of U.S. troops wounded in the war against Iran has risen to about 200, the U.S. military said on Monday, as the conflict entered its third week.The U.S. military’s Central Command said the vast majority of those wounded had suffered minor injuries and 180 troops had already returned to duty. Ten of the injuries are serious, it said.Troops had been injured in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, and Israel, Central Command added.Thirteen U.S. troops have been killed since Iran launched strikes against U.S. military bases following ⁠the start of…

CAIRO — President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has demanded about seven countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, but his appeals have brought no commitments as oil prices soar during the Iran war.The president declined to name the countries heavily reliant on Middle East crude that the administration is negotiating with to join a coalition to police the waterway where about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil normally flows.“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory,” Trump said about the strait, claiming the shipping channel…

Sign up for the Outdoor Life Newsletter Get the hottest outdoor news—plus a free month of onX Hunt Elite. Hunters and anglers in the Deep South were given reason to celebrate last summer, when a conservation group purchased a large chunk of land near the Okefenokee Swamp that was the site of a proposed mine. The purchase put an immediate halt to the mining project — one that local conservationists and outdoorsmen had been fighting for years. Now, the state of Georgia is planning to acquire more than half of that land in order to establish a new wildlife management…

President Donald Trump on Monday recast his weekend call for American allies to deploy warships to the Strait of Hormuz as a test of loyalty rather than a strategic necessity. The shift in Trump’s framing of the issue came after nearly half a dozen countries either pushed back directly on the request or showed no enthusiasm about complying.“We don’t need anybody,” Trump insisted during a press conference in the East Room of the White House. “We’re the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far.” “I’m almost doing it, in some cases, not because we need…

Israel has invaded Lebanon, beginning a ground operation against Hezbollah. Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stated that it has started a “limited and targeted” move against the terrorist group in order to protect Northern Israeli citizens. WAR EXPANDS: Iran Pounded Israel With Missiles Overnight In a statement on X, the IDF explained that the “limited and targeted ground operations against key Hezbollah strongholds” are “part of broader defensive efforts to establish and strengthen a forward defensive posture, which includes the dismantling of terrorist infrastructure and the elimination of terrorists operating in the area.” According to a report by RT, the Israeli military noted that…

A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Friday that temporarily reinstates a collective bargaining agreement between the Department of Veterans Affairs and its largest employee union. Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Melissa DuBose ruled in favor of the American Federation of Government Employees National Veterans Affairs Council, ordering the VA to recognize the bargaining contract that represents roughly 300,000 VA employees. In her decision, DuBose noted that an executive order issued in March, 2025 by President Donald Trump allowed federal agencies that are involved in national security to terminate union contracts, including the VA, which may provide medical care…

A woman raising two children was among the six U.S. service members killed last week when a military refueling plane involved in the war with Iran crashed in western Iraq.Tech Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, hailed from a large family in Bardstown, Kentucky, and was “very, very” proud of her military career, her husband Gregory Pruitt said Sunday.“I’ll give you something brief: in a word, radiant,” he said in a phone interview, trying to hold back tears. “If there was a light in the room, she was it.”Survivors include the couple’s 3-year-old daughter and Sgt. Pruitt’s stepson.Pruitt joined the military…

Sign up for the On The Gun Newsletter The latest for gun hunters and competitive shooters. Many hunters and shooters care a great deal about their cartridges — and feel strongly about the subject of new ones. Some embrace the progress of cartridge design, as they see it. For others, it stokes contempt. To some, new is the way and the old is to be discarded. Others hold onto what they believe to be “good enough” and see little reason for trying the new. In reality, most of us fall somewhere between those two extremes. Much has changed in the…

United States energy companies could bring in billions of dollars if the war in Iran continues.  The global rise in energy prices, which has resulted from the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, will make the U.S. one of the biggest beneficiaries. The Financial Times (FT) [behind a paywall] has reported that the U.S. stands to make billions of dollars from the rising cost of fuel, while citing estimates provided by the investment bank Jefferies. Oil prices have already surged past $100 per barrel due to the fallout from the ongoing war in the Middle East. If they remain elevated this year,…

