Reply #76: Iran is a 3rd world nation. We spend more in defense than their gdp." [View All]

[boricua79]

Yeah, we said that about Iraq too...tell it to the 20,000 or so American soldiers who ride around in wheelchairs, or who are missing half their heads from roadside bombs. Arrogance got us into Vietnam and this war...and in both cases, it netted us losses. Humility is in order.

Don't like Rense...how about this?

http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1048

What France did with Iraq's Republican Guard is irrelevant.

A little reading from that Rense article, since you're too lazy to read it. The Iranians have a missile even more powerful than the Sunburn (Yakhonts), and they have hundreds of Exocents (the same missiles that the Argentinians used to sink 2 ships from Britain.

"The US ships in the Gulf will already have come within range of the Sunburn missiles and the even more-advanced SS-NX-26 Yakhonts missiles, also Russian-made (speed: Mach 2.9; range: 180 miles) deployed by the Iranians along the Gulf's northern shore. Every US ship will be exposed and vulnerable. When the Iranians spring the trap, the entire lake will become a killing field.

Anti-ship cruise missiles are not new, as I've mentioned. Nor have they yet determined the outcome in a conflict. But this is probably only because these horrible weapons have never been deployed in sufficient numbers. At the time of the Falklands war the Argentine air force possessed only five Exocets, yet managed to sink two ships. With enough of them, the Argentineans might have sunk the entire British fleet, and won the war. Although we've never seen a massed attack of cruise missiles, this is exactly what the US Navy could face in the next war in the Gulf.

Try and imagine it if you can: barrage after barrage of Exocet-class missiles, which the Iranians are known to possess in the hundreds, as well as the unstoppable Sunburn and Yakhonts missiles. The questions that our purblind government leaders should be asking themselves, today, if they value what historians will one day write about them, are two: how many of the Russian anti-ship missiles has Putin already supplied to Iran? And: How many more are currently in the pipeline?

In 2001, Jane's Defense Weekly reported that Iran was attempting to acquire anti-ship missiles from Russia. Ominously, the same report also mentioned that the more advanced Yakhonts missile was "optimized for attacks against carrier task forces." Apparently its guidance system is "able to distinguish an aircraft carrier from its escorts." The numbers were not disclosed."