Big friggin' deal. Iran has had Chineese Silkworm antiship missiles covering the Strait of Hormuz for over 20 years.
Yo-Yo, this isn't a Silkworm, its a whole different breed. Its a 3000 mile range cruise missile, similar to our Tomahawk, and it can hit Japan. If it can hit Japan it can take out every US military base in the region, including Diego Garcia.
But those are relatively short range, and primarily anti-ship. The new bird is much longer ranged and has both anti-ship and land attack variants.
Let me try and put this into perspective. Let's say we decide to attack Iran before they can fully go nuclear.
Chances are they already have enough uranium to pack all 12 of these missles with radioactive material, even without them being able to be detonated into a nuclear explosion.
Since these missles can be launched from the air, their air force could easily fly to the bottom tip of the Spain in the gulf and into range of NYC. When launched, those missles would reach NYC in 20 minutes, no time for an evacuation and no way to stop them, they are supersonic. They could also be used to attack all of our major bases in Iraqi with radioactive, biological or chemical material. THIS IS A BIG DEAL.
Here's your "big frigging deal":
Ukraine probes fate of nuclear arsenal
By Tom Warner in Kiev
Published: March 23 2005 02:00 | Last updated: March 23 2005 02:00
Ukraine is investigating what became of its cold war nuclear arsenal in response to revelations that at least 18 unloaded cruise missiles were smuggled to Iran and China in 2001.
Petro Poroshenko, secretary of Ukraine's National Security Council, said he had ordered the Defence Ministry and SBU secret police to make a full account of the arsenal, which was supposed to have been destroyed or transferred to Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Mr Poroshenko also promised an "objective, unprejudiced and transparent" investigation of the smuggling case and a review and strengthening of arms-export controls "in order to rule out any recurrence".
However, he said it was up to the judge to decide whether to lift a secrecy order on the trial of one of the smuggling suspects.
Two men were arrested and accused of smuggling the missiles last year, but the case was kept secret until after the pro-western government of Viktor Yushchenko took power in January. One of the men, Russian businessman Oleg Orlov, was arrested last July in the Czech Republic, where he is being held in prison pending a hearing on Ukraine's extradition request.
Mr Poroshenko stressed that the missile sales were not official policy. "We're not talking about a crime carried out by the state of Ukraine. There's no evidence that this sale was sanctioned," he said.
Kishichiro Amae, Japan's ambassador to Ukraine, said the case was "stunning" because he thought Ukraine had completely disposed of its former nuclear arsenal. The only known exceptions were a well monitored programme in which inter-continental ballistic missiles were converted into commercial satellite launch vehicles and a small number of missiles turned into museum pieces.
The X-55s missiles allegedly exported to Iran and China are considered particularly dangerous because they can fly up to 3,000km and avoid detection by most radar. They were designed to carry a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead. These were stripped out and handed over to Russia years before the smuggling incident, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general.
The X-55 has been converted to carry conventional warheads by Russia but most nuclear bombs, especially primitive ones, would be too big for its payload.
A Defence Ministry spokesman said 483 X-55s had been destroyed under a US-funded disarmament programme but declined to say how many were in the arsenal Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union or how many were left.
According to a member of the Ukrainian parliament who first publicised the case last month, the Defence Ministry reported that it had destroyed the missiles but had actually turned them over to the state arms export company, which sold them to the smugglers.
Ukrainian specialists were sent to Iran to help install the missiles, according to the MP.