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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Aug. 25, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 056 ~ 28 of 65
continue to be updated as the storm progresses.”
In Houston, one of the nation’s most ood-prone cities, Bill Pennington prepared his one-story home
for what he expected would be its third invasion of oodwaters in as many years and the fth since 1983. “We know how to handle it. We’ll handle it again,” Pennington said he told his nervous 9-year-old son. Dozens were in lines Thursday at a Corpus Christi Sam’s Club, at home improvement stores and super-
markets. Alex Garcia bought bottled water, bread and other basics in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land after dropping his daughter off at college. He said grocery items were likely more available in Houston than back home in Corpus Christi, where Garcia, a beer distributor salesman, said stores were “crazy.”
“We’ll be selling lots of beer,” he laughed.
In Galveston, where a 1900 hurricane went down as the worst in U.S. history, City Manager Brian Max- well said he was anticipating street ooding and higher-than-normal tides.
“Obviously being on an island, everybody around here is kind of used to it.”
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Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Houston; Seth Borenstein and Catherine Lucey in Washington;
Diana Heidgerd, Jamie Stengle and David Warren in Dallas; and videographer John Mone in Sugar Land contributed to this report.
In the Persian Gulf, Iran’s drones pose rising threat to US By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press
ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ (AP) — High above the Persian Gulf, an Iranian drone crosses the path of American ghter jets lining up to land on the USS Nimitz.
The drone buzzes across the sky at least a mile above the massive aircraft carrier and is spotted by the ghters. It is unarmed.
But for the senior Navy commanders on the ship, the presence of the enemy drone so close is worrying. Their biggest fear is the surveillance aircraft will start carrying weapons, posing a more direct threat to U.S. vessels transiting one of the world’s most signi cant strategic and economic international waterways.
“It’s just a matter of time before we see that,” said Navy Rear Adm. Bill Byrne, commander of the carrier strike group that includes the Nimitz. He said the Iranian drone activity has “generated a lot of discussion” and was becoming an increasingly pressing matter of concern.
If, at some point, Byrne believes a drone is threatening his ship, he and his staff would have to carefully proceed through the required responses — efforts at communication, sounding the horn, ring ares and warning shots, and ying a helicopter close to the unmanned vehicle. If all those efforts fail and he still perceives a threat, Byrne said it would be his duty, his “responsibility,” to shoot down the Iranian drone.
So far, it hasn’t come to that. But the drones have become an even more dangerous security risk as U.S. carriers in the Persian Gulf like the Nimitz play a key role in Iraq and Syria. Planes from these ships are regularly ying to each country to bomb Islamic State militants and other targets. From the Nimitz alone, U.S. ghter jets ew missions resulting in at least 350 bombs being dropped on IS militants just in the last month.
Iran has routinely challenged U.S. ships and aircraft across the Gulf, asserting at times that the entire waterway is its territory. Navy commanders say Iran’s unpredictable behavior is the biggest safety hazard. “Iranians don’t always follow the rules,” Byrne said. “There is a well-established set of norms, standards
and laws. They don’t tend to follow them.”
To counter the threat, Pentagon experts are searching for new ways to deter, defeat or disable the
drones. According to Byrne and Cdr. Dave Kurtz, the Nimitz’s executive of cer, Iranian drones y over the carrier strike group almost daily.
They said the danger is that as the F/A-18 ghters return from their missions in Iraq and Syria, they circle overhead, lining up for their turn to land on the carrier. Even if the Iranian drones are only meant to annoy, their buzzing across the American ight paths risks an accident.