Yeah, and you can see in the video how they either did or nearly did fire into their own formation. Multiple times. Firing an essentially unguided rocket from a moving high speed platform is generally wasteful of ordinance. Doing it while in the middle of a formation where you are not the lead vessel or all abreast is dangerously reckless.
Their whole battle plan of “Everyone line up abreast and let’s do a Hollywood style Naval cavalry charge!” IS going to evaporate as the Carrier and/or it’s escorts begin to light them up. Assuming that Allah and the US Navy actually lets them get within the 1000yd range of these rockets. Which I’m not placing MY money on, TYVM.
I encourage the Iranian military to make this attack the premiere tactic of their naval warfare strategy. And I think pretty much every Navy person I know would join me in enthusiastically encouraging them to plan to use this as often as possible. Because it’s going to work out about as well as the Charge of the Light Brigade. Scratch that. It’s not even going to go THAT well for the Iranians.
Finally, the USS Cole was not swarmed. She was suicide rushed in a fixed position (at stop while under refueling) with little perimeter security in place and no intelligence that an attack was likely. The vulnerabilities exposed were: Not having enough perimeter security people in place and the ships security forces not having authorization to fire once a certain perimeter point was breached and instead needing to wait for authorization from the Captain or other Officer. That has since been corrected.
The complete destruction of Iran’s Navy and Air Force and a sustained bombing campaign to destroy every known or suspected nuclear research site, intelligence site, or primary gov’t/military site. Here’s a neat-o map that kinda explains what direction the attacks will come from.
Pretty much every point of the compass. You think any country in the region is going to deny the US strike back operations from the bases on their soil? From their perspective we’re doing them a huge favor.
Pretty much EVERYTHING in a country’s arsenal becomes more or less useless if nukes start being thrown around. That, and nobody’s actually demonstrated an ability to hit a carrier going 25+ knots with any kind of ballistic missile, so I’ll believe that when I see it. In other words, those two things aren’t as relevant as you seem to think.
So we’re back to conventional naval war. And carriers are still the most potent naval platforms out there for that sort of thing. Carriers also have the benefit of versatility; their air wings can be used for ground attack as well as conventional naval warfare.
Plus I think you’re overestimating the USAF’s capabilities. Yes, you can stage to bases nearby, but that takes time. Usually longer than sailing one of the 10 carrier battle groups nearby and starting flight operations. And that’s the point; we keep carriers at sea and near potential hot spots, and in case of trouble, we have an entire 90 plane carrier air wing on the spot ready to go. You can’t roll up a USAF air wing and move it to a closer base in an equivalent amount of time, and you definitely can’t do it for multiple ones at the same time, like you can carriers.
The thing we’re all snickering about is that a successful attack against an actual aircraft carrier (at speed, with the protection of its escorts and air wing) far exceed the deed accomplished here.
The Pearl Harbor comparison is a bit flawed because the ships hit in that attack were moored, mostly with cold boilers (so, entirely immobile). Compare to the Battle of Midway a few months later where pilots on both sides faced considerable difficulty in successfully laying in an attack on heavily defended (and evading) enemy ships. Out of five waves of American torpedo bombers on the first day of fighting, zero successful attacks were made (and three of the four squadrons involved in the torpedo attacks were effectively destroyed for their trouble).
So yes, if the Iranians managed to unleash their speedboats within a habor where an American carrier is based while the ship is tied up to the pier, I have no doubt they’d manage to cause considerable damage. It’s just hard to imagine a set of circumstances where they’d find themselves in that situation.
Ah, Magiver. Ever so reliable about understanding military logistics and the realities of war. OK, let’s see how many ways you’re so very wrong :
drop tanks means less ordnance carried. Less ordnance means less mission-based boom boom. Long flight times also means less hover-time on target, which is bad for missions such as “just be ready to drop a 1000 pounder should the squishies spot somebody looking at them funny or something”
transcontinental flight takes double digit hours. Impractical for supporting ground operations that may or may not be launched depending on intelligence that may or may not be good for the next hour or so ; or to repel surprise attacks on ground forces. In war, shit happens fast.
transcontinental flight takes double digit hours, which means a given plane can fly at most one mission a day from the States, or two-three from some distant base, as opposed to 6 or 8 a day from an aircraft carrier parked right next to the hot place.
transcontinental flight takes double digit hours, and in-flight refueling is pretty intense and nerve wracking, which means the pilot would arrive at the hot zone already knackered. While military meth is certainly a thing, you can only push a body so much, for so long. And I’m not sure you really want the flyboys hopped up on more than their own egos on a routine basis.
tankers can not just stay in the air forever. The US doesn’t have infinite tankers.
the US military, or any military, do not have infinite fuel stores. Cost-effective, including transcontinental flight in every mission is emphatically not.
if pilots have to ditch out for one reason or another, it’s really neat to have a bunch of rescue helicopters and medical personnel and aggro Marines somewhat close, such as on a big floating rivet city 30 minutes away. For that matter, it also helps to not include flight over thousands of miles of empty sea where any mechanical problem means a pilot freezing to death long before any sort of rescue could conceivably reach them.
