A Must, Must Read

[metalman]

Re: A Must, Must Read

After reading your article on the Sunburn missile and its capabilities against U.S. ships, I have shipped my pants.

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9144

[Ghent12]

Re: A Must, Must Read

After reading your article on the Sunburn missile and its capabilities against U.S. ships, I have shipped my pants.

Yeah, part of the problem of having the world's only global Navy is that everyone builds things designed to exploit all of your weaknesses. War with Iran would almost certainly be the very last effort of the American Empire. Not that America would lose its nation, just the last of its willing blood and treasure. C'est la vie.

[ASH]

Re: A Must, Must Read

Steve, you are wrong about how easy it would be to damage Iran's nuclear facilities. I have read that they are so far underground that even bunker-busting bombs would not damage them much.

The point is debatable. You don't have to get every nuclear facility -- you can probably settle for getting the enrichment plant, which is hard to disperse effectively and maintain any type of production scale. Also, burying the facility by collapsing access tunnels and severing power and air could also do some good.

From an earlier thread on the same topic:

This link has some information on the main enrichment facility at Natanz, which is the facility that Israel and the United States are most concerned about.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran -- an exile group -- revealed the existence of a secret nuclear facility at Natanz at a press conference in 2002. The International Atomic Energy Agency has visited the site more than once since its existence was revealed, and the NCRI turned out to be correct about the nature of the facility.

The NCRI claims that the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) complex is built 8 meters-deep into the ground and protected by a concrete wall 2.5 meters thick, itself protected by another concrete wall. The construction of the enrichment complex was watched by satellites, and it is believed that by mid-2004 the Natanz centrifuge facility was hardened with a roof of several meters of reinforced concrete and buried under a layer of earth some 75 feet deep.

So, we're talking more like 25-30 meters or soil plus a thick concrete roof, rather than 1 km. Even so, that's at the outside range of what a conventional bunker-buster bomb can do. Supposedly, the new massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) can penetrate up to 200 feet of soil (60 meters) before punching through a concrete roof but some analysts say this soil penetration estimate is optimistic. More importantly, the MOP is too big for tactical aircraft to carry, and I don't think Israel has any strategic bombers. To the best of my knowledge, the only bunker-buster that Israel has is the GBU-28, which should be able to penetrate 30 meters of soil and 6 meters of concrete.

So... my guess is that Israel thinks it can get the job done with the GBU-28, and Uncle Sam is planning to try the MOP later if Israel doesn't succeed.

I think the recent revelation about a second uranium enrichment facility, sited deeper in a mountain, may indicate that Iran is aware that Nataz is inadequately hardened.

I am not one who thinks an attack on Iran is imminent. However, I think that if one comes from the US, a strike on Nataz would be successful; don't know about that second enrichment site in the mountain.

[Starving Steve]

Re: A Must, Must Read

The amazing story here I think is that for 31 years, the appeasers have let the regime in Iran fester to this point. Shame on the UN !!!:rolleyes:

[Mn_Mark]

Re: A Must, Must Read

I can't see Obama attacking Iran. Everything he said during the campaign and before suggests he sees the U.N. and diplomacy as the moral way to deal with such things. And I don't see the U.N. authorizing a military strike on Iran. Obama will never get finished exploring non-military options. He may get sanctions imposed on Iran, but my sense is that the Iranian leaders are determined to have a nuclear arsenal and mere economic sanctions will not stop them. They may take a page from North Korea's book and agree to talks, etc, in order to stall, but they won't stop building the weapons.

Obama is a talker. That's the soul of what he believes in. He was one of the few Senators to vote against invading Iraq back when even Kerry was voting for it. He will put his hopes in stern words, blue-ribbon panels, U.N. resolutions, economic sanctions, diplomacy, talking, stern talking, VERY stern talking...until the day the Iranian leadership proudly announces that they have a nuclear arsenal.

If he DID decide to attack Iran, it would be an act of war. How would Iran react? Would they attack shipping in the Persion Gulf? Would it bring Iranian society together in a united front against us? And history suggests that leaders who instinctively shy away from a military solution tend to make poor decisions when they do go the military route. They push too hard or put too little into the effort...they don't have a sense of how to handle it. I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's disasterous attempt to free the hostages back in 1980 with a military mission that ended up crashed in a dust storm in the Iranian desert.

So I figure Iran WILL get nuclear weapons. What happens then, who knows...it probably depends partly on how the Iranian people react, and partly on how truly fanatical the Iranian leadership is. If Ahmadinijad truly believes that there is a "mahdi" in a well, who is going to come out of it and give victory to Islam once the world is destroyed, then maybe he'll actually attack Israel with them.

And despite anything Obama might threaten, the Iranians know Obama wouldn't retaliate with nuclear weapons if they attacked Israel. Nor would Russia or any other nuclear power except Israel, if they were able. Obama said during a debate with Clinton during the campaign that he would never, ever use nuclear weapons. And even if a Republican were president I don't think he'd use nuclear weapons either. You kill too many innocent people and would be severely condemned by the world community.

If the Iranians developed nuclear weapons and then smuggled them into Israel and detonated them, they could claim they had nothing to do with it. By the time irrefutable evidence was shown that the bombs had originated in Iran, there is no way the US or any other country would cold-bloodedly retaliate with nuclear weapons. So the Iranian leadership may feel it's worth the risk of being attacked in order to get rid of Israel.

Probably in the end, Iran will get the weapons and nothing will happen because at root enough of the Iranians are not suicidal and they would see they could not win such a war. All of the threatening talk from Ahmadinajad may just be posturing anyway - a middle-eastern/Islamic cultural thing. He may just want the status and bargaining leverage of having nuclear weapons and being able to threaten Israel with them.

But if I were Israeli I'd be scared anyway.

In the end, Obama and his left-wing allies are going to look weak and impotent, because there is nothing they are willing to do that is going to stop Iran. They will be seen as paper tigers who make lots of serious-sounding noises about how they won't tolerate this and won't tolerate that, but in the end talk won't solve this problem. Only some level of warfare is going to stop it, and Obama won't do that. It would go against his entire worldview.

[Starving Steve]

Re: A Must, Must Read

Look at where 31 years of appeasement toward the Iranian regime has gotten the world. Shame on the UN, and shame on the diplomats and politicians worldwide who let Iran fester into the cancer it has now become.

The world made the same exact mistakes trying to appease Adolf Hitler and his nazis before WWII. The world's appeasement policies made the inevitable war that followed even worse.

[tofu2u2]

Re: A Must, Must Read

Can someone tell me again why it matters to us if Israel is attacked? I mean, maybe the 171 wounded crew members of the Liberty and the family members 34 crewmen who were killed will all sleep better at night. But why should the rest of us Americans give a damn?

[metalman]

Re: A Must, Must Read

Can someone tell me again why it matters to us if Israel is attacked? I mean, maybe the 171 wounded crew members of the Liberty and the family members 34 crewmen who were killed will all sleep better at night. But why should the rest of us Americans give a damn?

oh, boy. here we go.

[a warren]

Re: A Must, Must Read

oh, boy. here we go.

While we are at it then how about this?

What if the September 11 planes had hit Wall St or the Fed? Good or bad?