So for the unitiated this is how the arms race in countries outside the nuclear block go.

Everyone against the US shops at Sminovs Discount Weapons in Ukraine or it's numbering outlets

Everyone for the US shops at Uncle Sams Military discount store located in England or it's numbering outlets

Peace

shhhhhh that doesnt help in portraying Iran as a severe threat to the US...

I learned all I need to know about Sonar playing Red Storm Rising back in 1988.

This just in...Iran has announced that the five lions have come together to form Voltron, the US infidel devils will surely be destroyed. Hahaha. Bow before the power of the mighty Iranian Empire.

/whatever

I'm having a tough time understanding what's "obvious" these days, because I thought this one was a slam dunk non-issue.

yeah, stfu, how will we get away with attacking iran if we haven't used distorted facts to scare the bejesus out of the american people?

if you aren't scared than you are unamerican and doing a disservice to your country

uh if iran doesnt have nuk u lar dual use super secret weapons then how are we supposed liberate them?

And that's not counting the scuttlebut I've been hearing from some navy boys about some ships being tested with underwater "phalanxes" mounted to the underhulls of destroyers that fire supercavitating slugs to deal with this type of thing. I know that their just rumors, but still.....

The Roman Empire wasn't afraid of Hannibal, either...

So much for short, to the point articles.

Yes, considering that we've never had one of these torpedoes fired at us, I'd say there remains a bit of question as to whether an $x-million ship can outrun, out-turn, or outsmart one of these. Especially an oil tanker running the Straits of Hormuz.

It doesn't matter. Bush is already in the "Iran has WMD and they are a imminent threat to attack us" mode.

Yes, considering that we've never had one of these torpedoes fired at us, I'd say there remains a bit of question as to whether an $x-million ship can outrun, out-turn, or outsmart one of these. Especially an oil tanker running the Straits of Hormuz.

Iran is going to shoot an oil tanker????

Isn't that like shooting yourself in the foot???

Wasn't too worried about the Shkvals from Iran until they refered to it as the "flying boat" then it gets into my territory. After they launched it a coupla fridays ago in the Straight of Hormuz & then lost the sucker & still have'nt fround where "we" are hiding it I don't worry about their weaponry as much. But, Sun says to know your enemy so will keep an eye on em. They do have pretty good Aviators from what I've seen. The initial airstrikes will not be a piece of cake. Buzzy.

Anyone wanting to see what a piss-poor military can do to the most advanced military in the world should read up on the Falklands War. The British lost 75% of their invading force to Argentine missiles. Yesterday, Russia agreed to the biggest arms deal in their entire history of dealing with Iran. Mostly anti-aircraft batteries. This is going to be a catastrophe of epic proportions.

And there's absolutely no reason for it whatsoever! Iran is legally within their rights as a signatory to the NPT to enrich uranium for civilian reactors, which are already built and ready for it. This is a complete and total nightmare.

Go ahead and blame Bush, ZipBeep, but it was the "much-loved" United Nations that has been making all the noise about this and took it to the Security Council, NOT the U.S.

Please, if you're going to rewrite history, make it history that's a bit older than a year.

however the iranian's
supersonic cruise missile
they also got from the
russians called the Sunburn
is something to very afraid of

Philo_T_Farnsworth

Best...video game...evar.

Nothin beat laying a few harpoons and Mk48's into a Kiev.

OMG EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!

/or I guess not

Go ahead and blame Bush, ZipBeep, but it was the "much-loved" United Nations that has been making all the noise about this and took it to the Security Council, NOT the U.S.


Oh, please. Bush has been saber-rattling for months now on Iran.

Here's something none of you Neo-Fascists have yet to address - if we strike Iran, they will, absolutely positively will, strike back. Then what?


This is just an excuse to kill more Muslims.

Zagloba: Especially an oil tanker running the Straits of Hormuz.

Yeah, but it's not -that- big a threat. Check this out, instead, as an idea of how life could easily get interesting:
CAPTOR mine

Now that this has been shown to be a complete non issue, I bet it will make it into the next state of the union address...

"We have learned that Iran has recently sought significant quantities of super cavitating torpedoes from africa."

I laugh at your Super'Do and fart in your general direction!

Special new active and passive sonars, advanced signal processing algorithms, and console display modes so sophisticated they're classified are intended to eke out the slightest whiff of an enemy diesel sub concealing itself amid the naturally high background noise to be found in most littoral areas.

That's all very well, but imagine a sub powered not by diesel but by ducks. Thousands upon thousands of powerful ducks. The sonar guys would just think they are approaching a busy park lake, and they wouldn't realise an enemy sub was attacking them until the torpedo hits...
Scared? You should be.

Quack.

czarangelus

I think you're a bit misinformed about the Falklands War. It lasted about 14 weeks, UK suffered 255 casualties. Hardly 75%. UK won handidly, maintaining possession of the islands.

"Yes, considering that we've never had one of these torpedoes fired at us, I'd say there remains a bit of question as to whether an $x-million ship can outrun, out-turn, or outsmart one of these. Especially an oil tanker running the Straits of Hormuz"

You could take out a tanker with a WWI submarine.

