The US already LOST the Naval War | Commodore Steve Jermy

The unfolding confrontation in the Gulf has exposed a deeper tectonic shift in the balance between high-technology Western militaries and regional powers that have invested in asymmetric, missile-based denial. Recent exchanges featuring retired Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jermy crystallize how the United States’ conventional assumptions about early warning, maritime dominance and power projection are fraying. What looks on the surface like a tactical success for Iran—attacking radar sites and threatening shipping lanes—may in fact signal a strategic reversal: the erosion of the conditions that underwrote decades of American maritime predominance. ## Radar and Layered Air Defense At the heart of the current crisis is the loss of what naval and air-defense professionals call “eyes” on the battlefield: forward radars and early-warning networks that give commanders time to allocate limited defensive resources. The conversation underscored a simple principle long understood in air defense and naval operations: layered protection. Long-range picket radars, airborne early-warning aircraft, medium-range sensors and point defenses form an interconnected net. When the top layer—the radars and forward sensors—is degraded, the entire net frays. Commodore Jermy’s operational experience makes the point stark: pickets are not ornamental. For carrier groups and fixed-base defenses alike, forward sensors provide crucial minutes that allow interception, sortie generation and the rationing of expensive interceptor missiles. Deprived of those minutes, defenders face compressed decision cycles and must either disperse precious interceptors across many inbound tracks or accept that some threats will get through. The damage to land-based radars in the region, therefore, is more than a tactical inconvenience; it converts predictable defense into reactive scrambling, with predictable increases in casualties and damage. The conversation also highlighted the compensatory role of AWACS-style airborne radar, which can extend the detection horizon. But airborne assets have limits: they require continuous rotations, they are vulnerable if confidence in air superiority collapses, and their capacity to detect and cue defenses against ballistic and hypersonic threats is uncertain. The net effect is a degraded, brittle surveillance posture rather than a robust substitute for the destroyed ground sensors. ## The Vulnerability of Sea Power One of the most consequential threads in the discussion was the shifting calculus about ships at sea. Aircraft carriers and surface fleets derive part of their power from maneuverability and the ability to present a mobile, hardened target. But mobility is not an all-purpose antidote to long-range precision weapons. The conversation emphasized that operating at distance—keeping carriers hundreds of miles from threatened coasts—is no longer merely a tactical choice but a necessity that limits utility. This change is significant in two ways. First, it forces naval commanders to trade proximity and effectiveness for survivability. If carrier air wings must operate from hundreds of miles offshore, their reach and persistence over the theater shrink. Second, it undermines allied confidence: calls for coalition partners to “reopen” closed straits may sound plausible politically but are much harder operationally when maritime forces risk terminal-phase guided strikes. Jermy’s assessment that allies will be reluctant to risk their ships—and rightly so—highlights how conventional alliance expectations can collapse rapidly under new threat profiles. The impact extends beyond carriers. Amphibious groups, logistics ships and replenishment vessels are equally critical to sustained operations and are arguably more vulnerable because they lack the air defense and maneuver capability of carrier strike groups. If adversaries can hold those lifelines at risk, the entire logic of forward basing and maritime sustainment is challenged. ## Hypersonics, Ballistics, and the Problem of Terminal Guidance Perhaps the central technical uncertainty driving this strategic disruption is terminal guidance. Jermy framed the problem in three stages—launch, midcourse updates, and final homing—and stressed that the decisive element is whether missiles possess accurate terminal guidance against moving naval targets. An unguided ballistic trajectory adjusted only by initial coordinates is unlikely to hit a maneuvering carrier. But if Iran (with possible assistance from state partners) can provide terminal-phase targeting—via radar, seekers, or other means—then the calculus changes fundamentally. Hypersonic glide vehicles and advanced ballistic missiles complicate defenses because they compress timelines and reduce the window for effective interception. Existing sea-based layered defenses—Aegis-style radars, point-defense missiles, electronic decoys—were not designed to cope with massed salvos