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SolkaTruesilver wrote:

lcpl seilicki wrote:That redefines stupid

Hum... no. It's bad communication between the anti-air defence forces and the people running the experimentation project.

It's not like such incident never happened in the U.S., Canada or Europe.

My point was you learn from others mistakes, a little thing called a transponder would have prevented the shoot down.

How about a little intra-departmental communication?

"Our drones will be flying here at (x) date."

Wow. Took genius level intellect for that one.

Tsukiyumi wrote:How about a little intra-departmental communication?

"Our drones will be flying here at (x) date."

Wow. Took genius level intellect for that one.

As I said,

I am sure it happened quite often before in the U.S. or Europe. And these countries weren't on a war footing with a twitchy finger on the trigger like Iran's anti-air defense is.

If anything, that blunder simply underlines the lack of Iran's experience in running a combined services military forces they way the U.S. does with it's Army/Air/Navy, not stupidity.

Cpl Kendall wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Will

Thats a brief over view. Basically Iran started screwing with shipping (laying mines) and the US Navy demolished them.

Iran basically has no worthwhile Navy anyways, so any attempt by them to screw with shipping (especially oil related shipping) is just going to leave them with a bunch of broken kit. If we can't find their ships, we'll just bomb the ports.

Well,t hat was a long time ago. More than 25 years, actually. A lot of things happened in between, biggest of them is Iran's increase of military spendings, techniques and experience in the naval field.

They currently have 3 Russian Kilo-class submarines, 10 French Kaman-guided missile patrol crafts equipped with C-802 anti-ship missiles, similar to the U.S. Harpoon. However, these crafts have known little engagement in real sea warfare and would probably not be perfectly efficient in a full-scale conflict against the U.S.'s navy. However, the high-friendlies civilian crafts, and the small size of the engagement area in the Gulf limits the U.S.'s ship offensive and defensive capabilities.

The biggest card in Iran's sleeve, however, is not large military hardware, but the speedboats employed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These are fast, manoeuvrable, hard to target by any weaponry, even moreso during the night. They could very well pack themselves with explosive and cause serious damage to USN warships that way. But outside of such suicidal tactic, there is little damage these ships can do..

In short, Iran, while not being on part with the U.S. military capacity when it comes to naval warfare, is not defenseless and it shouldn't be taken for a granted that they would fail attacking the Ormuz Strait or even mining it. U.S. wargames have proven that asymetrical warfare can be very potent if one is ready to go the extra mile in resourcefulness, I am sure the Iranians aren't going to be fighting the way by the book.

In the event that they manage to mine the Strait, it would probably not going to destroy many tankers, but the insurance premium of any tankers going in or out of the Strait will skyrocket. No company wants to pay for the damage caused by a lucky mine. With the massive increase of shipping cost for 40% of the world's oil supply, we will see the oil price skyrocket, which could seriously hamper the current economical recovery.

So... that's the problem with Iran. They can't really compete for a real war, but they don't need to. they can cripple the U.S.'s economy with just basic means at their disposal, taken that they strike sneakily, speedily, and intelligently. Ultimately, the consequence of failing to effectively disable the Iranian's mining capacity in time outweight the benefice to striking Iran.

What I will say from Dad's experience of playing a wargame in his last days on Campbeltown. where they actively hunted a Kilo, those things are damn quiet.

Reliant121 wrote:What I will say from Dad's experience of playing a wargame in his last days on Campbeltown. where they actively hunted a Kilo, those things are damn quiet.

But I think it relies heavily on the experience and expertise of the crew. I think Iran's-ran Kilos will be much less efficient than Russian-ran Kilos. But it is still a menace.

You would have to catch a kilo when it snorkels to run its diesel. That or fly over with P3's and do magnetic anomaly runs

lcpl seilicki wrote:You would have to catch a kilo when it snorkels to run its diesel. That or fly over with P3's and do magnetic anomaly runs

The nice thing for Iran about gulf warfare is the smallness of the fighting zone. They don't need to carry their fleet for hundreds of miles

Magnetic anomaly detection is fairly short ranged and typically only used AFTER locating the target with SONAR.

SolkaTruesilver wrote:

lcpl seilicki wrote:You would have to catch a kilo when it snorkels to run its diesel. That or fly over with P3's and do magnetic anomaly runs

The nice thing for Iran about gulf warfare is the smallness of the fighting zone. They don't need to carry their fleet for hundreds of miles

But that also works against them with their subs, it gives the force hunting the kilos a much smaller place the have to search for them.

Tyyr wrote:Magnetic anomaly detection is fairly short ranged and typically only used AFTER locating the target with SONAR.

True but given the smallness of the gulf, makes the mag detection a better proposition than in the open ocean.

If I recall a P-3 can scan a swath of ocean 300ft. wide with it's MAD boom and that's it. Even that body of water is huge when you can only scan 150 ft off center.

And you don't want to start throwing torpedoes at random in a Civilian-heavy area

SolkaTruesilver wrote:And you don't want to start throwing torpedoes at random in a Civilian-heavy area

I don't?

Damn...

Since the entire North American coast line is covered, I think we could handle the Persian Gulf.