Cooper was careful to reframe the nature of the American operation on Monday. There are no ship-by-ship “escorts,” he said – rather, the US has assembled “multiple layers” of protection including ships, helicopters, aircraft, airborne early warning and electronic warfare. “I think we have a much better defensive arrangement in this process,” he said. The distinction matters for insurers: a layered defensive perimeter is harder to price than a named-vessel convoy, and the legal and underwriting implications of vessels operating inside a US-defined “enhanced security area” without a formal escort remain untested.
