Naval war with Iran

Robert Kagan writes about the difficulties in engaging Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf.

Many folks don't remember (I didn't until reading about it recently in Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies) that we fought a limited engagement against conventional Iranian naval forces between 1982 and 1987, when they were attacking Kuwaiti flagged ships carrying Iraqi oil. We beat them soundly, and they've learned some new tricks since then.

Iran now fields two navies, a conventional force and a naval arm of the Revolutionary Guards ("IRGCN"). The IRGCN has over 20,000 ideologically committed sailors who have been trained in asymmetrical warfare, including kamikaze style attacks. Tactics used by the IRGCN include swarming larger ships with small, quick-moving craft bearing rocket launchers and torpedoes, as well as packing such ships with explosives in order to ram larger craft. The Iranians also have extensive knowledge of the islands and coves in the Gulf, particularly those in the narrow Straits of Hormuz at the southern end of the gulf (check out the map to see how much Iranian territory there is surrounding the Gulf).

According to Kagan, recent simulated war games dealing with a battle between swarming small Iranian ships and a force of American ships ended with simulated losses for the US greater than those in any naval battle since Pearl Harbor.

The US Navy is developing a Littoral Combat Ship, a smaller, shallow-draft craft for use in narrow, shallow waters like the Persian gulf, but we're many years away from having enough of them to make much of a difference.

Full article is worth a read- and it's important to remember that, although our military is by far the best in the world, it's not always going to be the best at every type of combat in every single situation. The question is not whether we could eventually beat Iran in a naval war- of course we could. The problem is that in the short-term, our forces could take unacceptably high losses. A blind faith that our military is "the best in the world" should not overshadow the fact that our power in some cases is limited.