You Won’t Believe What The U.S. Military Just Did To Open Strait Of Hormuz

It’s April 2nd, 2026, day 32 of Operation Epic Fury, and right now the US military are taking some extreme measures to open the Straits of Hormuz. Looking at CENTCOM’s website, we see fresh images of the EA-18G Growler, and that could be out there right now turning Iranian coastal radars into basically expensive paperweights.

While the Strait is still stubbornly closed, this is taking it up a level focusing on opening the Strait by blinding the different radars that could be around the Straits of Hormuz that is used to spot the ships that are coming in and determine which ships belong to which country. This, teamed up with the USS Tripoli that is in the region right now, the Marine Expeditionary Unit with F-35Bs, CV-22s, does this mean some sort of limited ground invasion to open the Straits of Hormuz? Well, stay to the end of the video, we’re going to unpack what all of

this means. But the EA-18G Growler, teamed up with the USS Tripoli, this might be the duo, the combo that’s needed to actually crack open the Straits of Hormuz, as well as A-10 Warthogs, AH-64 Apaches up above, strafing drones, also being able to track underwater unmanned vehicles that is a favorite for Iran’s terrorist tactics is a huge part of the piece of this puzzle as well.

Drones can be up there scanning the sea, advanced drones, potentially even advanced drones like the Anduril Fury, the AI Expat. That’s not confirmed, but that would be nice having drones like that in the area that could actually track and see the underwater unmanned vehicles, as well as some different systems that could be laying on the seabed waiting for these drones from Iran to go try to threaten ships.

This is a whole new level that’s being uncracked on how to open the Straits of Hormuz. Is it Mission Impossible? Stay to the end of the video to find out. But the star of the show is the two-seat electronic attack beast that is a Super Hornet derivative that packs the AN/ALQ-218. It’s also got radar warning receivers on its wingtips.

It’s flying with four AGM-88 advanced anti-radiation guided missiles, and we can see that in these recent images from CENTCOM. The whole goal is for these things to guide on any emitter that lights up, even radars that are targeting ships. And the EA-18G Growler, yeah, it’s loaded down with HARMs, but it really doesn’t even have to shoot missiles because of its electronic attack capability.

It basically just sends some electronics towards these actual radars, and they just turn themselves off. Yeah, we don’t want to get hit by the HARM, we’ll just go ahead and shut down. But this Growler is doing what it does best to help open the Straits of Hormuz. And what it does next is going to challenge everything you’ve heard about electronic warfare in the Strait of Hormuz.

But first, some breaking news. So President Trump did a primetime address, and he says the war will end shortly, and Iran denies requesting any ceasefire as Iran sets up what looks like celebrations for the government. Obviously, a limited celebration. The people that are in this image that were there celebrating the government, the government’s like, “Hey, come celebrate us, and if you don’t, we’re going to kill you.

We have a revolver to your head, but yeah, come celebrate us.” And these people are like, “Uh okay, yeah, whatever you say, just don’t kill me, okay?” This is the level of desperation that it looks like to me that Iran is going to to try to show that the regime itself, the old regime, is actually legitimate.

But more and more every single day, it’s looking less and less like that’s the case. Over the last 12 hours, some of the summary of what has happened is the US has hammered even more targets in Tehran, likely focusing on ballistic missile production. But right after President Trump’s speech, of course, Iran threw a volley of ballistic missiles and drones at their Gulf partners.

Coalition defenses have knocked down most of those. So the whole goal here is swat down those missiles from Iran and then focus the EA-18G Growler and the USS Tripoli with its F-35Bs on opening the Straits of Hormuz and blinding those different radars that are along the coast. Holding air superiority along the coast is huge as well.

There’s F-15Es up above, F-35s from the Air Force, Navy, and now from the F-35B squadrons off of the USS Tripoli. The whole goal there is to open up that maritime choke point and keep Iran’s [snorts] threats and actual strikes on some of these tankers from keeping whoever’s out there waiting in their tanker from going through the Straits.

I mean, if you’re sitting out there waiting right now, you just want to sip your cup of coffee and make your $50,000 or whatever the fee is that you’re getting paid to take that tanker through the Straits. You don’t want the threat of getting hit by a Shahed drone, even if it’s a small threat. So the EA-18G Growler, it’s right in the thick of it creating electronic corridors through narrow waterways between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula by blinding sensors along the coastline with full spectrum jamming.

With the USS Tripoli now on station as a lightning carrier carrying up to 20 F-35B stealth fighters, we’ve now got sea-based fifth generation punches with the F-35B and the Navy off the USS Abraham Lincoln. And then you’ve got the ability to launch JASMs off those F-35s as well. AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles could be used to hit the different sites that the Growler detects.

