A little news...
China, India and Vietnam are gearing up for a fight over the Spratly Islands. India announced that they were prepared to defend their interests, Vietnam claimed that a Chinese company was sabatoging its fishing boats and would defend its rights to the chain and China was being China. Basically the Chinese believe that all should bow to the rising power.
If that wasn't enough, then check out the following pics from the Poder.Naval Blog.
Yeah that's right boys and girls. The Iranians are building a new class of Frigates and I believe that's a new patrol boat alongside. Additionally they're building (or refurbing) what looks like some model of British Hovercraft and lets not forget the little funky blue sub.
We can all joke but they're building a navy that is specifically designed to fight asymmetrically
So yeah. If you thought you might be looking at a peace dividend in the next couple of years you can think again. The world is an even more dangerous place now.
If that wasn't enough, then check out the following pics from the Poder.Naval Blog.
We can all joke but they're building a navy that is specifically designed to fight asymmetrically
So yeah. If you thought you might be looking at a peace dividend in the next couple of years you can think again. The world is an even more dangerous place now.
The frigate should not be much of a threat, it's armament capacity seems to be rather small (no VLS, no torpedo ports, no gun pit so all will be hull mounted, rather small scale and small caliber) and it's air capacity will be for drones at best.
ReplyDeleteThe hovercrafts, well, it depends on their number but they don't seem to have mine laying abilities or to carry weapons, so they might at best serve to raid petrol plateforms.
The blue sub will have almost no capacity. The two Kilos behind are something completely different, depending on their condition.
The Spratly's more interesting on the other hand :)
"no VLS, no torpedo ports, no gun pit so all will be hull mounted, rather small scale and small caliber"
Delete-- all of which are equally true of the LCS which is projected to be what percentage of the US fleet by volume?
It looks like a weiner - kind of. Just sayin.
ReplyDeletegute
I just remember the 1,000 ton "destroyer" they launched...I'm not too worried, but I'd love to see some more Burkes and maybe a new FFG to deal with these folks. How 'bout a navalized Apache?
ReplyDeleteI would be careful not to dismiss the 'blue sub' as having "almost no capacity'.
ReplyDeleteBy all accounts, it was a similar submarine which was used to sink the South Korean ROKS Cheonan (PCC-772)corvette. Given the right circumstances, such a small submarine - in the right hands - could be a dangerous opponent. Remember, the Persian Gulf presents a challengeing ASW environment.