Posted on 04/19/2010 4:42:17 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Military experts say the Fifth Fleet has come a long way since Iranian gunboats crippled it within hours in a notorious war game five years ago.
In fact, says John Pike, president of the Alexandria, Va.-based Global Security Web site, the Navy was well on its way to solving the challenge of fending off the swarming swift boats before the war game began.
In that test, an enemy "red team" headed by retired Martine Corps Gen. Paul Van Riper deployed the gun boats and propeller-driven suicide planes to paralyze the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
It took Riper less than two hours to knock it out of commission.
Key to the shocking result was Van Riper's strategy of neutralizing the American advantage in big guns and cruise missiles by getting in close before hostilities began.
But the Navy now has the MK 182, “the mother of all shotgun shells,” fired by 5-inch guns deployed on every major ship in the fleet, says Pike.
“To the extent there was a material deficiency” at the time of the 2005 war game, Pike said in an interview, “this took care of it.” The weapon had been under development since 2002, he said.
“The doctrinal problem of when you pull the trigger” still exists, he added.
Over the weekend the New York Times reported that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had warned the White House in a memo that the U.S. did not have sufficient military plans in place to deal with Iran should diplomacy and sanctions fail to blunt its nuclear ambitions.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.washingtonpost.com ...
Ping
That would be the Corps composed of the Martinis?
“Martine Corps Gen. Paul Van Riper”
“Martine” Corps? (Note to the president-the ‘s’ is silent).
This is so silly. With Obama in office, there a better chance of us attacking Canada, than there is of us attacking Iran. Iran could develop a nuke, and destroy Israel without Obama doing so much as sending a strongly worded letter.
If Bush or a republican had come out with some of the dim wit comments like bozo has then they would have been on comedy night and the MSM for months
Obama is saving Iran for his wag the dog moment.
Hopefully something like Federal BlackCloud...
LOL, leave it to the WaPo to put this in the very first line of the article.
Well, if you asked Obama it would be a corpse loaded with martinis.
Yup. Plan A was to turn the country against conservatives and TEA Partiers (overlap), maybe forment a little violence, maybe have a Reichstag fire, and use the crisis to subvert the 2010 election. Plan A is failing. Miserably.
Plan B? Hit Iran in October. After all, they’re Shia/Shi’ite. As a Sunni symp at the least, he’d have zero (pun intended) qualms about doing so. (Indonesia muslims are mostly Sunni).
Yep, a completely "new" idea.
Somehow, "give them a whiff of the MK 182" doesn't have quite the same poetry.
Depends on the rules of engagement whether they'd be used. Can't offend those muzzie voters in Michigan you know.
You got it. Think the worst of Obama and you will be correct every time. He is that bad.
The MSM loves to taunt the US military for every failure—possibly the only part of government whose failures they ever point out.
Except that it wasn’t a failure. They have wargames precisely so that weaknesses can br found. Which is exactly what happened here.
I agree with you
Martini Corps Corpse-men.
That would hurt!
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