Closer look: Iranian Navy

We have to remember that the gulf is very small - carriers and large ships are very vulnerable to quick attack. This plays inthe favor of the Iranian navy with its good quality conventional subs and small misile craft - although it does mean that if the US can base conventional aircraft in the gulf states they can prevent the need for the USN to get involved at all - I'm sure the USN would want to be in there but realistically they aren't the choice asset except as a cruise missile launching asset in the relative safety of the Indian Ocean.


As for rivalling the USN - the Indians, japanese and the chinese could all ruin the USN's day in the right scenarios, though probably wouldn't win a "fair" fight. The good news is that the North Korean navy is a joke even with its many minisubs and submersible boats.

Originally posted by planeman
Ok, I'll chip in with my own opinion based on the current extent of my ongoing research - I won't say too much as I'm going to put together a better threat analysis in the near future.

But the short of it is that the Iranian military, Navy included, cannot and do not expect to beat the US in a conventional shooting war. If the US all-out attacks Iran then most of the Iranian military assets would be destroyed straight off the bat and the remainder, although posing a credible threat far beyond Iraq in 1991, will not be nearly enough to stop the inevitable defeat.

But Iran does poses several weapon systems which would pose the greatest real threat the US military has experienced since Vietnam and we could expect some serious US losses such as carriers.

There are also other "low intensity conflict" scenarios to consider like blockade in support of UN sanctions, limited air strike, no-fly zone enforcement etc. In these scenarios the iranians could truly bloody the US' nose.

Another aspect, is the impact of possible new acquisitions - if Iran does get its hands on anything like S-300PMU2/S-300v/S-400/FT-2000 et al SAMs from Russia or China, we could be looking at a drastic increase in potency.

Nice point taken planeman although the US is well prepared to deal with those SAMS(S300/400 and FT 2000). We could break those no fly zones with our stealth aircraft like our F117.Once the JSF's are out its OVER for all their sams and AC.