Iran to test "state-of-art weaponry"

Run_to_da_hills

"A top Iranian military commander has said that Iran is preparing to hold a massive aerial maneuver in coming months".

This should be fun.



http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=129017&sectionid=351020101

gungun

"We have managed to rise to the challenge of those far stronger and bigger than Israel… If they dare assault us, they will be crushed by our response."

here we go:rolleyes:

RMD

Here comes WW3 boys, let's hope for the best.

Avgas

This story should be read alongside perhaps this choice piece of possible disinformation/propaganda...from the Times (of London) online.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7140282.ece

To cut a long story short Israelis are claiming they will have submarines off coast of Iran and in the gulf with modified missiles which may have nuclear warheads... nice.

To my mind much of this stuff is minds games and propaganda...I mean why tell the world your stationing subs off Iran's coast....deter them?..provoke them?..spook them?..confuse them, when in fact the strikes will come from air.....?

who knows...but maybe the Israelis have big time lost their winning touch...just think of last week...Cast Lead 2008-9....Leb 2006.....hmmmmm.....

Personally, I'm getting that bit extra petrol in for the lawnmower...in case of....shortages.

FunnyStuff

Avgas wrote: »

who knows...but maybe the Israelis have big time lost their winning touch...just think of last week...Cast Lead 2008-9....Leb 2006.....hmmmmm.....

To a certain extent maybe. I think one of the things being, in years gone by, many Israeli troops were battle hardened by major conflict with real military forces. These conflicts seemed to occur regularly, with border clashes and raids interspersed in the intravening years. Nowadays though, its clashes with "non combatants" so to speak, hit and run tactics and minor clashes with a couple of gunmen. They are learning from their mistakes, but the doctrine seems to remain i think.

iceage

Ahh like Maritime Law which I mentioned earlier in another post, I'm a bit behind in the whole Air role thingy whatsit as well, but if memory serves me well (I am getting a bit dodddery) But correct me if I'm wrong, and I do stand to be corrected by those in the know around here no names mentioned but..

Mirage vs F16?
F4 Phantom vs F16?
Sukhoi SU-24 vs F16?

Lets not get started on Attack helis.

Is it just me or are they taking the preverbial.

concussion

They do, however, have pretty strong ground based AD.

iceage

Do they? Good for them cos their Air wing looks crap to me! This is all according to the God Wiki of course. As I said I'm a tad rusty on up to date Air etc and the Tinternet is a mine of useless infomation to those that look. Of course I'm not talking about you Concussion.

Now about these Russian S300's......

storm2811

Well,I'm all set for the nuclear winter,anybody else?:p

BlaasForRafa

Avgas wrote: »

To my mind much of this stuff is minds games and propaganda...I mean why tell the world your stationing subs off Iran's coast....deter them?..provoke them?..spook them?..confuse them, when in fact the strikes will come from air.....?

who knows...but maybe the Israelis have big time lost their winning touch...just think of last week...Cast Lead 2008-9....Leb 2006.....hmmmmm.....

Personally, I'm getting that bit extra petrol in for the lawnmower...in case of....shortages.

Since when was Cast Lead a loss? The IDF acheived what they set out to do with very few casualties, they learned lessons from 2006 and applied them to Gaza with great success.

They certainly have the subs, and they certainly have the capability but I have doubts that they're anywhere near the Gulf. It wouldn't surprise me if its just a ruse to have the Iranians rushing about frantically with the ASW ships looking for israelis lurking about.

The IDF have already practiced long range air operations but I'm skeptical if they would actually do it but its useful for them to look as if they have the capability to do it.

Avgas

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Since when was Cast Lead a loss?

Hi Blaas,

Indulge me a little space and time to respond to your excellent post.

Yes in some ways Cast Lead was operationally successfully in a narrow sense…but in a wider political and strategic sense it was wasted effort which has further isolated Israel

So.yes….many armies will be looking for lessons from it for MOUT/FIBUA…[there is a US Army publication on it.... Back to Basics or something?]......

stopping the missile attacks was the core objective, no?

Wikipedia has this entry:

Over the course of 2009, 566 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel, in comparison to 2,048 in 2008. Out of these, 406 were fired during the Gaza War, which ended on 18 January, and 160 were fired during the rest of the year.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2009

For this year I count at least 39 separate attacks..mostly Qassam…but also some mortars and even a Grad(122mm) attack in February 2009…well after CAST LEAD was supposedly successful!

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2010


Now the core objective was to stop the missile strikes, no?

That has failed…reduced maybe…stopped no.

