In a rare announcement, the US military said a guided missile submarine has arrived in the Middle East, a message of deterrence clearly directed at regional adversaries as the Biden administration tries to avoid a broader conflict amid the Israel-Hamas war.
US Central Command said on social media Sunday that an Ohio-class submarine was entering its area of responsibility. A picture posted with the announcement appeared to show the sub in the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo.
The social media post did not name the sub, but the US Navy has four Ohio-class guided missile submarines, or SSGNs, which are former ballistic missile subs converted to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles rather than nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a rare announcement, the US military said a guided missile submarine has arrived in the Middle East, a message of deterrence clearly directed at regional adversaries as the Biden administration tries to avoid a broader conflict amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“SSGNs can deliver a lot of firepower very rapidly,” said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center told CNN in 2021.
The magnitude of that firepower was shown in March 2011, when the guided missile sub USS Florida fired almost 100 Tomahawks against targets in Libya during Operation Odyssey Dawn.
In June, the Navy publicized the visit of one of its two West Coast-based SSGN’s, USS Michigan, to South Korea as a show of US commitment to its Indo-Pacific allies.
The announcement of a guided missile sub in the region comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been holding a series of meetings with US partners in the Middle East.
In addition to emphasizing the need to protect civilians and provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza, Austin said the US was committed to deterring “any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this conflict,” a clear reference to Iran and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group.
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