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Playing on Iran’s Home Court: The Great Strait of Hormuz Test
Playing on Iran’s Home Court: The Great Strait of Hormuz Test
Courtesy of Russ Winter of Winter Watch at Wall Street Examiner
Any good armchair general with a good search engine and time on his hands can figure out in a hurry that the song and dance about Iran being unable to close the Strait if Hormuz for long is just a plain crock. Worse than that. Yet, this big Orwellian lie persists, so I want to set the record straight. Iran has the capability of not only closing the Strait for some time, but creating a world of hurt for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
Iran possesses a build-up of anti-ship weapons called Sunburn missiles, which it has procured from Russia and China over the last decade. These are top-notch weapons developed by the Russians as a low-cost challenge to the expensive, tech-heavy weaponry of the U.S., and specifically the aircraft carrier task force. A conflict, which I now assign a high probability to [see Scenario for an Israel Attack on Iran], is going to be a huge test of a global-naval doctrine that Russia and China will watch with tremendous interest. Iran's mix of anti-ship missiles (Sunburns, Onyxs, home produced, etc) is an unknown, but I think they are armed to the teeth. The big question: How many of these weapons does Iran have? I would suggest thousands, and that this is the real show.
Given that U.S. crony logic seems to be about squandering money on weapons in the military-industrial complex, I fear for sailors and marines on the 5th Fleet. Don’t get me wrong, the US Navy is professional, but the Strait doesn’t allow for the normal defense in depth available in open seas, in fact it offers the Iranians a cross fire setup or triangulation (see map of Strait below) . If you read discussions on various military sites, there is a lively debate on American ship defense system like the Aegis. However, almost nobody claims this to be fully protective against ship strikes. And an oil tanker, no way. It is important that the US is working on new generation lasar defense to counter these missiles, however they are still in development. This puts added pressure for Iran to have this fight now, not later. The following is from ”Russian Military Equality Network. (I have cleaned up the English a bit.]
U.S. Navy Pacific Commander Admiral Timothy Keating said that due to lack of sufficient funds for the procurement of simulated target missile defense system, the U.S. Navy can not now afford to fight “the club” category of supersonic anti-ship missiles. It is reported that the U.S. military that is used to simulate the “club” missile target missile is still being developed, and is expected to be put into use in 2014.
The Sunburn is perhaps the most lethal anti-ship missile in the world, designed to fly as low as 9 feet above ground/water at more than 1,500 miles per hour (mach 2+). The missile uses a violent pop-up maneuver for its terminal approach to throw off Phalanx and other U.S. anti-missile defense systems. Given their low cost, they’re perfectly suited for close quarter naval conflict in the bathtub-like Persian Gulf.
The Sunburn is versatile, and can be fired from practically any platform, including just a flat bed truck. It has a 90-mile range, which is all that is necessary in the small Persian Gulf and 40-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz. Fired from shore a missile could hit a ship in the Strait in less than a minute. It presents a real threat to the U.S. Navy. Tests using the Aegean and RAM ship defense technology stops the Sunburn 95% of the time, but such testing was done in open seas, not a bathtub. The payload hit with a 750-pound conventional warhead can be witnessed at 1:53-1:57 in this video. Not enough to sink a carrier, but it could take down smaller capital ships and crew.
You don’t have to be Hannibal preparing for the Battle of Cannae to see that the Strait is a potential shooting gallery. Without a doubt, Iran has plotted and mapped every firing angle and location along the Gulf, their home-court coastline. This is going to put enormous interdiction pressure on U.S. warplanes to spot and destroy platforms, which may be as simple as a flat-bed truck. In reality, Iran has dug in from Jask in the east to Bandar in the west and can easily cover any ship, commercial or military, traversing the narrow Strait.
Equally disturbing is Iran’s missile range for the entire Persian Gulf. Bahrain itself could be hit by the longer-range version of the Sunburn, the Onyx. Is the U.S. (which has three aircraft carrier groups in play currently) going to stick around or clear out to the Oman Sea, leaving control of the oil lanes to Iran? Or will they stay and slug it out with the Iranians? If so, at what cost? Iran’s home court strategic advantage and weaponry may mean nasty losses for the 5th Fleet. If they leave, the Iranians would use naval mines to close the strait and missiles to hamper the mine clearing operations.
This is a classic fog of war situation, and has game changer potential.
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There is ZERO chance that there will be an invasion of Iran by boots on the ground.
As far as losing a million men in the war against Iraq, remember what Patton said, "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
Correct. No land war with Iran.
Apples and oranges...it's not about manpower and hasn't been since WWI.
The population watched Iraq for over eight years - probably doesn't want their leaders leading them and their loved ones down the same path just to find the 12th Imam. There is division in Iran between fundamentalists and post-revolution generations, even with the US having been just next door for a good while. Maybe not every Iranian is suicidal - just the ones who run the country and are more confident of their own survival, having prepared for armegeddon themselves?
All flat-bed trucks in two hours, I suppose?