I know lawndart jockeys make it look easy and all, but in-flight refueling is actually *really *fucking hard and dangerous to pull off. Your plan involves two more points of possible horrible fuck-up per combat mission - by definition something that has a really low fuck-up tolerance to begin with. If I’m honest, a carrier landing also rates pretty high on the sphincter-puckering scale, but that’s still one less Crazy Stunt point than your plan. Also one that takes place right next to the rescue crue.
if the tanker has a problem, you could wind up with the whole flight of jets ditching. Cost-efficiency !
you can’t just have a lone tanker doing donuts in the sky on its own. They need protection, too. That’s more jets in the air, more fuel wasted, more stress on airframes, more maintenance costs…
air warfare is highly dependant on the weather. Including double digit hours travel time increases the chances of the weather on target turning to unworkable soup. Also increases the chance of shit weather between you and the target scrapping the whole mission altogether - storm or shitty visibility at the refuel points for example.
the US bases “all over the world” don’t have full combat wings ready at a moment’s notice complete with all the concomitant ground crews and ample munition *or *fuel stocks. This isn’t the Cold War when Europe was riddled with ammo dumps all keyed up for Armageddon. They’re also highly dependant on the host nations’ good will, which pretty much means having to suck their cocks forever. Also not being involved in a fight against guys they happen to like.
do you want the Navy to sulk ? Well, do you ?
And that’s just off the top of my Tom Clancy, I’m sure an actual Air Force guy would add a dozen more points…
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
“There are four Raytheon / General Dynamics 20mm Phalanx six-barrelled Mk 15 close-in weapon systems which have a firing rate of 3,000 rounds/min and a range of 1.5km.”
Those alone would pretty well destroy small boats, would they not?
[/QUOTE]
Depends how far down they can depress. These things are made to shoot down missiles - even if their software actually includes a toggle to shoot at things that are much bigger and much slower than what they’re really meant for, they’re sitting on a very high deck, so there might be a dead angle.
There’s also the fact that there’s only four of them, with only so much ammunition per. Which means there’s always going to be a swarm large enough to overwhelm them. Throw enough spaghetti at the wall of lead, eventually somewill stick. Just sucks to be all the *other *spaghetti I suppose.
They also have the RAM missiles, which are anti-cruise missile, anti-aircraft and anti “small surface threats”, which sounds exactly like these little Iranian boats.
Plus, a swarm of speedboats would have to make it through the escort destroyers, which have 5" guns, 25mm cannons and 50 caliber machine guns, all of which would seriously chew up one of those speedboats, if not sink it outright.
That’s assuming they didn’t already light up the boats with AGM-119 Penguin missiles, Maverick missiles and cluster bombs well prior to the escort engagement range.
From Wiki only the latest variant can target surface craft. The good news is those upgrades are scheduled to be complete by this year so likely a carrier would have them. Effective range is up to 3.6km and they’ve increased ammo storage.
Downside is they also increased ROF and that increased storage is only 1,550 rounds (just over 20seconds of firing). The standard round is a kinetic energy round with a subcaliber projectile. It’s more than enough to penetrate a speed boat but it doesn’t go boom and the holes are smaller than 20mm. A burst with a couple dozen of those wreck a small unarmored boat but unless you get a secondary explosion from the carried armament it’s not a catastrophic kill. It still looks kind of like a target.
The CIWS still needs to do it’s primary job if things get to the point targets are in range. A knife fight with small boats while shore and air based anti-shipping weapons need to be dealt with simultaneously by the battle group is about the most challenging threat the Iranians can pose to the carrier group. I can’t say I blame them for trying to perfect the technique.
I also can’t say I’d want to ride in one of those little freaking speed boats. It’s only slightly less suicidal then the old kamikaze pilots.
Good grief, AK84, are you on acid or something? For starters the perception many may have that Iran is not exactly a mecca for the production of forestry products doesn’t make them xenophobic. Arborealphobic? Hell, even that’s a stretch, not to mention an absurd concept.
If you’re gonna make such a silly issue of it, Iran’s relatively low (50th in volume) 6.72% of the country where some measure of forest can be recorded is just slightly ahead of Mongolia. By comparison Canada and the US are at around 31%. You post some Wiki numbers, kinda useless without context really, about the acres of “scattered” and “desert forest”, etc., presumably to imply that the country has an abundance of processed timber. The small Caspian region does produce some. But the exact same paragraph in YOUR quote goes on to say " Although forests and pastures are nationalized and 12 percent of forested land is nominally protected, forest destruction by the private sector is routine.[37] Limited forest areas, mismanagement, and destruction have compelled Iran to import lumber and wood products. In addition, forest fires destroy 20,000 hectares of forest area each year.[37] Between 1954 and 2004, an estimated 41 percent of Iran’s forest land was lost."
If you’re going to initiate such a silly argument, at least be honest in your assessment. You saw facts to the contrary but went ahead with a deceptive screed. Bad form really.
Finally, sometimes a thought is just a thought and a post just a post. My comment wasn’t intended as a “wisecrack”, not that there won’t be an assload in the future, and if you’re hellbent on finding amusement in the board’s content I suggest you perhaps read more of your own comments. While I’ve never noticed you and know nothing of your posts, the one above is a bit of a joke.
