Quote from achilles28:
It'll be a short war. I doubt the USN would need more than 4 hours to sink the entire Iranian Navy. Scared, yet?
Don't be so sure...
I did an analysis of this conflict scenario⦠Any USN personnel hereâ¦? Iâve never been in any of the services⦠So Iâm just doing this from an armchair perspective. Anyway, the way I see it the ships themselves donât matter much, itâs whatâs on them that counts. So as things stand, this battle will be won after an exchange of missile fire. The Iranian navy has plenty of capable anti-ship and surface to air missilesâ¦
Here is the thing⦠The Iranians have a significant advantage over the US 5th Fleet at the âStrait of Hormuzâ. It is only about 34 miles wide at its narrowest meaning that large numbers of land based missiles can be brought to bear against the US fleet.
The most worrisome of these anti-ship missiles are the new Qader missiles reported to be radar evading and with a range of about 200 km⦠This missile may be able to penetrate Aegis. Iran will probably be able to keep the US fleet out of missile range. So the US 5th fleet will have to stay at a distance of about 200 km.
This leaves the US with basically two options⦠Tomahawk strikes and airplane strikes on the land missile batteries after which the US surface fleet will be able to knock out the Iranian navy.
The problem is that the Iranians posses plenty of surface to air (SA) missiles that are capable of shooting down Tomahawks. Like the MIM Hawk 23 and the Tor⦠Iran also has about 200 S-200 SA missiles and is reported to have about 4 S-300. Also, Iran has quite a few Iranian made missiles of various capabilities⦠If Iran does have the S-300 it may very well be able to see stealth bombers and stealth fighters. The incident with the RQ-170 unmanned aerial stealth drone is worrisome.
Finding the land based anti-ship missiles is also very difficult and I donât think that sending in SEALs will help as the Iranians will be on the lookout for that with their own special forces. It is also hard to tell if littoral action can be taken by US submarines considering the capabilities of the Kilo class, the other Iranian made subs and the Iranian surface navy on patrol.
From an offensive point of view the Iranians canât do much⦠Their only hope is to probably sneak a Kilo class sub close to the aircraft carrier and to fire some torpedoes but I donât see that happening. There isnât much that they can do offensively but they can definitely mine and close the Strait of Hormuz and hold for some time. In fact, I donât think that the US 5th Fleet can open it again if the Iranians close it.