The Growler could go out there, be looking and scanning for the different radars along the coast, and then you bring in an F-35 behind it with an AGM-158 JASSM, or you use the HARM missiles that are on the actual Growler itself. That’s another option as well. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit with 2,200 Marines, that adds real flexibility for coastal work, amphibious operations, potentially limited boots on the ground.

Now that you can see how all these pieces are moving, wait until you hear how badly Iran is actually struggling at this point. Because Iran’s still talking big right after President Trump’s speech, they launched volleys of ballistic missiles and drones, and then an IRGC spokesperson, at this point who is the spokesperson? I mean, they might as well just be named, “Hey, not going to work here much longer.

” But they swore that more crushing, broader, and destructive attacks will happen until a permanent surrender of the US and Israel. They called reopening the Strait irrational and said the fight continues until victory. So now we can see there are splinters in the actual regime itself. Who’s in charge? Who’s the spokesperson actually speaking for? I think at this point they’re probably drawing straws, and they’re like, “Oh, you got the short straw, you’re the spokesperson this week, good luck.

” But talk is cheap when your navy is on the seafloor, your air force is in ruins, and your missile factories are smoking holes. The residual threats are still there though. They’re keeping the Strait closed just due to the intimidation factor and Iran showing they can actually hit the ships. Anti-ship missiles is one of the biggest threats, and that’s where those coastal radars really come into play.

But also command and control. Those coastal radars being able to detect and see which ships are which is a massive advantage that it looks like some vestiges of the IRGC still have. Those coastal radars can spot the different ships coming through, they can determine what their country of origin is, and then you team that up with the fast attack craft that we’ve seen along the coast.

During my livestreams, we go through all the different coastal areas, and we look and see where these fast attack craft could be coming from. So seeing that there’s probably hundreds of these left, those are still a credible threat as well, but they need to be targeted in by something. They need to get the intelligence from somewhere, and that’s the coastal radars.

And then shore-based launchers are scattered right along that tight waterway, and they can disguise those things as civilian infrastructure. That’s their main goal, even disguising certain merchant vessels with ballistic missiles on them as well, or anti-ship weapons on them as well. So the Growler is right there in the thick of it reaching out and touching those emitters before they can lock on to commercial shipping or US naval assets.

And that’s really the Growler’s ultimate job. It slides in nice and deep into dangerous target areas, and it makes sure that it stays hard enough to get the job done. But now imagine what happens when the electronic wall gets even thicker and the Growler start pumping in all that electronic energy. And in President Trump’s speech last night, he reiterated the core objectives that have been said since the beginning of the conflict.

Obliterate Iran’s ballistic missile and drone production, wipe out its navy and air force, cut off the terrorist proxies, and stop any potential of them having nuclear weapons. He called the results so far swift, decisive, and overwhelming, and said that the US will finish the job in the next two to three weeks with overwhelming American air power. The gloves are off at this point.

But we’ll probably see the rhetoric continue until this IRGC core unit realizes that the gig is up, or they become a part of the actual transitional government that it looks like there’s already been regime change. That’s what’s been said by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. And at the end of the day, it looks like the Ayatollah class is at least for now taking a bit of a backseat.

President Trump also honored the fallen American heroes so far, and then CENTCOM imagery shows that Growlers are launching from the carriers with SEAD loads, suppression of enemy air defenses for all you acronym lovers out there. These are extremely heavy loads, and when it comes to the SEAD load, the SEAD load is basically the heaviest load that can satisfy any enemy out there.

But the SEAD load proves that electronic attack missions are alive and lethal right now in Iran, going on right now. And the Strait isn’t fully open yet, even though we’ve seen 20-plus Western aligned ships actually get through. but that might have just been a sign of good faith from whoever’s likely in charge of the Iranian government at this point.

And it’s not fully open yet. The strait’s relatively closed because of those scattered coastal threats that are still making safe transit too risky for tankers that are carrying just oil. Maybe if we paid everybody on the oil tanker crew a million dollars each, maybe they would take that risk, but you can’t expect them to take that risk at this point, especially with underwater unmanned vehicles in the area.

But every jammed radar and destroyed launcher brings the US closer. So every time those Growlers go up and do those flights, they jam the radars, they target them, they find, fix, track, and then they target them themselves, or they just pass the coordinates to an F-35B or an F-35 from the Air Force or the Navy, and then they pummel that radar site.

There was optimism from President Trump’s speech, and that lines up with the 2 to 3-week timeline to get the job done, but to do it right. We don’t want to have to go through all of this and not get the job done right, obviously. The EA-18G Growler though, that’s the star of the show. It’s jamming tactics are pure American electronic dominance.

