American Submarine Notches First Torpedo-Aided Kill Since World War II Against Iranian Warship in International Waters

For the first time in more than eight decades, an American submarine has used a torpedo to sink a ship in a combat setting. On Wednesday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed reports that an American submarine sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean that “thought it was safe in international waters.”“Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo — quiet death,” Mr. Hegseth said.He added that it was the first sinking of an enemy ship by an American torpedo since World War II. The Pentagon posted a video of the moment the torpedo struck the Iranian ship. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told reporters that a “fast attack” submarine used a single Mark 48 torpedo, which achieved “immediate effect” and sent the ship “to the bottom of the sea.”“I want to remind everybody that this is an incredible demonstration of America’s global reach. To hunt, find, and kill an out-of-area deployer is something only the United States can do at this type of scale,” General Caine said. The strike occurred near the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The deputy foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Arun Hemachandra, said that the strike on the ship, which had an estimated crew of 180, killed at least 80 people, and that 32 people were rescued. While American officials did not publicly identify the ship, Sri Lankan officials identified it as the Iranian frigate the IRIS Dena. American officials say they have struck 20 Iranian naval vessels since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury. The head of U.S. Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, said in a video posted on social media that the American military is “sinking the Iranian Navy — the entire navy.”While Wednesday marked the first time in decades America used a submarine to sink a ship, Central Command said that in a “historic first,” America used “long-range Precision Strike Missiles … in combat during Operation Epic Fury, providing an unrivaled deep strike capability.”“I just could not be prouder of our men and women in uniform leveraging innovation to create dilemmas for the enemy,” Admiral Cooper said. A senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Eugene Kontorovich, noted that on Wednesday, Israel also made history as it became the first nation ever to use an F-35 to shoot down another plane in aerial combat. Mr. Hegseth told reporters that America is “accelerating, not decelerating” its operations in Iran. On Wednesday, Israel’s military said that it carried out a strike on a military compound at Tehran that houses the headquarters of Iran’s security organizations, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Video from the aftermath of American and Israeli strikes around Tehran showed smoke billowing around the city as the conflict continued into its fifth day.

American Submarine Notches First Torpedo-Aided Kill Since World War II Against Iranian Warship in International Waters

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