War with Iran?

[Bengalzona]

(06-19-2019, 01:40 PM)Dill Wrote: Couple points and questions to develop this further. First is about what happens BEFORE all communications networks are reduced. What sort of casualties might the US be expected to take? Seems to me that, in contrast to prep for Iraq and Afghanistan, US strategists are focused on their anti-access and areal denial capabilities. They would have to take out buried sites, some as deep as 500 meters.

It is hard to tell. Probably Desert Storm is the best indicator of what casualties to aircrews might be like initially. Iran has better air defense equipment than Iraq had, more modern. But it isn't so modern as to cause great concern. On the ground, a Marine division with possibly some smaller Army support units and some Special Ops teams would probably do the initial strike to seize port and air facilities in the Gulf. Marines live for this type of mission: charging up the beach. They are highly professional and they are the best in the world at it. They haven't had to do an amphibious landing on a contested beach since Inchon back in the Korean War. So, estimating casualties is a bit difficult.

This area is highly defended by the Iranians. It is their "oil lifeline" to the world. This area and Tehran are where they have concentrated most of their heavy defenses (tanks, artillery, air defenses, etc.). This is also where the Iraqi Army was stopped cold during the Iran-Iraq War.

But we are not the Iraqi Army of the 80's. Stealth aircraft would remove most of their radar network and would reduce their air defense efficiency. Cruise missiles would come in to finish up the rest. This would probably occur in a 24 to 72 hour time span. Ground attack aircraft would then be free to roam and target tanks and artillery positions in the area. With the heavy stuff removed, the Marines probably wouldn't face much more than small arms when they storm the beach (much to their disappointment). We would probably have the port facilities and area airfields secured within a week after commencement of operations.

Now if I were an Iranian commander, I would take those rockets we have discussed before and pre-target them on beach locations around the port area. They would not stop the Marines, but in that circumstance they could create the most casualties and shut down the port for awhile..

Quote:Second, the converse of the accuracy problem is that missiles are hard to stop. Some of Iran's rockets, like the Emad, which has a 2000 km range, are supposedly able to hit within 30 meters of a target or explode over them. That would be with a 750 kg payload. Don't these also have internal radar guidance?  If four or five of these strike US ships, no one will care if 5 malfunctioned before striking and 4 were taken out by air defense.

I read somewhere that Iranians might swarm US naval vessels with hundreds of old missiles, exhausting defense measures, then follow that with a wave of guided missiles.  But you think they would be unable to track targets? They do have lots of drones. One followed one of our aircraft carriers for 25 minutes without being detected. And they have friends with satellites to the north and east, don't they? Could they plausibly get access?

I believe claims of an Emad rocket hitting within 30m of a target are Iranian propaganda. As I have mentioned before, there is evidence to support that Iran's rocket resources are not all that they claim them to be.

A 750kg conventional payload would be a nasty hit... if it hit. But their rockets generally do not have radar guidance. They are either artillery rockets or ballistic missiles which do not have the ability to affect course changes once they are launched. That is an ability for a ballistic missile that only the Russians claim to have right now with their Iskander missile. The Iranians do appear to have some cruise missiles (Soumar, based upon the Russian Kh-55) which would have radar or closed circuit guidance. It would have a substantially smaller warhead.

Hitting a moving target with a guided missile is not easy. Hitting it with a rocket is pretty much impossible. On the backdrop of an ocean or sea, a ship is pretty small and hard to find from a long distance. You need to have the recon and surveillance equipment that can find ships at long range. The Iranians would not have this capability in a wartime situation.

Our Navy uses a combination of systems for missile defense: SeaRAM anti-missile missiles, electronic countermeasures, chaff dispensers and the Phalanx anti-missle close-in weapons system. The Phalanx system is an automated Gatling gun and has successfully shot down Iraqi Silkworm missiles in combat. It is effective, automated and can deal with multiple incoming threats from a couple of miles out. Not sure about the SeaRAM. Anti-missile missiles is a hard mission. As rockets and (non-nuclear) ballistic missiles are not effective against ships, we could assume that any swarm attack would be attempted with cruise missles. Cruise missiles are sub-sonic. They travel about as fast as a jet airliner. I'm thinking you wouldn't be able to overwhelm a Phalanx with those.

Iran's gun and missile boats, submarines and cruise missiles are there to threaten unarmed oil tankers and other nations in the region, not to engage with a world power.

Quote:Third, about "owning the skies."  We certainly do over Afghanistan. But we don't over Syria. How would US aircraft fare over SAM-studded Iran?

We don't over Syria only because we chose not to. We didn't want a confrontation with the Russians over it.

In a concentrated effort, we would overwhelm the Iranian air defenses in a few days. We would take casualties in the process. But not so many casualties as to make the mission untenable.

Quote:Fourth, in addition to taking out their air defenses, there is also a navy to worry about, with some 30+ submarines with homing torpedoes and a couple capable of firing missiles from undersea. Planning for asymmetic warfare against an opponent they presume would overwhelm their surface navy quickly, they have developed an array of smaller target ships and submarines to exact heavy pre-landing costs on the potential invader.  Can the US track and target their submarines sufficiently well to take them out before they damage US ships?

Yes. We can absolutely find and destroy all of their submarines within a short amount of time. Our Navy has been designed to fight 'quiet' nuclear Russian subs. They use older, non-nuclear submarines that are generally easy to find. On the off chance that a submarine managed to hide for a short time (say that it stayed underwater for a few days and didn't move), as soon as it fired a torpedo, it would be tracked and destroyed.

Their smaller gunboats and fast missiles boats could prove troublesome. But, once again, once they appear and fire, they are toast. Particularly with our available air resources.

Quote:If I am the Iranian leadership, I know my goal is not to "defeat" the US military, but to exact a cost for defeat that the US would be unwilling to pay. 
Do you think they could do that, given their current forces?

The Iranian commander has a dilemma. He has to attempt to make a stand at the beaches and in the big cities even though his positions there are hopeless. The only thing they can do is to make every effort to slow and bleed the opposing force as much as possible. And I'm sure they will do that. Politics calls for it. But if I were him, I would have learned from the previous U.S. invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would have stockpiled arms and ammo in remote underground caches and dispersed a good portion of the troops to remote mountain locations in order to wage long term guerilla warfare. Most of my planning would have gone into this. Underground tunnel and cave networks would have been created. Plans for clandestine resupply operations with other nations would be made. War of attrition. It is the way of the 21st century.