Geezus krist, Israel couldn't even clean up Hezbollah's truck launchers in 2006, that could be seen launching with the naked-eye, and were well within mortar and heavy artillery range and being constantly bombed!
At no point did the IDF look like stopping the rockets - mere unguided rockets!
This article can't be right...it's not what the tv news says.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbvgOFxp-hk
Courtesy of Ori - thanks.
I believe everything I read, hear, and see personally.
Reads like Iraq.
Iraq had fourth army in the world etc...
Same building up on false ground.
The fleet will be sunk in minutes, the greatest military defeat in history.
Then Obama uses the disaster to become Dictator.
I think I know why you're unemployed.
This could be for aircraft carriers like it was for battleships in WWII. Nothing but juicy and easy big targets. It only takes one decent missile hit and fighter jets are most likely unable to take off and land. Then it will be all out chaos, trying to put out the fires on ship while keeping jets in the air and still missiles keep coming.
There are plenty of friendly airfields to divert to and two other carriers to land on or receive in-air refueling from so that they can go elsewhere.
If the fires are big enough for long enough it's a fucked-unit. Water tight compartments, or even sinking, becomes irrelevant, because the ship is still ruined beyond repair and further operation.
The Iranians Russians and Chinese know this fact, so their missiles will have penetrators and frag plus incendiary components because hanger decks full of aircraft and fuel, burn really well. if you open them up.
Even if a missile is hit in terminal dive on the ship, all the fragged metal and fuel from the shredded missile (and these are very large and heavy missiles) still just keeps coming at the ship at Mach 2.2.
i.e. thus even if you successfully engage the first wave or two of missiles and decoys, the resulting fragged bits rapidly peper and degrade the ship's exposed systems until they don't work any more (radars, comms, computers, people) ... then they fail to stop the third and fourth waves of missiles ... that's what'll really happen.
The US navy may be first-rate but terminal CIWS missile defences degrade and eventually fail, and the opposite teams all know this and are banking on it.
Duck and cover bitchez
Don't forget that every one of these carriers is potentially a floating Fukashima if their cooling systems are compromised. This is one area where the local suck-ups probably dont' want that kind of collatoral damage.
The area is also very busy with commercial aircraft. The U.S. commander will be encomubered with rules of engagement which prevent simply clearing the area of every flying, floating thing.
As long as Iran does not care about the day after response, they could get away with sinking a ship or three.
The USN uses multiple layers of threat and exclusion radii with active and increasing warnings, plus weapons-armed zones, and active engagement radii triggers, based on 'bogie' classifications, via electronic signature, electro-optics, and track origination, track history, it's active emissions and its behaviour, etc.
An international naval and air exclusion zone would also be declared. Airspace can be cleared and or avoided rather quickly, but waterways and seas can not be cleared for days.
Civilian shipping will be the most exposed over time.
When systems like PAC3 and AEGIS go on combat alert even friendly military aircraft can be quickly shot-down.
That actually happened a lot during the past two decades. A lot more allied aircraft were destroyed by friendly fire mishaps than by hostile shots.
Despite all the hoo-har about IFF experience shows the battle still degenerates into a case of fire first and ask questions later, once people become confused about the tactical situation, and what is a real contact or bogie.
Which is why stand-offs are dangerous.
Now throw in the use of hundreds of decoys.
Too many people on the planet...too little time.
Either there is WWIII or Mathure Nature Part Deux...
The current march up of the price of oil is the countdown clock methinks.
Left out of this equation is the capacity to murder cities at will.
Remember private armies who are american corporations are now US citizens. So if that corporation has an army in your country, they have the full rights of an american citizen. America can invade you at anytime to protect "their" citizens
Welcome to Truk Lagoon
http://www.truk-lagoon.com
Dilmun, Sinbad the Sailor, the barbary coast of Spice route, the Opium trade of Rule Britannia Age, now the Nexus of OIL's solar plexus. Narrow passage like old Hellespont, leading into the Vagina of Queen Oil kingdom.
Mystical passage over time, where civilization all began.
Barbarians at the gate, wearing leopard leotard camouflage like shadowy dancing girls, carrying rifles of pinpoint precision, commanding drones of collateral damage, guiding missiles of mass destruction. All for OIL, all for spoil and for slave labour toil. Bringing the world to boil.
Making our desire to foil this immoral sport of imperial tort disguised in military resort for pretended human comfort. Declaration of human rights a Machiavellian screen to hide the crime of Oligarchy land.
Play on... we will never abandon the right to bring to justice the sons of Nebuchadnezzar's vile progeny. Those who destroy the temple of human progress. Wherever it be on seven continents. Oligarchs of fiat ponzi and oil hegemony.
And their Ayatollah counterparts, as their Taliban upstarts, all fabricated to specification by the rulers of Imperial Age, both British and American, via surrogate potentates.
You forgot to work in 'roil' and 'moil'.