of high-speed, terminally guided threats. The conversation left open a sobering possibility: even if a single missile cannot sink a carrier, damaging flight decks, arresting gear, or sensors could temporarily neutralize a ship’s air-power projection. Damaging enough ships in a logistics tail could be equally debilitating. Underlying these technical uncertainties is a policy question: can blue-water navies realistically defend high-value assets against modern long-range strike without fundamentally altering deployment patterns? The interlocutors implied that the answer is increasingly “no,” at least not at acceptable risk levels and cost. ## Strategic Miscalculation and Political Hubris Beyond the hardware and tactics, the exchange turned to the decision-making that led to this crisis. Jermy suggested two sobering explanations for why critical radars were allowed to be exposed: either a failure of strategic imagination and risk assessment in planning, or a conscious decision to accept high risk—born of political hubris and an overreliance on the myth of invulnerability. This is a familiar but still painful motif in modern warfare: the dissonance between political narratives of dominance and the more nuanced assessments offered by military professionals. When political leaders assume that military supremacy is automatic and cost-free, they may discount asymmetric counters. The conversational analysis argued that this hubris has real consequences: degraded deterrence, strategic overreach, and a loss of credibility among allies when risk is mis-communicated or underestimated. There is also a cultural dimension. Western militaries and political elites often presume others will value leadership continuity and institutional preservation as they do. Iran’s different calculus—where martyrdom, replacement of leaders, and a collective resilience are culturally and ideologically embedded—means that Western expectations about bargaining, escalation control, and rational restraint may not hold. Misreading those signals makes miscalculation more likely. ## Iran’s Strategic Resilience and the Limits of Coercion A recurring theme in the dialogue was Iran’s ability to turn perceived vulnerability into strategic strength. The regime has built governance and military structures that tolerate losses in ways Western states do not. That resilience, combined with a doctrine that integrates asymmetric missile and proxy capabilities, creates a credible denial strategy: keep foreign forces at distance and impose intolerable costs for close operations. The conversation drew a parallel with the Russia-Ukraine conflict in showing how initial objectives can mutate under asymmetric pressure. Just as Moscow recalibrated its aims as the war unfolded, Tehran’s objectives—removal of foreign military presence from the Gulf, preservation of its regime, and safeguarding its allies—have concrete means behind them. If survival is the yardstick of strategic success, Iran appears to have achieved it; if the Western objective wa

The US already LOST the Naval War | Commodore Steve Jermy The War against Iran is getting worse and worse for the United States. Its navy can't even get close to the "theater" of war and the inadequacy of its naval assets is now out in the open. My guest today, UK navy officer (Commodore) Steve Jermy explains the various parts of the US maritime quagmire. Support us on Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Shop and Donations: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com #Pascal Welcome back, everybody. This is Pascal Lottaz from Neutrality Studies. I'm a professor at Kyoto University, and I'm talking today again with Commodore Stephen Jeremy, a retired British Navy officer. Steve, welcome back. #Steve Jermy Good to be back, Pascal. I've been listening to some of your recent podcasts—some particularly fascinating, especially the one about the origins of the neocons and how Zionism and American Christian Zionism played into that. I found it absolutely fascinating. #Pascal It's a lot of things actually coming together right now. The Zionist topic will come up again in a day or two on another podcast. But with you, I think we should really talk about the military implications of the Iran war. Later, maybe a little bit about what's happening at sea, since you’re a captain and were in the British Navy. But let's start with all the military things that happened on the ground— how Iran was able to destroy a large part, if not all, of the U.S. radar system in the region. What does that mean? And if you were there, if you were responsible for this, how would you interpret it? I mean, this must be frightening for the U.S. military personnel on the ground, right? #Steve Jermy Yeah, definitely. What this is about is what we call, in air defense, layered defense. As I said, one of my jobs in the Navy was to be the captain of an air defense destroyer, Pascal. Within that job, you’re actually what’s called the anti-air warfare coordinator. It’s