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 Gulf of Oman


US Navy sails first drone boat through Strait of Hormuz between Iran, Oman

FOX News

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The U.S. Navy sailed its first drone boat through the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, a crucial waterway for global energy supplies where American sailors often faces tense encounters with Iranian forces. The trip by the L3 Harris Arabian Fox MAST-13, a 41-foot speedboat carrying sensors and cameras, drew the attention of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, but took place without incident, said Navy spokesman Cmdr. Two U.S. Coast Guard cutters, the USCGC Charles Moulthrope and USCGC John Scheuerman, accompanied the drone.


US condemns Russian use of Iranian drones in Ukraine

FOX News

American defense officials on Tuesday sought to dispel any doubt that Iran is supplying drones for Russia's war in Ukraine, releasing photos and analysis of unmanned aircraft deployed in the conflict to demonstrate Tehran's involvement. During a briefing in London, analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency displayed photos of drones that attacked Ukraine alongside images of those previously traced to Iran. A comparison of design details such as tail fins, nose cones and landing gear shows that the weapons used in Ukraine are "indistinguishable" from Shahed-131 and -136 attack drones and Mohajer 6 unmanned aerial vehicles used in the Middle East. The effort to "show the homework'' is intended to help persuade governments or international agencies of Tehran's involvement. Iran has said it supplied a "small number" of drones to Russia before the invasion of Ukraine but has denied providing any more since troops crossed the border last February. The evidence proves otherwise, an official from the Defense Intelligence Agency said while speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. "Iran is a partner in the conflict with Russia,'' the official said.


Iranian Drones Bring Back Fear For Ukrainians

International Business Times

In Ukraine's port city of Odessa, residents have recently found themselves hiding not from the thunder of rocket attacks but from the whir of buzzing Iranian drones in the sky. The machines have been playing an important role since Russia invaded seven months ago -- forming part of reconnaissance operations, missile firings or bomb drops. Awakened with a start on Saturday morning by a roar from the sky, Maryna Kondratieva ran to hide in the cellar with her two young children, fearing the worst. "I understand now that everything can change in five minutes," Kondratieva, who lives in a well-to-do part of the city and whose terrace overlooks the Black Sea, told AFP. Odessa -- the'capital' of the southwest and Ukraine's main port -- had seemed largely safe from Moscow, whose troops failed to take it at the beginning of the war.


Comment: how ships can outwit piracy with AI

#artificialintelligence

Deep learning is on the frontline in a new age of piracy, outwitting attacks with pre-emptive tech, explains Yarden Gross, CEO and co-founder of Orca AI. Almost a decade has passed since piracy raged off Somalia, and yet the danger posed by maritime hijackings is as present as ever. The global pandemic last year sparked a resurgence of attacks, with piracy incidents doubling across Asia, in a worrying uptick also seen in the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa. The fallout from coronavirus, including the loss of key security personnel, turned quarantined vessels into easy targets. This wave has since receded a little, with the International Maritime Bureau reporting a 44 per cent YoY dip in piracy and armed robbery incidents in 2021.


Israeli defense minister threatens Iran with military action

PBS NewsHour

Israel's defense minister warned Thursday that his country is prepared to strike Iran, issuing the threat against the Islamic Republic after a fatal drone strike on a oil tanker at sea that his nation blamed on Tehran. The comments by Benny Gantz come as Israel lobbies countries for action at the United Nations over last week's attack on the oil tanker Mercer Street that killed two people. The tanker, struck off Oman in the Arabian Sea, is managed by a firm owned by an Israeli billionaire. The U.S. and the United Kingdom also blamed Iran for the attack, but no country has offered evidence or intelligence to support the claim. Iran, which along with its regional militia allies has launched similar drone attacks, has denied being involved.