Dude, that's beautiful. Quite the poet. Truly, I'm impressed! Very well structured and to the point. I'm afraid all too true as well.
get over yourself. Think deep on this sentence.
how about a haka? As you're "on ground".
You ever consider writing in simple English intsead of purpled prose, you know just for variation's sake?
I'll try if youuuu insist. )))
All it would take is the sinking of some freighters in the straits. There is not alot of wiggle room to navigate with the deep draft oil tankers. The straits are shallow in most parts. This would take some time to clear. All hte modern weaponry in the world cannot do anything if they sink the freightors and salvage would take alot of time. No naval engagement necessary.
Right, and the cost to insure said ships would skyrocket.
So Israel hits their nuclear facilities while Iran blocks its own oil imports by sealing up the Strait with shipwrecks. Sounds like a lose-lose for the Mullahs, and the Iranian people. We can deal with $6 gasoline for a while if it means the US doesn't fire a shot. Only about 6% of US oil comes through there. If other nations are made thirsty, then they can step up and be the Bad Guy Aggressors who keep the Strait open.
Problem is, if Iran is realy Jonesing for a war with Israel/US/West then it will find some front to fight it. Why not invade Iraq once the US has all but pulled out? Kinda hard for us to ignore that move. It's what we feared could happen if Iraq was neutered. And if we make Iran seem invencible, some portion of Iraqis might as much as invite such an invasion, embracing their new overlords.
$6/gal? Pretty optimistic, huh?
If they can nav/guide a ship up a narrow Suez Canal I think they can dodge a few sunken ships.
If they are really in the way, the US will simply explode enormous tonnages of HE against them, until they are much smalled bits and peices.
Solved. Sunken ships will not impede trade for long, if at all.
Modern sea mines and anti-ship missiles will pretty much halt trade.
Using one of those sunburns to blow up an oil freighter, resulting in the costs to insure said carriers, well, that might have an effect on trade.
Nobody is shooting at the Suez canal, which is why it can be navigated, although narrow and tricky. What insurance company will allow their client ships to be put at risk in a hot war zone? What shipping company will risk their capital goods (ships) on a sea lane that is a ship graveyard? Shipping will come to a halt immediately after the first tanker goes down.
What don't you understand about someone claiming a few sunken ships could theoretically block all sea traffic via the strait and me pointing out that that assumption is obvious complete horseshit?
Did I not also say that, "Modern sea mines and anti-ship missiles will pretty much halt trade."
You realise that would entail being fired at? ... right?
Or are you incapable of grasping the very obvious?
And the Iranians don't have to sink someone elses ships. They can scuttle a few of their own rust buckets.
The double post was not intended.
Bloody hell, so many negatives just because I mentioned the double post, the double post that came through on my part as a result with the problems experienced with ZH's website earlier today.
Bloody hell, so many negatives just because I mentioned the double post, the double post that came through on my part as a result of the problems experienced with ZH's website earlier today.
Note that the Strait of Hormuz is in IRANIAN national waters west of the cape, the cape itself is in Oman waters. So they are in their full right to do a blockade or check ships as they deem necessary.
There is no such thing as "rule of law." The US is the greatest terrorist nation in the world. Witness what they did to Libya recently and now to Syria and the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is also the most hyprocritical country ever.
True. Few Americans will admit this to themselves, but that fraction is increasing exponentially. When the puppetmasters resort to FEMA camps, food rationing, etc. there is hope of a revolution. Within a couple years Americans and Arabs might even work together to hunt down the real terrorists: The Rothschild Zionist puppetmasters.
Whatever--the US is a dick, but sometimes dicks fuck pussies like Ghadafi, whom, I will remind you, was responsible for many terroristic acts in the past. It is poetic justice what happened in Libya, and perhaps the Libyans who have broken free from that despot might enjoy better lives in the coming years. Of all the bullshit going on out there, I think Libya might be a modest success story. And yes, I'm aware that the Italians/NATO are basically running the show for their oil needs, but even a corporatocracy there is better than an autocracy.
Real reasons we took out Gadafi:
You know the "humanitarian" excuse is a scam because the UN took less than five years to support it and because the "rebels" set up their own central bank only two weeks after they took their first city and were still struggling to hold it.
Go back to your Shack in the woods and Shhhh davood.
Witness what Libya did to Libya and Syria is doing to Syria...hypocrisy is a very popular sport, sport.
You gotta be duped to believe this
It is all a set up anyways... the banking cartel wants a Third World War in earnest, and make no mistake about it, the actors at the head of all the countries involved have been briefed about it. It is the soldiers and Average Joes who are going to be hit the hardest. Hopefully the last two groups will wake up in time and do what's necessary... aiming at the top!
I don't think anyone WANTS a third world war, I think a world war is what happens when a massive credit bubble blows up. The plotcrat bankers want control, and world wars have massively uncertain outcomes. Anyways, a world war would inevitably go nuclear, and being vaporized isn't the way to stay in power.
USA Branded Marketing for WW#3:
Breed more Meat-muppets!