Replies

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.

(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.