"I've warned in earlier essays that if battle at sea does erupt some day, our nation needs to be mentally and militarily prepared to lose some ships and Sailors -- just as the Royal Navy did in the Falklands Crisis in the early '80s."

IOW, the Iranian Navy is not the real threat...air-to-sea weapons are the real threat.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/moskit.htm

Moskit SS-N-22 Sunburn

Moskit is the aircraft variant of the naval missile 3M80 (SS-N-22 Sunburn, the designation 3M80 apparently referring to the Mach 3 speed of 1980 weapons) used on "Sovremennyy" destroyers (eight missiles on each) and on "Tarantul [Tarantula] III patrol ships (four missiles on each). The 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles have the fastest flying speed among all antiship missiles in today's world. It reaches Mach 3 at a high altitude and its maximum low-altitude speed is M2.2, triple the speed of the American Harpoon. When slower missiles, like the French Exocet are used, the maximum theoretical response time for the defending ship is 150-120 seconds. This provides time to launch countermeasures and employ jamming before deploying "hard" defense tactics such as launching missiles and using quick-firing artillery. But the 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles are extremely fast and give the defending side a maximum theoretical response time of merely 25-30 seconds, rendering it extremely difficult employ jamming and countermeasures, let alone fire missiles and quick-firing artillery. The aircraft version, officially called ASM-MMS and apparently also Kh-4, is intended specially for Su-27K (Su-33) carrier-based fighter aircraft. It was for the first time shown to the CIS leaders in February 1992 in Machulishche and then to the public in August 1992 at the Moscow Air Show in Zhukovskiy. The missile is propelled by a dual (rocket-jet) engine operating by the same principle as the Kh-31 engine. The missile, suspended under the aircraft, has a folding wing. The missile is guided by an autopilot during the initial fight stage, with possible correction by the aircraft pilot, and by active radar during the final flight stage.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If the Iranians manage to get a few of these launched, it'll be bad news.

junge altman: however the iranian's
supersonic cruise missile
they also got from the
russians called the Sunburn
is something to very afraid of

Exactly what I was going to say, but you beat me to it. Those are definitely something to fear. If The Chimp starts this shiat with Iran every ship we have in the Persian gulf are sitting ducks.

I understood about three words in that article.




/?????
/I'm stoopid

Tainted1
And that's not counting the scuttlebut I've been hearing from some navy boys about some ships being tested with underwater "phalanxes" mounted to the underhulls of destroyers that fire supercavitating slugs to deal with this type of thing. I know that their just rumors, but still.....

Not rumor, the article mentions these:

So what are the true Mach 1 weapons America is working on?

One of these devices is an anti-torpedo dart, fired underwater by an sonar-aimed gun in a streamlined turret. In a proof-of-concept experiment several years ago, the Naval Undersea Weapons Center Newport Division was able to shoot a dart in a tank at greater than the speed of sound in the surrounding water. Though the dart is not self-propelled, and thus loses velocity (and accuracy) with range, as a close-in defense system against fast (and not so fast) enemy torpedoes it holds great promise.

I read it as "The U.S. Navy has been unafraid of Iran's super-torpedo since it was the Soviet super- TORNADO in the 1970s"

Nothing a good length of strong duct tape can't sort.

/Move along.

akula
The Exocet was a decent missile in its day, but quite honestly, those little toy carriers and the Harriers didn't have the punch they really needed. They got the job done, but a Nimitz-class supercarrier with Aegis cruisers and destroyers is one helluva lot tougher nut to crack.

And the fact that the French government provided the disarming codes to the British Army helped A LOT.

I understood about three words in that article.




/?????
/I'm stoopid

Yes, but you certainly rule.

Zagloba

There are much cheaper weapons to use to sink oil tankers then expensive "super" weapons.


Czarangelus

75% casualties???? You are way off. Please show me where you got this info.

Fear the Iranian army, bent barrels and all.

Good. I was beginning to be not scared. Nice to know the gov't can still be counted on to keep me scared. Who's this guy pretending I shouldn't be scared. Why does he hate America.

From TFA: In that nightmarish scenario, the Shkval with its limited range would amount to a suicide weapon." . . . "A well-aimed spread of such weapons could definitely prove fatal to a big surface ship, say one of our supercarriers, and higher torpedo speed does make up for softness in the firing solution. But as mentioned above, the key to successful defense is to prevent the Shkval's launching vessel from getting close enough to the carrier to begin with."

Um . . . I'm actually still a bit concerned. The article approaches the weapon from the standpoiont that we can detect thier submarine, destroyer or whatever beforehand and blow it up. Also, it assumes the thing wouldn't be wielded by suicide attackers, clandestinely on a small fishing boat, and that it wouldn't have a nuke.

What about Iran makes anyone think any of these situations is not possible?

I'm not saying it's that scary of a weapon in the conventional warfare sense - it's hardly better than an artillery shell, but it could get past a phalanx system.

