Iran Military Forum

AK,

A large vessel yes, not a 100,000 ton vessel. Aircraft carriers are built NOT to sink, meaning their bulkheads separating each hull section are very thick and designed to limit the damage of any explosion that happens within the vessel so it doesn't spread throughout the rest of the vessels interior. And the flight decks is very thick and reinforced because it of the possibility of an inbound aircraft hitting the deck directly and exploding (along with the ordance it could be carrying). Now it's likely the Persian Gulf missile (or any large AshM moving at the kind of speed) could penetrate the flight deck, but by doing so it will lose a HUGE amount of energy. We are talking about a solid-steel surface that is several FEET thick. I have seen videos of entire aircraft (an F-4 for example) being propelled at near the speed of sound on a rocket sled into steal plates thinner than that and you know what the result is? the Steel plate is large undamaged and the aircraft is disintegrated. Now because the PG missile would be moving at a speed several times that, they would likely penetrate but the amount of energy lost doing so would mean it's unlikely it would go much farther into the vessel's hull, certainly not all the way through. So again, it would cause a good deal of damage but considering what material it is impacting, it wouldn't go very far.

More importantly, when one looks to Soviet strategies of Anti-Carrier tactics and even they never claimed they could sink a carrier in a single shot and they have developed faster and heavier (in terms of warhead) anti-shipping missiles than the Persian Gulf missile. If they could, they wouldn't have bothered to developed a compact nuclear warhead for many of these supersonic anti-shipping missiles specifically for taking out aircraft carriers. And even this was deemed a last resort tactic. Preferably, the Soviet's plan for taking out aircraft carriers was hitting a single carrier with several such missiles at the waterline and flight deck to ensure the carrier is at the very least crippled if not outright sunk.

And if the Soviets, who are the "masters" of supersonic/hypersonic anti-shipping missiles, couldn't build one that could sink a carrier in a single shot, it's unlikely the Persian Gulf missile could achieve the same feat. Only if multiple missiles impact a single carrier do I believe it would sink.

Eagle,

No ship is built to be sunk and many ships nowadays are built in different number of hulls to reduce the chance of sinking. In my post, I was mainly talking about large ships rather than aircraft carriers and I agree it is very difficult to sink a supercarrier; however, I think some of the "facts" you mention are not correct. For example, you mention that the deck is "solid-steel surface that is several FEET thick". Simply, this cannot be correct. Lets assume, as you suggested, Nimitz class has a 3 feet/ 1m deck; then, simple calculation shows that the deck alone would weigh twice the weight of the whole carrier!

let me show you the calculations: length*width*thickness*density = 330m*78m*~1m*7.8t/m3=200,000 tons! which is twice the whole displacement of the Nimitz.

The deck is definitely thick but nowhere close to several feet. Perhaps, they are less than 4-6 inches thick (~22,000 - 33,000 tons). I think even that is an overestimation! We should not forget about the weight of the rest of the structure and the hulls and the loads.

As you nicely mentioned in your next post, if a PG hit a supercarrier. it should do enough damage to put the ship out of service, which should be more than enough.

infrared seeker of Persian gulf (khalij fars) missile:

M-ATF,
brother how did you get that close to get a picture of it?

M-ATF,
brother how did you get that close to get a picture of it?

They displayed it in Baharestan square in Tehran, I used a super-zoom SLR-like camera to zoom in on it.

Do you know any companies producing optical components in Iran?

IEI
http://www.ieimil.ir/

The Guards fired two Khalij Fars (Persian Gulf) anti-ship missiles which Iran says are capable of Mach 3 speed and can hit targets at a distance of 300 kilometres (186 miles).

According to Al-Alam, the missiles, which carry a warhead of 650 kilograms, have been entirely designed and built by the Revolutionary Guards, who are in charge of Iran’s missile programme and ballistic arsenal.
Khalij Fars (Persian: موشک خلیج فارس, "Persian Gulf") is a single-stage solid-propellant, supersonic Anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of 300 km based on the Fateh-110 missile. It is equipped with a 650 kg explosive warhead which benefits from a combination of guidance systems to evade interception.
While it is a much smaller missile, similarities can be drawn to specific variants of the Chinese DF-21 ballistic missile which is has been touted as a "carrier-killer". The Chinese DF-11 is an example of a ballistic missile that uses an radar for terminal guidance to give it a CEP of 500-600 m (the DF-11A uses an image correlator which improves the CEP to 200 m)
With Iran possessing such capabilities, the implications for the U.S. Navy are serious. The combination of passive targeting system with the precision demonstrated by the new Iranian missile means that Iran could potentially track U.S. Navy carrier groups at long distances, when they operate in the Arabian Sea, at relatively long distances from their coastline.

I'm not a specialist in TELs, but the TEL doesn't look familiar (to me).  What is that?

Mamdali

I could not find a thread dedicated to this IRIN's silver bullet. So here it is:

IRAN MILITARY WILL DESTROY U.S.A. NAVY 5TH FLEET WITH PERSIAN GULF ANTISHIP BLLISTIC MISSILE	Small | Large

Catsoo

If I change the title, then I will be the thread starter where in reality it is M-ATF and he deserves the credit. I merge these two and ask M-ATF to change the title.

Thanks mayday!


Catsoo

This thread belongs to the NAVY thread since Khaleej Fars is primarily an ASHM.

So I am moving it there.


Catsoo

By the way it's something that came to my mind a few months ago when I saw the video of the Khalij Fars, since it is based on the Fateh 110 it could theorically carry 100 submunitions instead of 500 or 600kg of explosives, no? The accuracy would be relativelly poor because you can't change the trajectory in the final phase, but for a large convoy rather than individual targets you increase the chances to have a few hits. I'm saying that because I suspect that the Aegis system can take out most of the ballistic missiles if there are few of them who appear simultaneously. But I never saw any reference regarding submunitions for this anti-ship missile.

Khaleej Fars is meant to be a supersonic ASHM with high accuracy. US navy does not have anything in its tool box to defend against supersonic ASHMs.

The original AEGIS system couldn't, the US navy has started to upgrade it in the year 2009. See http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20091103.aspx
Now, nowhere in the article do they mention the word "supersonic", but virtually every medium range (and even often short range) ballistic missiles are supersonic today. The goal was obviously to defeat the supersonic DF-21D from China. They do claim a success rate of 83% with their SM-3 missiles, however it doesn't garentee the same success rate if the incoming missile change its path. I agree that saying that AEGIS taking off most of the incoming iranian missiles is a free assumption, it would take off some but the real score you can't know in advance.