Posted on 01/01/2012 8:46:01 AM PST by nuconvert
Iran test-fired a new medium-range missile, designed to evade radars, on Sunday during the last days of its naval drill in the Gulf, the official IRNA news agency quoted a military official as saying.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Fire back!!!
Their launchers aren’t very stealthy.
Shows the value of pre-emptive strikes.
Amanutjob: “Abdul? How’d the test firing go?”
Adbul: “We couldn’t get it to work.”
Amanutjob:”That’s ok. We’ll just tell everyone it worked and their radar just couldn’t pick it up!”
Yahoo-Obama dutifully boasting about the kenyan’s allies.
And al-Reuters was breaking out the pom-poms at the launch site.
The Air Force calls the “pre-boost phase” missile defense! ;-)
they still make a thermal signature...
Where do you buy that wheel and tire combo? Maybe I’ll get a set for the Mustang.
They painted on the ailerons. Hinges must be beyond them.
Is that “military-grade wrapping” on the tires?
I assume they don’t want to fry a working Mercedes Unimog truck with a missile launch.
They’ll save the functional trucks for war shots. That’s my guess.
See 13.
Look, it is a SAM. That means it's primary mission is to launch from a surface craft (or maybe there is a road-mobile version) and intercept aircraft or another inbound missile. The spokesman touts its resistance to jamming and others tout its alleged radar evading technology.
Let's look at the alleged radar evading technology first. The first question you'd ask is why bother? Inbound missiles (eg. anti-ship, ballistic, cruise, etc.) don't care. They typically use stealth technologies themselves and/or a combination of speed and altitude to make themselves hard to engage. But they don't care about the radar properties of a SAM fired to intercept them. Or consider an inbound aircraft. When they detect a SAM fired at them they typically use a combination of active jamming, chaff, flares, and maneuver to try to evade the SAM. Again though, they don't really care about the radar reflecting properties of the SAM. Detection of a firing is typically from their radar warning receivers - a change is the signal characteristics from the radar guiding the missiles - or visually.
And then there is the whole claim of stealthiness to begin with. A boosting missile has a huge signature. Visual, infra-red... Many solid fuels have metallic components - you can probably get a radar return from the flame/smoke plume. They also have moderately large fins for aerodynamic control. These are big radar reflectors. Even coated with RAM, there has to be a seam where fin meets airframe - a discontinuity that produces reflections. I think it is probably nearly impossible to hide a missile (any missile) in boost phase.
Consider the other claim, about jamming resistance. That implies it is radar guided. What's the point of stealthing a missile if you're going to light up your target and basically tell them you're launching on them? The target aircraft is going to immediately begin evasion, doesn't even need to detect the launch. Besides, if it is radar guided, that means there is a radar antenna on the missile to pick up radar energy - either active (missile emits and receives) or semi-active (ground station emits, missile receives). Guess what, radar antennas are the least stealthy components you can imagine. You light up an aircraft with radar, it knows it is in trouble. You point an inbound SAM at it, reading reflections, and the aircraft's radar is going to be looking right at the antenna of the inbound SAM. You're not going to hide that.
Seems to me it would be kinda pointless to put too much effort into stealthing a SAM. Then again, just about anyone can claim they've incorporated radar evading technologies or design into anything. Picture a design meeting "Should we go with option A or B for feature X?" "Well, all other things being equal, let's go with A, it helps RCS." Viola, you just made a design decision based on radar properties, you can now claim you've (at least partially, minimally) "stealthed" your missile. Big whoop. Could be a simple as the radius of the curve on the corner of a tail fin, reducing the overall RCS by 0.0001%. But hey, the marketing/mouthpieces can say they're incorporating radar evading technologies... Even if it tactically makes no sense.
Here’s how this works:
- We have a pretty good idea were most of these are, at any given time.
- We don’t have to hit them all to send a strong message
- These wouldn’t be our only targets
- Without command and control, they have difficulty acquiring targets
- Their track record on accuracy is pitiful, even with Russian and Chinese assistance.
- The corresponding political disruption could easily be sufficient to undermine the radicals
- The opportunity to simultaneously damage their nuclear capacity would be worth it.
Secondly, Reuters identifies the object below as a cruise missile. Ah, looks like a torpedo to me.
Caption: An Iranian warship launches a missile in an unknown location in this still image taken from footage released by Islamic Republic of Iran News Network on January 1, 2012. REUTERS/IRINN via Reuters TV
It's an underwater missile! /al-Reuters>
Cheers!
(1940)
Here’s how this works:
-We have a pretty good idea were most of these Japanese warships are, at any given time.
- We don’t have to hit them all to send a strong message
- These wouldn’t be our only targets
- Without command and control, they have difficulty acquiring targets
- Their track record on accuracy is pitiful.
- The corresponding political disruption could easily be sufficient to undermine the radicals
Your reply sounds like the kind of overarching hubris that led to Dec. 7th, 1941. Or short time later, when the might British dreadnaughts Prince of Wales and Repulse sallied forth from Singapore to disrupt the Japanese invasion of Malaysia.
Don’t make the mistake of applying Western thinking and logic to Iranians who are hell-bent on starting the final war between islam and the rest of us. They don’t have to sink our warships to obtain their goals, all they need to do is instigate a state of war in the region, leading to the cancellation of insurance policies. Firing a silkworm missile every few days is all they need to do. OTOH, we need to positively destroy every single missile battery, and with 100s of them spread over thousands of square miles, this would be an astronomically more difficult proposition.
It takes just a fraction of the time for Iran’s horizontally launched, solid-fueled ASCMs to be launched than the Iraqi SCUDs we could not find or destroy during Desert Storm. The Iraqis were still erecting, fueling and firing giant SCUDs up to the last days of Desert Storm.
And it’s also foolish to think that disrupting Iranian C&C would stop the ASCMs from being fired. The Iranians are not stupid. They know we would attempt to jam or spoof their C&C, so they would have “sealed order” contingency plans. “Wait until day 35 (or 15, or 80) after the war begins, then roll out of your cave and fire at any target of opportunity.”
All they need to do is wait in their caves, eating Iranian MREs, until their day. All they need for targeting is binoculars. All they need to do to “win” is launch missiles. Hitting tankers or warships would just be a bonus. Their goal is just to create “a state of war” to cancel the insurance of the tankers. It’s “asymmetrical warfare” at its most asymmetrical.
Looks to me like all they did was burn a truck up.
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