US, UK and Israel blame Iran for attack on Israeli-managed tanker

FOX News

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The United States has joined the United Kingdom and Israel in accusing Iran of carrying out a deadly drone strike that killed two aboard a tanker off Oman. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the announcement in a statement Sunday. Blinken said: "Upon review of the available information, we are confident that Iran conducted this attack, which killed two innocent people, using one-way explosive (drones), a lethal capability it is increasingly employing throughout the region." He added that there was "no justification for this attack, which follows a pattern of attacks and other belligerent behavior."


B-52s again fly over Mideast in US military warning to Iran

Boston Herald

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- A pair of B-52 bombers flew over the Mideast on Sunday, the latest such mission in the region aimed at warning Iran amid tensions between Washington and Tehran. The flight by the two heavy bombers came as a pro-Iran satellite channel based in Beirut broadcast Iranian military drone footage of an Israeli ship hit by a mysterious explosion only days earlier in the Mideast. While the channel sought to say Iran wasn't involved, Israel has blamed Tehran for what it described as an attack on the vessel. The U.S. military's Central Command said the two B-52s flew over the region accompanied by military aircraft from nations including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It marked the fourth-such bomber deployment into the Mideast this year and the second under President Joe Biden.


Time series and machine learning to forecast the water quality from satellite data

Shehhi, Maryam R. Al, Kaya, Abdullah

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Managing the quality of water for present and future generations of coastal regions should be a central concern of both citizens and public officials. Remote sensing can contribute to the management and monitoring of coastal water and pollutants. Algal blooms are a coastal pollutant that is a cause of concern. Many satellite data, such as MODIS, have been used to generate water-quality products to detect the blooms such as chlorophyll a (Chl-a), a photosynthesis index called fluorescence line height (FLH), and sea surface temperature (SST). It is important to characterize the spatial and temporal variations of these water quality products by using the mathematical models of these products. However, for monitoring, pollution control boards will need nowcasts and forecasts of any pollution. Therefore, we aim to predict the future values of the MODIS Chl-a, FLH, and SST of the water. This will not be limited to one type of water but, rather, will cover different types of water varying in depth and turbidity. This is very significant because the temporal trend of Chl-a, FLH, and SST is dependent on the geospatial and water properties. For this purpose, we will decompose the time series of each pixel into several components: trend, intra-annual variations, seasonal cycle, and stochastic stationary. We explore three such time series machine learning models that can characterize the non-stationary time series data and predict future values, including the Seasonal ARIMA (Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) (SARIMA), regression, and neural network. The results indicate that all these methods are effective at modelling Chl-a, FLH, and SST time series and predicting the values reasonably well. However, regression and neural network are found to be the best at predicting Chl-a in all types of water (turbid and shallow). Meanwhile, the SARIMA model provides the best prediction of FLH and SST.


AI in War Means Deepfakes as Well as Killerbots

#artificialintelligence

Since 2014, Russia has played a dominant role in the civil war hostilities in Syria where the testing of technology fresh out of research and development has been applied to measure results, graded by software systems. Such military upgrades launched in Syria and in Yemen include the SS-21 Scarab, the Uran-9 and the Ratnick-4 (robotics). A four day drill was held in December 2019 in the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Participants were Russia, Iran, and China whose cooperation, unity, and military exchanges were evident during the drills. Russia's involvement should be considered in the light of a strategy.


High-gear diplomacy aims to avert U.S.-Iran conflict

The Japan Times

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – A flurry of diplomatic visits and meetings crisscrossing the Persian Gulf have driven urgent efforts in recent days to defuse the possibility of all-out war after the U.S. killed Iran's top military commander. Global leaders and top diplomats are repeating the mantra of "de-escalation" and "dialog," yet none has publicly laid out a path to achieving either. The United States and Iran have said they do not want war, but fears have grown that the crisis could spin out of Tehran's or Washington's control. Tensions have careened from one crisis to another since President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from Iran's nuclear deal with world powers. The U.S. drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani and a senior Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad on Jan. 3 was seen as a major provocation.