a defensive role. But the key thing with air defense is that the general principle is one of layered defense. For example, if you take an aircraft carrier, the way you would defend it would be to have pickets out—ships with long-range radars positioned at some distance. With their radars, they can see quite a long way. Then, as you get -- 1 of 15 -- closer, the defense actually increases. The point of having the pickets, as we called them, is that they give you much more time. And time allows you to allocate your resources. #Pascal Sorry, what is a picket? #Steve Jermy Yeah, a picket is a vessel that’s positioned up-threat—that is, toward where you expect the threat to come from. What it does is give you much more time. This started in the Pacific War, really, Pascal. During that war, the Americans began to develop ships with radar that could alert the carriers before the attacks arrived. That meant that if they were, say, 40 miles up-threat—toward where they thought the threat would be coming—they’d get another 20 minutes or so of warning. That allowed them to launch their own combat air patrols and be ready to intercept those aircraft before they reached the heart of the carrier force, if you see what I mean. That principle generally holds. The way I think about these radars that the Americans have had destroyed is that they’re usually what I’d call up-threat—particularly from Israel. They provide advance warning so that those on the ground can respond. So it’s about early warning for people on the ground, but it’s also about helping allocate air defense resources. As you start to see the air picture—where the missiles are coming from and which ones are the highest threat—you can assign them to different weapon systems. But if those eyes are gone—and they are gone, from what I hear—then suddenly you're in a much more difficult position. Not only do you get very little warning for your people on the ground, but the effectiveness of your air defense missiles is much less—uh, much less effective—because the missiles are coming in with such short notice. It’s very difficult to allocate them efficiently. There’s an issue of numbers as well: if the number of missiles coming in is high, it becomes extremely difficult. So I would say, at the moment, the American bases are close to naked, and that must be an extremely uncomfortable feeling. It's not completely so because, of course, what will be happening, Pascal, is that the Americans will have AWACS aircraft—that’s airborne early warning and control aircraft. They haven’t been targeted, and it would be difficult for the Iranians to target them. Those will probably be operating about a hundred miles back, I’d guess, over the key areas. They have very large radars—people may remember what they look like, with that big sort of spaceship dome on top, a circular dome, kind of like a saucer shape. They provide long-range radar coverage, probably out to about four or five hundred miles, and that again allows you to allocate missiles and systems. So there is some coverage in that system. But again, what we’ll need to do is keep one of those aircraft airborne 24/7. It’s a continual rotation of that aircraft, because you can’t let your guard down -- 2 of 15 -- and create a window where there’s no radar at all. So it’s not a completely disastrous situation, but they’re much, much worse off. And again, what I don’t know is the capability of the AWACS aircraft against ballistic missiles and certainly hypersonic missiles, which are a very demanding threat. So it’s a much worse situation for the Americans on the ground. And I’m sad that they’ve lost people, but not surprised. #Pascal Why did they not foresee that? I mean, I wonder—aren’t these obvious targets that would be hit first? Did they have their missile defense systems in place and think those would be enough to protect the radars? #Steve Jermy I think there are two answers to that question. It's a question I've asked myself. I mean, when I was originally asked whether I thought this campaign would happen—about three or four days before it actually started—I said it was about fifty-fifty. But if I had to bet, I would’ve bet that it wouldn’t happen. My bet was based on the fact that I thought people would be very unlikely to actually enter the campaign, given the very high risks it would entail and the very few benefits I could see. I’m afraid I was wrong. They took the decision to take the risk. What I don’t know is whether they calculated the risks against their own air defense radars or completely missed it. It’s not impossible that they missed it, and it seems to me they’ve missed other things as well. They haven't understood the nature of the campaign properly. So it's one of those two answers. If they did miss it, well, that's not a competent way of doing strategic thinking, I'm afraid. If they accepted it as a risk, then it's a very high one—and not just something that will hurt them, but actually evidence of a kind of hubris, I