An Iranian missile strike damaged five U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, two U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal.The aircraft were parked on the flight line at the time of the strike and sustained damage but were not destroyed, according to the officials. The tankers are being repaired and are expected to return to service. No U.S. personnel were killed in the attack, The Wall Street Journal reported.President Donald Trump disputed those characterizations in a Saturday Truth Social post, saying, “The Base was hit a few days…

SETERMOEN, Norway — Norway’s elite soldiers for Arctic warfare swear by an old-fashioned method for staying hidden from drones’ sophisticated sensors: quinzhees, or snow caves, carefully dug by hand.Deep in Norwegian woods, some 400 kilometers away from the Russian border, an officer of the Norwegian Long Range Reconnaissance Squadron is hidden in a snow-made shelter, with only his light-grey firearm peeking out.The officer, nicknamed Poster Boy, is part of the country’s elite Arctic task force, designed to operate far behind enemy lines to conduct surveillance missions. The snow cave serving as his concealment is known as a quinzhee, 1.5m high…

If there are any boats in the Air Force special warfare training pipeline, you can bet David Goggins will be carrying them.Goggins, who retired from active duty in the Navy SEALs in 2016 and has gone on to build a brand as a bestselling author and motivational speaker, has reenlisted at age 51. He is now assigned to the Special Warfare Training Wing, Air Force officials confirmed to Military Times.While Goggins did not publicly announce his return to active duty, the military-focused Instagram page “Come.Sit.And.Relax” set veteran communities abuzz March 13 when it posted a photo of Goggins in an…

Sign up for the Quick Strike Newsletter The hottest fishing news, tips, and tactics We’re pulled over on a gravel bank in interior Alaska, peering down a series of Class IV rapids named the Toilet Bowl. There are five of us in three 30-year-old rafts. No one wants a swirlie. Only one of us, Mary Katherine Fields (everyone calls her MKat), knows how to paddle. She once set a record for successfully kayaking an 80-foot waterfall. The rest of us? Not so much. Dry bags, rods, fly boxes, a chain saw, and cases of Coors Light are strapped down with…

United States ruler, Donald Trump, has claimed that Iran “is being decimated,” while the “fake news” mainstream media outlets lie about it. Trump has threatened the outlets with “treason” over their reporting of the Iran war. On Sunday, Trump composed and published a long Truth Social post in which he made all kinds of claims about the reporting on the war, and how horribly Iran is being “decimated.” “The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they ‘win’ are those that they create through AI, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets,” Trump wrote. He also disparaged the…

The two-star head of the command responsible for coordinating support for Ukraine left a tube of classified maps behind on a train in Europe, losing control of the sensitive material for 24 hours, a new report from the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office has found.Then-Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Aguto, now retired, was also found to have sustained a concussion following a night of drinking to intoxication at a social event in Kiev, leading to incoherence and confusion in a briefing the next day.The report, released March 12, covers a period in April and May 2024 in which Aguto was…

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As the Navy builds out new career fields focused on operating drone boats and submarines, it’s repurposing special insignia pins taken from other job fields with similar requirements to recognize the work they do.At the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium in January, Lt. Miles Graham, commanding officer of the freshly established Chimera Detachment Alpha, revealed that his sailors were now earning the Craftmaster Insignia, a distinctive and rare device featuring a ship’s wheel and crossed anchors. Chimera Detachment Alpha, activated in January, operates the Navy’s medium unmanned surface vessels including Sea Hawk and Sea Hunter; the DARPA-built no manning required…

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog.  A worst-case scenario could be just weeks away. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been essentially paralyzed by the war with Iran, and there is a lot of speculation that the Houthis could soon bring commercial traffic through the Red Sea to a screeching halt. If such a scenario actually materializes, it would be catastrophic for the global economy. The good news is that so far, we are not witnessing widespread panic among investors. Most of them still seem to believe that this crisis is just…

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