Maximum external payload of about 17,000 lbs across nine different hard points. Typical loadout for this electronic attack fight. Four AGM-88E anti-radiation missiles that can hunt radars even after the radars have shut down. Yeah. That’s how good these things are. The radars are shut down, and they’re just kind of chilling up there and they’re like, “Oh, yeah.

You were on about 20 minutes ago. Boom, I’m going to strike you right now.” The Growler’s also carrying two AIM-120 AMRAAMs. Those are likely more for self-defense, external fuel tanks for range, plus up to five AOQ-99 or next-generation jammer mid-band NGJ-MB pods that flood the electromagnetic spectrum with full spectrum jamming of radars and communications.

So shutting down C2, command and control, communications where the IRGC talks to each other, where they’re basically talking to themselves basically at this point. It’s like two guys at a desk and they’re like, “Hey, how’s it going over there?” They’re like, “Good.” They’re like, “Yeah, we know we can’t leave this bunker, right?” But here’s how the Growler’s outfit would actually work to help open the Strait of Hormuz.

The two-person crew uses the advanced AN/AAQ-218 radar warning receivers to passively detect, identify, and geolocate every Iranian coastal radar, anti-ship missile battery, and command link in real time without emitting a single watt themselves. Once the threats are mapped, the Growler lights it up with jamming pods in layered tactics.

Noise jamming to overload enemy radar screens with electronic garbage, basically. Deception jamming to create dozens of false targets that confuse missile guidance, and precision spot jamming to burn through specific frequency bands. This creates invisible electronic corridors along the Iranian shoreline, completely blinding sensors, so anti-ship missiles can’t lock, coastal radars can’t guide fast attack craft, they can’t tell you where the actual tankers are, and shore-based launchers lose their eyes and ears. The Growler doesn’t just jam

and run. It stays on station, dynamically adjusting its jamming to counter any frequency hopping attempts, while the four anti-radiation missiles stand ready to deliver lethal strikes with some teeth added onto that electronic attack. Teaming with the USS Tripoli though, this is where it gets the 4D chess section.

19 to 20 F-35B Lightning IIs, which brings stealth, precision, JASSM strikes, and ISR, plus the MV-22 Ospreys for rapid coastal raids if needed. The Growler creates safe corridors through this contested airspace for these different assets. And then if you add in advanced drones like Anduril’s Fury, that’s a 9G capable collaborative fighter-type drone.

Also Shield AI X-47B, supersonic VTOL, vertical takeoff and landing with over 2,000 nautical mile range. And the AI X-47B, if it was in theater, I’m not saying it is for sure, but this would be the perfect aircraft to team up with F-35Bs off of the Tripoli, and it can vertically take off off of the Tripoli as well.

Imagine AI X-47Bs up overhead blinding even more of these coastal radars, or striking them after the EA-18G Growler determines where they are. These drones add mass, they can act as decoys, and they can be used in high-risk, high-stakes missions, or they can be up above the ocean detecting and determining where the UUVs are coming from, the underwater unmanned vehicles.

And to me, that’s one of the biggest things to help open up the Strait of Hormuz. Teaming up these advanced drones, even if for now some of this technology is on MQ-9s or MQ-4 Global Hawks, this type of technology can determine where these UUVs are, and then dynamically task Lamprey underwater sea drones.

These can be laying on the bed of the ocean, just sitting there waiting for the right moment, and then they get the cue, and then with AI they team up, talk to each other, creating a metal net on the floor of the ocean that basically rises up, and then strikes down any of the UUVs. So owning space, owning the sky, and then owning the entire ocean all the way down to the seabed is what these different systems can do for each other.

With the EA-18G Growler, the F-35, and these advanced drones using technology to detect these UUVs, they’re out there basically stroking Iranian defenses until they can’t get it up anymore. But this integrated team is why American air power dominates and why 4D chess is what they do best. So what do you guys think happens? Where do you think we go from here? Do you think that the Strait of Hormuz will be opened up over the next week or two? Do you think that the US will use boots on the ground amphibiously to go in and take certain strategic areas along the Strait of

Hormuz? Let me know in the comments below. Would love to hear what you think. Go ahead and follow me on X, follow me on Instagram. I’m posting there pretty much every day at this point. And then join the Max Ready Room. I’m doing live streams in the Max Ready Room. There’s a link in the description. Join the Max Ready Room and you’ll get priority replies to your comments and your questions.

So I’ll see you guys on those live streams, and then go ahead and watch this next video that pops up right here. This is Ryan, also known as Max Afterburner, signing off.