http://www.rense.com/general59/theSunburniransawesome.htm

The above gives a litle prespective to the upcoming threat.
Will the Iranians now avenge the commercial aircraft shot down by the USS Vincennes

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[http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/01/14/youve-got-problems-not-issues/ ]

"A liberal is someone who feels they owe a great debt to their fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."

The missle threat is probably overstated. Remember that nobody pays attention to no news. News has to have splash. Yes, the missle is a threat. So what? It's beyond dumb to counter an attack strategy directly--that tells the enemy what to expect. Instead, use assets the enemy doesn't have and use them to threaten something more dear to him than that which he threatens of yours.

http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2003/Summer/art3-su3.htm
http://www.house.gov/hasc/testimony/106thcongress/00-07-19gill.html

The point is...Iran is the central figure in this senario.
With porous borders , there's enough range in the latest missiles ( 180 nm ) to reach any surface vessel in the Red Sea or the Golf of Hormuz from a land based mobile launcher(s).

The AWAC's only look at moving threats, by the time a missile is launched and on track at Mach 2 plus... there's maybe 30 seconds to impact.

I'd say this is a serious threat that has left a big hole in surface shipping defence.

China and far east threats do not pose the same 'inland waters' confined attack strategums.

.

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[http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/01/14/youve-got-problems-not-issues/ ]

"A liberal is someone who feels they owe a great debt to their fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."

That's a pretty serious article. I've been worrying for a while that cruise missiles are kryptonite for the SDI/star wars/missile shield. Course, cruise missiles are not intercontinental but ballistics' point of origin is known unlike with CM.

I'm thinking delivering a CM on a fishing boat might be fairly easy. Or maybe hiding one under a couple of metric tons of cocaine and getting 50 miles away from a target city.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Yeah, it's a threat. There are lots of threats for which we have no direct countermeasure. But then we do have countermeasures of different sorts. This was the whole concept of MAD vs the USSR. We couldn't stop MIRV'd nukes but we could make retribution so horrific that the USSR was intimidated by the response.

Ths same applies to Iran. If they screw-around too much we have a wide array of responses that can introduce them to a world of pain. The trick is to convince them that a first strike for them is not worth the response we will deliver.

B

That is the trick tho. To convince them that we have the stones to do it when we have shown restraint. We call it restraint, they call it a lack of courage and they are good at capitalizing on it,

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They would never be stupid enough to launch a preemptive strike. However this missile capability sure gives them a lot of bargaining power. I'm sure they will leverage that in every way possible to benefit their anti-Israel agenda. Why is it with all the efforts to bring peace to that part of the world, it has become more of a powder-keg than ever?

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http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/weapons/wep-phal.html

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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

Having the credible threat of sinking aircraft carriers, quickly, at low cost, is an enormous coup. Carriers are our big Kahuna, correct me if I'm wrong.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Carriers have always been one of our greatest assets and the most vulnerable ships at sea. That is why they never go anywhere unaccompanied. There are always combatant screens surrounding them in all three dimensions.

The French sale of the most excellent Exocet missle systems to practically all buyers has worried American carrier sailors for decades. This is NOTHING new.

Just before the invasion of Afghanistan some academic military theorists opined that the carrier was obsolete. It was too valuable a target and too vulnerable for the amount of money and effort put into protecting it. They proposed phasing-out super carriers and going to smaller carriers like the English Ark Royal, using Harrier type aircraft. Cheaper to build and still provide tactical support for blue water and brown water action. Other aircraft missions would go to the Air Force.

It was a well thought-out theory except for the stans countries. See, tehre are no support bases around and so the Navy provided air cover for troops until the Kabul airport could be seized and repaired. The only aircraft that the Air Force could supply were strategic bombers flying out of the USA.

But the Navy knows that carriers are not a permanent solution to supply air power from the sea. But they're probably good for a couple of dozen years. The Navy just wont be able to bring them in close to shore in areas where cruise missles are a threat. With the changer-over from Tomcats and Hornets to the new steath fighter as the backbone of naval air power, the life of the carrier fleet got a modest extension.

Finally, any hostile enemy combatant that puts to sea anywhere on the planet would be living on borrowed time. He could never get close enough to be a threat to a carrier. Submariners say there are two types of vessels at sea, submarines and targets.

B

I saw a piece on TV somewhere, History Channel maybe or PBS, about converting Trident submarines into semi trucks of the sea, capable of dispensing pods of various sorts of fighting units. Could no way begin to fully replace carriers -- even if they could be fitted to launch a fighter plane, say one with foldable wings that could open after launching from some device, there's no place for the plane to land. Pontoons maybe?

One idea was to lauch capsules complete with landing craft, land vehicles, and troops.

Even as I'm writing, it seems hopelessly Rube Goldberg.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

1) When was the last time a US carrier was attacked? Sunk? Doubtful anything other than multiple hits or a nuke would do it. Plus these third world nutballs don't have the technology to set up launchers and tracking, etc.. It would be like giving a machine gun to a caveman.

SCUDS were the perfect example of Iraq using a glorified catapault that was lucky to hit a CITY. The only reason we went after them at all was for PR purposes (Israel), they had no strategic valuel.

2) The description about the Phalanx was BS. (original article posted). As a regular "gun" firing normal rounds, by definition the encounter is VERY close and last-ditch but it was designed to work that way.

3) How many US ships have been struck in the last 25 years where crew screwups didn't contribute to the problem? In other words (Stark) those guys sat around not knowing what was going on. It wasn't because they were dwarfed by some awesome technology.

4) Oh yeah, anything flying Mach 2 isn't a cruise missle.

And for someone to suggest the US is 10 years behind is an idiot. Nobody spending any dough on defense is that far behind. The guy who wrote the article writes an interesting tale. And I am sure there are accurate facts in there, but they don't support the conclusion the US could be run out of the Gulf. Get real.

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MB-less

Very much agree having seen that system in action. Keeping in mind it's at least 20 years old as well. That's why I posted a link to clarify.

I think going to the original article that started this thread and then viewing the home page should give you some perspective on the veracity of the author. More "sky is falling" type rhetoric which is like much of the leftist propoganda - simply factually wrong.

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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone

Umm, so what? I saw that article a year or more ago when it first surfaced. The real question is, why would we ever take a carrier into the Persian Gulf or the Straits of Hormuz (the Red Sea is on the other side of Saudi, the missiles couldn't reach)? Our carrier-based attack aircraft can fly a lot farther than the missiles can, esp. with refuelling. Essentially, we have a gun, he's got a knife, why would we ever get within 3 feet of him? Our capital assets are fairly safe.

The real concern would be if the Iranians popped those into a couple of oil tankers in the Gulf. If we start something, I'd guess we'll be shutting down shpping in the Gulf for a while (hurts the Iranians more than it does us). If they do it unilaterally, or hit a US destroyer or some other surface asset that would venture into the Gulf, well, they've started a whole new game, and we're in a conventional war that we didn't start (the kind the Europeans don't mind if we win).

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I'll bet you they would. If not all, at least France.

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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone