A US fighter jet disabled two Iran-flagged tankers on Friday by firing precision munitions into their funnels, the US military said, demonstrating the precision of the weapons in use.
US Central Command, which oversees Middle East military operations, released a video it says shows the tankers – the Sea Star III and the Sevda – being hit by a US Navy F/A-18. It said the vessels were violating the US blockage of Iranian ports.
The video shows slight puffs of smoke from the Sea Star’s smokestack, and then darker smoke rising from it after the strike.
In the Sevda clip, a burst of flame is followed immediately by plumes of heavy black smoke.
No damage beyond the funnel, or smokestack, area is evident in the videos provided by CENTCOM. The release did not mention any casualties on the tankers.
Military experts told CNN the Navy fighter jet likely used 500-pound laser-guided bombs to hit the tankers with such precision.
Peter Layton, a fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and a former Royal Australian Air Force officer, described how the F/A-18 may have carried out the dual attacks.
“If you fly at say 5,000 feet straight toward the ship, use the aircraft’s infrared imaging targeting pod, put the laser spot on the smokestack and then drop as you approach, it should work,” he said.
The US aircraft likely aimed for the smokestack as a whole rather than dropping a bomb down the exhaust vent directly, he said.
“It’s a laser spot, the bomb needs to see the spot for at least the last 10 seconds. If the spot vanishes down the smokestack as you fly overhead, then it will be imprecise,” Layton said.
Maritime shipping expert Sal Mercogliano, a professor at Campbell University in North Carolina, said his examination of the video showed the munitions hitting the ships in the lower portion or base of their smokestacks.
CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton, a retired US Air Force colonel, said it’s possible the Navy jet fired inert munitions at the tankers, enough to disable but not sink them.
Use of inert bombs – or bombs with a small yield – could explain the lack of a large explosions or secondary blasts that an explosive warhead could cause, analysts said.
The twin-engine F/A-18 flies off US aircraft carriers, in this case the USS George H. W. Bush, according to CENTCOM.
It can carry a range of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons, including several varieties of the laser-guided bombs analysts say were likely used in the latest attacks.
The tankers were unladen and heading to an Iranian port in the Gulf of Oman trying to evade a US blockade, CENTCOM said.
They were the second and third Iranian ships hit by a US F/A-18 in the past three days.
On May 6, a Navy jet fired several rounds from its 20mm cannon to disable the rudder of a tanker.
“All three vessels are no longer transiting to Iran,” CENTCOM said, adding that multiple vessels have been disabled by the US as they try to evade a blockade of Iranian ports.
“And more than 50 have been redirected by CENTCOM forces to ensure compliance,” it said.
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