Iran's Arsenal Of Sunburn Missiles Is More Than Enough To Close The Strait

[Owlet]

"Any good armchair general with a good search engine and time on their 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 a crock. Yet, this big Orwellian lie persists, so once again I have 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."




Read more: http://www.wallstreetexaminer.com/blogs/winter/?p=4519#ixzz1luHbvjQ1

[leveymg]

1. Iran only has (at most) a handful of those, but hundreds of Exocet clones.

And, one of them did this to the HMS Sheffield:

[Old and In the Way]

3. Wasn't these missiles tipped with DU and the heat reaction literally melted the aluminum alloy hull?

[leveymg]

6. The USS Stark, an all-steel vessel, didn't do too much better against the same Exocet-type missile

[Old and In the Way]

2. They might be able to pull off a devestating first strike.

If they were to launch a "all in" first strike without warning. But that would almost guarantee immediate annihilation, a "suicide by cop" on a national scale. Is Iran that crazy? I doubt it. What scares me, though, is a single person could light off a missile and that act could set off an unstoppable escalation before human intervention could react and allow cooler thinking to prevail. While we might have rights to transit in this international space, we are literally in Iran's backyard. Both sides must be on hair trigger alert - a Sunburn missile launched from Iranian territory could reach the 5th Fleet in 15 seconds. One miscommunication, one misinterpretation of sigintel, or a sociopath deciding to unilaterally launch his weapon could start the whole conflagration without either side actually wanting this to happen.

[leveymg]

4. Hair-trigger escalation following an isolated event is precisely the scenario I predicted in 2008.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/359

[ronnie624]

5. Yeah, but with the Iranians cornered in their own country,

there's only one way to ratchet down the tension.

I'll bet I know which side has the "miscommunication" and which has the "sociopath".