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Iran Tests Naval Cruise Missile During War Games
Hugh Pickens writes "Iran says it has successfully test fired a cruise missile during naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz, and the surface-to-sea missile, known as the Qader, struck its targets with precision and destroyed them. Iran had previously announced that it intended to test a missile during the exercises, raising fears that it might try to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for tougher international sanctions. The Qader missile is said to be capable of striking warships at a range of about 125 miles, a distance that would include some American forces in the Gulf region as Iran is about 140 miles at its nearest point from Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. Analysts say Iran's increasingly strident rhetoric, which has pushed oil prices higher, is aimed at sending a message to the West that it should think twice about the economic cost of putting further pressure on Tehran. 'No order has been given for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,' Iran's state television quoted navy chief Habibollah Sayyari as saying. 'But we are prepared for various scenarios.'"
Iran's naval capability isn't that shabby. Sure, the US Navy could obliterate it but not without suffering a few losses themselves. 100+ missile boats can send out a lot of missiles before they're sunk. They only need a few lucky hits to take out a much bigger boat..
Nor is Iran technologically in the dark ages, having its own robotics industry and technology from China and Russia.
100+ missile boats can send out a lot of missiles before they're sunk.
Also, IIRC an estimated 900,000 Iranians died resisting Saddam Hussein's grab of a useless strip of land along the border. Anyone who thinks they'll just run away and hide is a fool.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
* Caveat: In the last ten years, I have only spent 2 years in the Persian Gulf, transiting the Hormuz approximately 20 times.*
- The strait is approximately 12 miles wide at the "choke-point".
- A Qader has an maximum range of 125 miles.
- Most of the corporations that run tankers through the straits are extremely risk adverse. All it would take is one missile being "tested" in the vicinity of the shipping lanes to cause the number of tankers to plummet.
- There is a huge number of container ships that go from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean via the Suez (and vice versa), and almost the same number of ships that "turn left" instead of "right" there.
- Jet-skis can and do transit the straits. The bigger smugglers use speedboats, but the intelligence agencies use the personal watercraft sized craft and semi-submersible planing hulls to move agents and for surveillance. What airborne surveillance aircraft that Iran does have are slow moving and could probably be best engaged by M-4's and SAWS.
- The US Navy presence in Iraq is rather small compared to the USN presence in Bahrain and the UAE.
- Iran's militarized coast guard regularly harasses ships that transit the strait anyway. Have to love the 'Great Satan Running Dog' rants that comes up on chan 16.
- Iran's air force could be wiped from the skies by a single squadron of F-18F's loaded for dedicated air to air. It is their waterborne forces that are actually a threat.
- Two Global Hawks at high-altitude would be able cover the entire Persian Gulf with real time targeting data.
- Sniper rifles work just as well at sea as they do on land.
This is just more evidence that Iraq was a huge mistake, not like we needed any more but here it is. When Bush outlined his "axis of evil", he decided to go after the least "evil" country on the list, Iraq. Why? Well most people will say oil, or personal vendetta, and while there is some truth to that, the real answer is Iraq was the weakest of the 3. Bush needed a war to boost his poll numbers, so he chose the country that was least able to defend itself.
Had he gone after North Korea, the result would have been an unmitigated humanitarian crisis as North Korea would have unleashed a barrage of missiles and artillery fire(possibly with chemical and/or biological weapons) on Seoul, and the North Koreans are so dug in that there would be no way they could be neutralized without significant damage to Seoul and the surrounding areas. Kind of nice for your enemy to put half their population and probably around 2/3 of their economic output well in range of your artillery isn't it?
Now look at Iran, they have the strongest navy in the middle east(Iraq didn't have anything resembling a functioning navy when the US invaded). They also have decent missiles thanks in no small part to the North Koreans, and a relatively formidable ground force. US casualties in Iran would have been huge, and thats assuming Iran DOESNT have any chemical/biological capabilities....
Now look at Iraq. Saddam eventually disarmed and complied with almost all the UN regulations. His army was incredibly weakened by the embargoes and his air force crippled. And now he is dead. Gadaffi gave up WMD, and now he is dead. What message does this send to dictators? If you disarm, we kill you, if you can cause massive amounts of suffering, we negotiate.
Now look at the Iranian regime, there are only 2 things keeping them even remotely popular, and thus probably in power, in Iran.
1. Defending agains the US(Which thanks to the cowboy president many Iranians legitimately think might invade)
2. Oil revenues(which is why oil continued to plummet after the recession started, Ahmadinejad and Chavez, among others made so many promises to their people assuming oil was going to be over $150/barrel. When the price fell they had no choice but to continue to keep supply high in order to keep the money flowing in)
So now what is happening? The regime knows its running out of time, and has to get nukes fast or else risk being wiped out. Stopping Iranian oil exports would essentially cause chaos at home, so Iran is doing everything in it's power, including going to the brink of war, to keep those oil exports going. It wouldn't be nearly this paranoid about getting nukes if the man-child hadn't decided he wanted to play war hero for daddy and take out a guy that while certainly not, to borrow a phrase from Lewis Black, a snuggy bear, was not any worse than most regimes supported by the US(and the EU before Europeans start getting all self-righteous, France went after Libya and thus has a hand in this too, though not as big as the US's obviously). So instead of his fantasy of making the world safe from tyrants, Bush's actions have basically said, "if you want your regime to stay in power, get WMDs" Good one. The Iraq war will go down as the biggest foreign policy blunder in post-war American history. And while the actual Vietnam and Korean Wars were probably more savage, they were relatively self-contained. The Iraq war(and supporting the Libyan rebels) will have implications that will be felt for decades to come.
Monstar L
You forget that part of the reason why war games are interesting is that many cheat as best as they can without being demoted for it, often they'll find holes in the general plan that might not exist in real life. Small boats are clever, but I'm sure that they never launched a weapon (American or cobbled together) during the entire game. I don't think that I would have needed to be in combat to understand how different it would be from having some guy in a pontoon boat pretend that he has a mounted weapon on it.
UAV suppression of the Iran coast line is a given under a combat order and likely active just off the coast now, so how many missile boats would we let collect in the gulf? More importantly, how long would it take for them to collectively start to fire? I'd bet that we're better at fire control. How many boats would be lost by Iran before they could fire? If they all start to drill at the same time, does Obama rain Hell Fire down on them preemptively? A few boats might take damage or even be sunk, but I'd hardly think that the whole fleet would be in collectively in jeopardy. It's just another sad example that suicide missions force a cost of lives.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
No there are several countries without nukes that the US navy could not annihilate at range with impunity. Take for example the Swedish Gotland-class submarine, it has on multiple occasions(at least 2 occasions) "sunk" US carriers during naval wargames.
I'd imagine that it would be a pretty big embarrassment to the US navy if they lost one or more of their Carriers to a country with an air force only twice the size of what you can fit on one of those carriers.
One problem with this is that our fleet is parked right outside their country. We could sink their ships, but the missiles will still be coming from all over their *land*.
I'm annoyed that the US has the policy to anchor a fleet on the doorstep of a country tensions are high with, then blames that country for being confrontational. I could just imagine the propaganda storm that would come if Iran or North Korea had a fleet off the coast of Hawaii and started having random wargames right there. Why is this country such a hypocritical bully all the damn time?
What's Canada like? Is it nice there? -starts packing-