think, probably within the political establishment. They believe that, notwithstanding what they're being told by their military advisers, America will prevail and is, as Trump often says, the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen. That isn't true. But if that's the way you're thinking, you can imagine people being seduced by their own political narrative into taking a decision that I think is ultimately going to be catastrophic for America's position in the world. #Pascal Yeah, if I had to guess, I’d think some of the people who must have been most shocked by this decision are probably the military personnel on the ground over there, who understood what it meant for them even before the first missiles were hitting Tehran. You know, if we’re now in a situation where the United States and Israel are reduced to, let’s call it, emergency radar coverage— very expensive and nowhere near as effective as the systems they had on the ground—if we’re at that point, and we also see where the U.S. Navy actually parks its ships, right? -- 3 of 15 -- Yeah, the aircraft carrier being tucked away safely, like in the Mediterranean—not in the Gulf at all, right? And the distance the United States is putting between its naval assets… and also the idea from Donald Trump yesterday—and we’re speaking today on March 16th—yesterday he pitched this idea: “Hey, how about China, Japan, France, everybody—you come, bring your ships, and go reopen the Strait of Hormuz. You know, why don’t you do this? And we’ll help big time,” in all caps. It seems they’re very much aware that these naval assets are in real danger if they come too close to Iran, aren’t they? #Steve Jermy Yeah, I think that’s right. #Steve Jermy One component is a completely fundamental shift in the way we’re thinking about warfare. Suddenly, because of the difficulty we have in intercepting ballistic and hypersonic missiles, the advantage has shifted to those who possess those capabilities. Now, if you look at the American Armed Forces, they’re very much an air-heavy and maritime-heavy force, with a relatively small army compared to the size and expenditure of the American defense budget. But what we’re seeing is that those air and maritime forces are now much less deployable—they have to be used with much more caution. And what that means is that the ability of the Americans to exercise power across the world is significantly reduced. I think if you take the two aircraft carriers—I don’t know where the Ford is. The Ford was, I think, in the Mediterranean, and she may have moved into the Red Sea. I’m not 100% sure, but I did hear that she was moving to the Red Sea. It seemed to me that she was in the Mediterranean largely to provide a defensive capability for Israel—so her destroyers and their systems, along with her own aircraft, would provide defensive air cover over Israel. I suspect that was the initial thinking. I had heard, though, that they were going to deploy her into the Red Sea because of concerns about the Saudi Arabian pipelines and their exit into the Red Sea. That would be entirely logical if so, but I honestly don’t know whether they’ve done that yet. The Red Sea isn’t necessarily going to be an easy place for them to operate, because the last time an aircraft carrier group was there, they eventually decided to declare victory and retreat. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re in the same situation, because the Houthis have done this before. So we’ll see—maybe the Indian Ocean next. But again, as you say, I think operating at a distance, we won't know. I'm sure the Iranians know, because they'll have intelligence from both the Chinese and the Russians about where that group is operating. But I’d be surprised if it’s operating much closer than about 400 miles south of the coast of southern Iran. So we’re in a very different situation now. It’s ironic, I think, that Trump and Netanyahu, having created the war and the situation where the straits were almost closed, are now -- 4 of 15 -- actually asking for help to open the strait. I think it’s highly unlikely that any allies will accede to that request because of the risks. And I think the risks of actually trying to open the straits—let alone get a carrier or an amphibious group as far as Karg Island—are such that I just cannot think the White House will want to see American ships struck. It'll be very interesting to see how that plays out, because, of course, with the Strait closed—and I think possibly for an extended period—the consequences for the world economy are really extremely challenging. I think they're potentially catastrophic, because I can see no sign that Iran is about to back down. And I think, again, it's an example of the White House and indeed the broader American neocon establishment completely misunderstanding not only the nature of the war, but the nature of their opponent and the way that opponent is thinking. I mean, the Iranians think of this as an existential war. But it's even m