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This means that ships face varying threats. In the past, it was usually naval ships and military targets that terrorists and states aimed for, such as the USS Cole that was attacked in 2000 off the coast of Yemen, although during the tanker war in the Gulf in the 1980s, many ships were attacked.
Clearly, the Iraqi use of western-supplied weapons is quite different to what Iran is doing today. Iran had responded at the time as well, eventually using Chinese CSSC-2 Silkworm missiles against ships and losses to crew increased. The US reflagged Kuwaiti ships to deter attacks. Tensions grew further and US ships came under attack. The US responded and struck Iranians ships and even mistakenly downed an Iranian civilian airliner.
Shooting down drones can be done with missiles, but no one wants to fit out lots of commercial vessels with missiles. Drones can also sometimes have their frequency jammed or GPS-denied environments can make their navigation more complex. They can also be taken down with other specially designed drones or even shot down. However, it doesn’t seem feasible that commercial ships would be armed in such a manner but they could use jammers and other technologies.
Another method to help ships defend against drones is for major navies, such as the US or UK, to help place more naval assets off the coast of Oman or in areas where Iranian drones are suspected to lurk, and provide air defense coverage. Ships can be used for air defense, and can even be used for ballistic missile defense. But that requires a lot of ships to provide the air defense umbrella over hundreds of kilometers of open sea. The Straits of Hormuz and the areas off the coast of Oman and Socotra Island are more than 1,800km apart and these are large distances.
Countries probably do not want to start shooting down every Iranian drone in the area or targeting Iran drone bases, which might be on its coast, or even on Iranian ships or among the Houthis in Yemen. Iranian drones have been harassing shipping for years. They have overflown the USS Boxer, and carriers such as the USS Harry S. Truman, the Eisenhower and even the Charles De Gaulle, flagship of the French navy. For example, in 2016 USNI News explicitly reported that US Fifth Fleet officers had confirmed that Iranian forces flew an unmanned aerial vehicle over the Charles de Gaulle and the Harry S. Truman.
What this tells us is that since around 2015, Iran has been experimenting with complex drones and flying them over the most sophisticated ships in the world. Iran is not afraid and it wants to send a message. Now the Iranians are using the drones to attack ships. This is a major escalation. For the ship owners and managers, and states in the region, the problem of defending the ships does not have an easy solution.