Iran Publicly Boasts Of Attack Plan Against The US Navy

Iran Publicly Boasts Of Attack Plan Against The US Navy

The Aviationist
DAVID CENCIOTTI, THE AVIATIONIST
MAY 22, 2014, 5:58 PM


The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), the branch of Iran’s military whose role is to protect Tehran’s Islamic system, has published on Twitter an interesting drawing showing how they imagine an attack on an enemy warship entering the Persian Gulf.
The plan is to use several different weapons systems in a coordinated attack, opened by high speed boats to create a diversion.

According to Good Morning Iran blog, who translated the text accompanying the rendering, the plan assumes that Iranian high speed boats, equipped with missiles and mines — and disguising themselves as normal fishing boats — would carry out an initial attack against the enemy ship.

While facing the boats, the U.S. warship would be attacked by Iranian submarines, backed by IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) warplanes, including some F-14 Tomcat jets with indigenous modifications (most likely providing some sort of air superiority in the vicinity), followed by ballistic missiles.

The latter could be the two types showcased during an exhibition held by the IRGC on May 11.

The new home-made ballistic missiles, an upgraded version of the solid-fuel, supersonic Iranian anti-ship missile dubbed Persian Gulf equipped with a 650-kg warhead, are dubbed Hormuz 1 and Hormuz 2.

Both missiles are believed to be more powerful than the Persian Gulf, with the Hormuz 1 being an anti-radar missile with a range of 300 kilometers.

That said, the plan is obviously quite optimistic, as it considers a U.S. warship as an isolated unit, whereas the latter may operate within a large, powerful and very well defended Carrier Strike Group, which includes an aircraft carrier, destroyers, supporting vessels and, often, a nuclear submarine, whose task is, among the others, to defend the Group from underwater attacks.

Anyway, the plan and the mock aircraft carrier being built by Iran are a sign Tehran is focusing on developing tactics to defeat the U.S. Navy in the Gulf. Not an easy task though.

Update May 23, 2014, 22.20 GMT:

A reader has found that the image posted by the Pasdaran on Twitter is an infographic posted in the past by the Wall Street Journal. IRGC replaced the English text with Farsi: therefore, even if it’s not their original work, the fact they translated and published it on Twitter means they consider it accurate and most probably coherent with their plan.

This article originally appeared at The Aviationist. Copyright 2014. Follow The Aviationist on Twitter.