IDF would be better to explore more appropriate military solutions like
1. Lasers/THEL
2. Use of CIWS…Americans have developed CRAM and it seems to work, Germans are developing a 35mm system
3. Iron dome…which is their missile based system seems flawed (they are partly developing it to flog it to Singapore)

Of course none of those are ever going to be 100%...but they all offer more promise than a temporary land invasion….

Either you occupy, hold and own…or you don’t. Basic strategy.

CAST LEAD = lack of strategic definition/clarity = failure

You may object that the mission was not merely to stop the missile strikes, which it has clearly failed.

It is true there were never stated but no less important other war aims…….

(a) restore IDF military pride and standing after the defeat of Lebanon 2006, in part to deter future oponnents from thinking they could take on IDF.
(b) There may have been a more political-psychological objective of punishing the entire population of Gaza for Hamas support and detering future rocket attacks by undermining wider social support within Gaza for the Qassam campaign.
(c) IDF intelligence were probably using the operation as an opportunity to kill certain key individuals in HAMAS who they viewed as particularly threatening/hardliners…..


Again on these headings CAST LEAD is a failure, except maybe the last one…..

IDF pride may have been restored within their own terms of reference. However, reputation is a wider social thing-how others view you matters as much as how you view yourself.

In this regard, the IDF’s reputation has been once again sullied by claims of war crimes, which are substantive enough to warrant closer investigation/taking seriously. The UN expert asked to investigate has concluded there were ‘war crimes’ committed, and these has been endorsed by UN Human Rights Council.

This is a serious propganda defeat regardless of what you think of this legal opinion. This also has perhaps implications for the legal liability of IDF personnel and their freedom of movement.

Did CAST LEAD convince non-state actors like Hamas, or Hizbollah or even the Taliban, or Syria (which may be reorganising its forces for more assymetric operations on the model of Hezbollah 2006), that they have no military future?

Did it achieve a deterence effect?

Far from it! It shows that you can easily provoke and force a war using 1950s tactical rockets built in a workshop. While no doubt many Hamas operatives were killed, many remain alive and well and simply ran away/retreated to fight another day. Hamas remains in control of Gaza and has rebuilt its offensive capability.

The lesson?

Despite a massive ground invasion with state of the art joint arms…..a guerrilla organisation can easily surrvive and prosper. And this is depite almost zero support from Egypt…the two countries beside the zone are hostile to Hamas.

So zero deterence effect there.

Rather than teach the entire civilian population of Gaza a lesson….(which BTW is illegal under the laws of war/siege) and make them blame Hamas….it may just as much have anchored support for Hamas. In the short term it will make the population more dependent on Hamas for basic needs and therefore less able to criticise them.

The strategic way of dealing with Hamas would be to reward and negotiate with its more moderate factions…yes your reading that correctly…Hamas is a more complex organisation that is widely understood…..and it has more moderate factions…..you need to give the “moderates’ something to work with and politically sideline the hardmen who simply want more rocket attacks…….

It is here that CAST LEAD gets interesting, not whether IDF were able to tactically move well with infantry battalions supported by organic combat engineers and UAVs……..for an outfit like the IDF that should be bread and butter……

An Irish example?

Hamas are arguably now where the Provos/Sinn Fein were in the aftermath of the Hunger Strikes…early 1980s…..on the face of it they have become a mass political organisation now dominant within their own community…they have sidelined Fatah in the same way the SDLP were more or less sidelined on the ground..……however,….the shift from military resistence to exercising political power is a fraught one……to make the most of that political power…..Hamas will have to control their military hardmen…..sooner rather than later….

Their more moderate factions need to be engaged with and ‘rewarded’.

My suspicion (it is only that) ….is that….what really happened in CAST LEAD was much more subtle…the extermination of the true no-compromise Hamas people by IDF precise fires/teams/HUMINT…..perhaps no more than two dozen within the mass of others killed …….to make more room for eventual ‘moderates/negotiators’……?

If this was the real strategic rationale for CAST LEAD it may eventually be judged a success.

However, a series of smaller operations could have achieved much the same 'end game' effect….... British successfully used informer-compromised botched provo operations like Loughgall to sideline the hardmen……and eliminate them....

CAST LEAD was simply too much force/risk for too little gain considering missile defence alternatives I’ve outlined.

So right now, it gets an F grade strategically even if some tactical operational elements would earn an A+ (and others an international arrest warrant perhaps?)

Regards, Av.

Conor108

storm2811 wrote: »

Well,I'm all set for the nuclear winter,anybody else?:p