Ten sailors aboard two U.S. Navy boats were seized by Iran in the Gulf on Tuesday, and Tehran told the United States the crew members would be promptly returned, U.S. officials said.
"We have received assurances from the Iranians that our sailors are safe and that they will be allowed to continue their journey promptly," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told CNN.
I wondered whether the Navy would correct the problems the investigation identified:
This is a theater where the threat and history should inspire a sense of urgency to prepare for battle at any moment. Yet even here our Navy had a poor culture that led to surrendering their boats to Iranians? How widespread is this type of laxity?
A little Navy history might be in order for our personnel--officer and enlisted.
Those boat crews should have defended their vessels with the full confidence that overwatching American forces would reinforce them rapidly. This incident should have ended with several wrecked Iranian boats and a lesson that you just don't mess with the United States Navy rather than viewing our vessels as hostage bait.
This was shameful. Now we know how shameful. Is the Navy ashamed enough to actually fix this?
Well, the Navy didn't cover it up:
Since it happened back in January 2016 the U.S. Navy has sought to learn from an incident where two American coastal patrol boats and ten sailors manning them were seized by armed Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf. The Americans were accused of being in Iranian territorial waters. The American boats and sailors were released a day later but the U.S. Navy kept quiet about the investigation into how this improbable event actually took place and what they were doing about it. Eventually it became clear that the navy made the most of the opportunity to carry out needed reforms. These were mostly about how its new (since 2006) NECC (Naval Expeditionary Combat Command). [emphasis added]
The post wanders into Marine and NECC history and roles. Which is useful.
So thank you Iran. If the Iranians do push a fight, our forces will be more capable than they might have been otherwise.
This also makes me feel better about the Navy learning from collisions in INDOPACOM that made me worry that the command's ship commanders and crew were not good enough to sail their ships let alone fight them.
