An F/A-18 Super Hornet launched from the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) disabled two Iranian-flagged tankers, M/T Sea Star III and M/T Sevda, on 8 May by firing precision munitions through their smokestacks1. US Central Command (CENTCOM), the Pentagon command responsible for the Strait of Hormuz blockade, confirmed both vessels were attempting to reach Iranian ports in violation of standing redirection orders. The ordnance, likely 500-pound laser-guided warheads, was dropped down the chimney rather than into hull or magazine, disabling the propulsion and electrics without rupturing the cargo or killing the crew.
This was the third blockade enforcement action in a fortnight and the first to use aerial precision-disabling rather than naval gun fire. CENTCOM's commercial-vessel redirection count has now climbed from 48 on 3 May to 52 on 7 May to 57 on 8 May, five fresh redirections in two days. Four Iranian-flagged vessels have been physically disabled across the campaign so far2. The technique maps onto a long-standing US Navy preference for proportional kinetic response: the 1988 Praying Mantis engagements aimed to neutralise Iranian platforms without sinking civilian shipping in the same waters. The 2026 variant uses laser-guided ordnance for what 1988 did with five-inch gun fire.
The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the IRGC overarching joint operational command, claimed "significant damage" to US destroyers from the 7-8 May missile, drone and small-boat salvos near Bandar Abbas. CENTCOM confirmed zero hull damage and zero US casualties3. Tasnim, the IRGC-linked agency, cited an unnamed senior source claiming three US destroyers fled to the Gulf of Oman. Both accounts cannot be true; both are real official statements in an information war running behind the kinetic one.
Donald Trump described the same exchange to ABC News as "just a love tap" on the same weekend his pilots were dropping laser-guided ordnance down two tanker chimneys. The verbal de-escalation track and the kinetic enforcement track are no longer running on the same calendar. The new precision-disabling doctrine creates an evidentiary record (vessel still afloat, intact cargo, surviving crew) that enables prosecution under the Hormuz blockade legal architecture, where sinking would have foreclosed it. CENTCOM has not yet published the rules of engagement under which an aircraft may put precision munitions into a non-combatant tanker.