But if the iranians can mnount it on a small boat and get near a carrier, and any potential close-in countermeasures are still in prototype phase (underwater dart cannons, hull pressure waves), how is that not still scary?

/author stuck in cold war

Time to activate......MECHA-GODZILLA!!!!!

czarangelus


The Roman Empire wasn't afraid of Hannibal, either...


First of all, the Roman Empire was established, officially, by Octavian aka Augustus a couple decades before the birth of Christ. Hannibal had been dead for over 150 years at that point...which was long after his forces were crushed at Zama by Scipio Africanus.

Secondly, the Roman Republic was terrified of Carthage...and rightly so after Trasimene & Cannae. Hell, even after defeating Carthage in the Second Punic War, which stripped Carthage of its Iberian holdings, they were still afraid of Carthage...to the point where they launched a third war to destroy that country once and for all. Marcus Porcius Cato used to end his speaches in the Senate with Delenda est Carthago. So that: "..."the temple of Juno must have the tiles repaired and Carthage must be destroyed, we propose the slums in the Subura be cleared and Carthage must be destroyed."

Yeah, the Romans sure weren't scared of Carthage.

You're better at philosophy.

Iranians are the most abased, embarassed and humiliated people on earth, at least from their own perspective. Think about it.

At one point, the Persian empire was feared from London to Yakutsk. They fielded mighty elephant armies, and dealth death to neighboring Thracians, Dacians and Seluecids with 100,000 man armies backed up by these elephants. There was such a thing as Persian CULTURE. Yet, in the last hundred years, first they were on the wrong side of history, their pre ww2 government making nice with the Nazis, and then they had their fledging democracy unhinged by American and European agents who assassinated the democratic choice of the people, and established the Pahlavi family as the sole authority in a Monarchist (as opposed to a theocratic) state. To aid the Shah, the US helped Pahlavi develop a special police force, known by it's acronym, SAVAK, which, I assure you, make any scene you have seen with Klingons a kid's game. SAVAK's brutality was no less so than the SS or the Gestapo in Germany during the war: they killed ten's of thousands, kidnapped, tortured, controlled the press...etc, etc. Yet, through all this, the Persian/Iranians maintained a well educated middle class. THEN THE MULLAHS TOOK OVER! Now the Persian middle classes live under extremist islamic laws, governed by a madman who uses hatred of foreign enemies (Jews, Christians, Americans and Europeans) to mask his true intentions: the exportation of terror to enforce the practice of Shariah.

If I was Iranian, I would be dealing with a lot of psychic baggage:
1)the Iran/Iraq war killed over 1,000,000 on both sides of the conflict.
2)Khomenei's disciples have enough whorers and closet drinkers to have discredited any claim to legitimacy as guardians of honor.
3)many Iranians over 70 dimly remember a time when their vote counted.
4)Iran has a long standing feud with Russia.
5)Israelis seem to be doing better then they are, yet the Israelis have only been in this basically resourceless area of the world for 75 years, and they have no oil. Talk about galling. After 2000 years of plotting against, denouncing and sometimes killing Jews, The Persian Empire finds that these Jews still control their lands, and they are doing better then they are!

Is it possible to be more humiliated and embarassed? A people that your people (the Persians) enslaved (The Jews) has now made an alliance WITH YOUR ENEMY (the Americans) to KICK YOUR ASS. I know i'd be a little frightened. And if I was paranoid, Like this moron President of Iran, I'd stoke the fact that I hated Jews AND Americans, just in case those two factions might have disliked each other, this President of Iran has sealed the alliance that already existed between Jews, Europeans and Israelis.

Most Jews in America don't support Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, but when lunatics like Ahmadinejab talk about killing all the Jews AND christians, it's pretty likely he's going to START WITH THE JEWS.

Anyway, if I was an Iranian, I'd be pretty embarassed by all of this, and might be so ashamed that, like the germans after ww1, I'd be willing, maybe, to go completely crazy. History in that region, up until very recently, consisted of one empire or another doing massive military campaigns and trying to rest control of large areas from one and other. If history repeats itself, the Persians will "rediscover" some sort of ancient, totemic past, in this case Mohammedism, and then mass large armies to fight long, bloody wars, which is already occurring.

"The weapon is the famous (or infamous) Russian VA-111 Shkval rocket torpedo and its variants, capable of speeds of more than 200 knots underwater. This speed is achieved by the rocket pushing the sharply tapering, flat-tipped torpedo so fast that a vacuum bubble forms around the body of the weapon, greatly reducing water resistance -- the process, for the uninitiated, is called supercavitation."

Is it just me, or does that whole paragraph essentially say "It goes really, really fast by going really, really fast..?"

Question - I'm just a regular joe, right, living it in middle america, having middle class, being middle minded about everything around me. I keep to myself, really, don't even watch media stuff on that TV thing - just play games, go to work, come back home like a good american.

Can I have any tips on what to do to get ready? Buy a lot of canned food or something... I dunno... one of your conspirary people give me a hand, I want to be somewhat prepared...

-_-