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Iran's new Missiles & Torpedoes

The Iranians are upping the ante

By John Burtis
Tuesday, April 4, 2006

The pieces of the puzzle, concerning Iran's ability to project military power, are falling into place. Interestingly, with a view to showcasing their military expertise and to insure that the West, and the United States and Israel in particular, fully realize the futility of military action to halt their nuclear weapons program, the Iranian government has recently unveiled two new offensive systems during a week long series of war games involving 17,000 Revolutionary Guards in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

And just like you do in any poker game, you up the ante before you call.

Last Friday, General Hossein Salami, missile chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, announced the successful test of a 1,250 mile ICBM with a MIRV capability, capable of striking Israel and regional US bases.

The missile, called the Fajr-3, is most likely based on the multi-stage Shahab missile, and will probably carry 3 multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRV's) with either a conventional, biological or chemical, or a nuclear warhead. The nuclear throw weight for each warhead will probably be in the 10 to 20 kiloton range, depending on the efficiency of the boosters, the number of stages, the warhead's technology and sophistication and the circular error probability of the warhead.

More bad news and a few more puzzle pieces trickled in on Sunday when General Ali Fadavi, the deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards Navy, broadcast news of the second successful test of a major offensive weapons system in as many days when he explained that the Hoot, a 223 mile per hour rocket propelled torpedo, had been fired, striking a surface ship. The Hoot compares favorably, as far as can be seen at present, with the Russian VA-111 Shkval, a similar weapon developed in the mid-1990s.

Unfortunately - falling under the loose ships sink ships category, which makes the Hoot a particularly deadly weapon for US forces, especially to aircraft carriers operating in the confined areas located in the vicinity - the New Wars blog-site carries a story on how to sink a carrier, which surfaced courtesy of a naïve US Naval officer who let the whole thing slip to a Chinese counterpart during a good will visit. Sometime later the Chinese were seen busily buying wake-following Russian torpedoes. The Iranians will not be too far behind in this technology and the Hoot may be their weapon of choice.

The Iranians are letting us know, in no uncertain terms, that any attempt to bloody their noses over their nuclear weapons program will result in considerable casualties to the forces involved in the incursion.

They are also announcing the high level of sophistication which they now possess in science of defense, just as they are alerting their populace to their depth of control. The Iranian government is also solidifying their tactical area of operations, wherein they can operate freely — arming and training terrorists, setting up the financial instruments to fund their own enterprises and those of terror, the freedom to operate their oil fields without international interference, the ability to govern harshly or to put down civil unrest if necessary, without having to answer to the malcontents at the UN and other human rights groups. And these weapons and their delivery systems may also provide Iran with the ability to extort some local blackmail, in lands, minerals, favorable local treaties and in the type of political meddling already seen in Iraq.

Oil money is financing Iran's military build-up at an astounding rate. And their latest series of operations with paratroopers, warships, helicopters, interceptors and ground attack planes, and electronic countermeasures indicate this sophistication as no other activity can.

Iran is rapidly becoming the Middle Eastern power house with something that its larger neighbors - Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan — appear to lack, the will to fight.

The Iranians are also hoping that the credible lack of Western resolve can be further hindered by these war games and the revelations of new and more highly potent offensive weapon systems.

Napoleon spoke of a whiff of grapeshot to break up a Parisian mob, while the Japanese spoke of the need for just a brush of the mailed sleeve to eject the Americans from Guadalcanal. Napoleon was right, the Japanese were wrong — how will the dice bounce for the Revolutionary Guards and the United States?

Remember that we were the underdogs at Guadalcanal. That we defeated a superior, battle tested and more technically advanced — for 1942 — foe. And imagine if we enter this conflict and quit the seas in defeat after the loss of a few capital ships and aircraft, including an aircraft carrier.

Recall the massive amount of blood and treasure lost to the predations of the kamikaze attacks on the US fleet during the waning days of the Pacific conflict. Then imagine a similar, but extremely rapid and highly automated, conflict with these systems in the hands of Quran driven kamikazes today, and the resulting casualties.

Perhaps they're right and Iran will obtain the nuclear weapons needed to arm the Fajr-3 and bring Israel, their regional neighbors and the nearby US bases under their umbrella. Perhaps they're wrong and the whole place will go up in flames.

Unless the Iranians are stopped or slowed mightily, or unless their current regime is changed from within, their programs will continue, their missiles will grow larger, with ever greater throw weights, with longer ranges and with a greater production capacity.

And where will their growing anti-Semitism, their wilder and more inflammatory rhetoric, combined with nuclear weapons lead us?

But if the Iranians succeed with their programs and we sell the farm back to the pigeon-hearted appeasement prone Democrats, their grand plan will finally be in place and they will have many more reasons to rejoice in their bastion.

We can't ante up forever. Someday we're going to have to call, or get out of the game.


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