Iranian Ship, in Plain View but Shrouded in Mystery, Looks Very Familiar to U.S.
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/09/the-sunburn-mis...
(^ that's quite possibly an overstated opinion piece -- I wouldn't know, I'm not an expert on these things -- but I'm sure there is a kernel of truth there)
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/blogs/aerospace-defense-blo...
http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/irans-carrier-killer-missile-...
I'd bet that the barge was built to test them in a live-fire exercise. Of course, the real question is how well the missile can get past a real carrier's defenses. A barge won't help with that, but the behavior of American carriers after Iran hits the barge might give the answer away.
Understatement of the year (so far).
> I'd bet that the barge was built to test them in a live-fire exercise.
Might as well just use a tanker hulk. Its about as useful as this thing.
> Of course, the real question is how well the missile can get past a real carrier's defenses.
Yes, and the defenses of the rest of the CVBG. And how well the ship's damage control will perform. And how well it will penetrate the actual armor of the ship. And how well the secondary protection systems work at suppressing secondary explosions and fires from fuel and ammunition stores. And the overall success rate of these missiles before factoring in everything else I just mentioned.
Soviet Frontal Aviation's plan for dealing with a US CVBG in the event of a hot war was to hit it with a saturation raid of 100 - 150 Tu-22 Backfire bombers each armed with a pair of Kh-22 (AS-4 Kitchen)[1] anti-ship missiles. The Soviet Navy felt that this level of saturation was required to ensure that the battlegroup's defenses would be sufficiently overwhelmed after accounting for bomber losses, electro-mechanical failures, and missile defense attrition. The Aegis system and F-14/AIM-54 pairing were developed specifically to combat a Frontal Aviation saturation raid. Sea skimmers, which the Kitchen was not, add an extra variable but do not have the range.
The Gulf transit scenario is ludicrous. The US Navy would not sail a CVBG into the Gulf in a war situation where the enemy has significant shore defenses without first suppressing those defenses. This activity would not be nearly as difficult as the badly misinformed author of the first piece seems to think, as finding the installations for launching these missiles is not difficult. If said installations want to have a snowball's chance in hell of finding a target to hit they will need to light it up, even if only briefly. At that point the fire control radar station is getting a HARM up the ass. The rest of the station is going to be fairly hard (though not impossible) to hide as well.
> finding the installations for launching these missiles is not difficult. If said installations want to have a snowball's chance in hell of finding a target to hit they will need to light it up, even if only briefly
Really? I'd have guessed that a carrier group puts out enough radio to locate using a walkie-talkie with a retuned crystal, let alone a purpose-built passive array of any sensitivity.
Of course, there's the NRO to contend with. Iran probably can't move a porta-potty without the NRO knowing, so it doesn't matter how well they hide their installations if they look suspicious putting them in place. But satellites have to put out signals too, and I know for a fact that certain publicly available astronomy-related datasets aren't censored well enough to stop interested parties from finding a large number of things they aren't allowed to know the locations of.
How hard is it to dazzle satellites if you know the location?
"United States Naval Institute in 2009 stated that such a warhead would be large enough to destroy an aircraft carrier in one hit and that there was "currently ... no defense against it" if it worked as theorized."
"The United States Navy has responded by switching its focus from a close blockade force of shallow water vessels to return to building deep water ballistic defense destroyers. The United States has also assigned most of its ballistic missile defense capable ships to the Pacific, extended the BMD program to all Aegis destroyers and increased procurement of SM-3 BMD missiles. The United States also has a large network optimized for tracking ballistic missile launches which may give carrier groups sufficient warning in order to move away from the target area while the missile is in flight."
We've been playing the BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense) game longer than the PRC has been playing the ICBM game....
ADDED: we've got 62 Arleigh Burke class destroyers operating, 8 on order and another 6 planned.
Nope. Not even if doing so saved the lives of twice as many killed.
We'd pick the civilians off piecemeal with drones and other airstrikes, but not a nuke. The former is easy for politicians to justify ("terrorism!"); the latter requires conviction, the ability to plan several moves beyond the immediate crisis, and the capability to coherently explain and justify such actions to the American people.
The individuals at the upper echelons of the civilian and military segments of the U.S. Government at present lack these traits. And this isn't exclusive to any one particular political party.
Maybe not -- if the leadership of the US thought they had a more effective way of both dealing with those directly responsible for the attack and convincing the public that a sufficient response had been made. Of course, that probably wouldn't be any better for the leadership behind the attack than a nuclear strike that had greater collateral damage.
The latter would probably involve several instances of the former.
But seriously, mockup for testing optical image-recognition guided anti-ship missiles, in all weather conditions. Unlike for radar guided missiles, for image recognition systems 'looking like it' is good enough.
Expect the DOD to place an order for 100 inflatable dummy full-scale aircraft carriers.
For example they might wish to profile the radar signature in various wavelengths and from various angles. Carrier groups aren't co-operative to such study.
Regardless, I don't know of an Iranian radar system that is good enough for detailed signature data to be of any use.