THE DAY THE SWIFT DIED
by Stephen Bryen
HSV-2 Swift is a very fast and relatively large catamaran ship originally built by Incat in Australia. Acquired by the US Navy in 2003, the Navy’s Sealift Command operated the vessel for ten years. Then it went out of service in 2013, replaced by another Incat-built catamaran. In an unusual move, in fact a strange one, the Sealift Command leased the Swift to a UAE organization called the National Marine Dredging Company. Before daylight on the first of October, the Swift was hit by a missile which caused a huge fire on the ship. We still lack an accounting of the dead and the survivors but at least three of them have told their story, surviving the incident. Importantly in addition to the missile attack, a fast boat with machine guns was trying to kill the survivors. It fired at them for the better part of half an hour after the missile attack. The crew itself was international, including sailors from Ukraine, Poland and India.
We do not know whether the fast attack craft firing on the Swift survivors was Yemeni or Iranian. Given this was a very well organized operation, including video cameras to record the event, a good guess is they were Iranian or supplied by the Iranians. This is backed up by reports that “spotter” boats were in the area directing the missile strikes. These could only have been Iranian: Houthi tribesmen are simply not capable or trained to carry out sophisticated surveillance and target identification.
Read More At: https://technologysecurity.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/the-day-the-swift-died/
So, this was apparently, that ship, apparently which was bought by the UAE, a former Navy ship, that was attacked about a month, 3 weeks ago.
