Article Part 1
War with Iran would be Navy, Air Force show
Some point to buildup in Persian Gulf region as precursor to attack
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Feb 22, 2007 20:08:37 EST
The attack would probably come by air. Waves of U.S. cruise missiles and warplanes loaded with smart weapons would swoop into Iran from the sea and land bases to destroy key Iranian nuclear facilities.
Out in the Persian Gulf, the Navy would wipe out Iran’s navy in a matter of days. Iran’s air defenses could possibly take out a few higher-flying Navy and Air Force tactical jets before being located and destroyed.
In short, the first round would go decisively to the United States.
But it wouldn’t be without serious repercussions. And the Navy would likely take the brunt of those. It’s the unconventional threat that would vex U.S. sailors.
An American public that has turned solidly against the war in neighboring Iraq — according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted Feb. 12-15, 63 percent of those polled oppose sending more troops to Iraq and 56 percent feel the war in Iraq is “hopeless” — may find it hard to believe that the possibility of attacking much larger, more formidable Iran is even being broached.
But the Bush administration claims Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons and has vowed to prevent that from happening. More recently, senior military and intelligence officials say elements within Iran’s government are smuggling to Iraqi dissidents components for ever-more-powerful roadside bombs and are using them to kill U.S. troops.
The administration backed up its tough talk by deploying the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group a week earlier than planned in January and, in a surprise move, also “surging” the Ronald Reagan to the west Pacific and dispatching the Stennis to the Middle East. There, Stennis joined the already-deployed Dwight D. Eisenhower group and doubled the Navy’s combat power in the region.
Iran has reacted with angry words — mostly by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — and recent missile tests near the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Feb. 8 that Iran would strike U.S. interests worldwide if Iran were attacked, and a leading Iranian cleric said the following day that the U.S. was within Iran’s “firing range.”
The Bush administration and military leaders deny that a war plan is in the works. The Stennis deployment was simply, in the words of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, “to underscore to our friends, as well as to our potential adversaries in the region, that the United States has considered the Persian Gulf and that whole area — the stability in that area — to be a vital national interest.”
As with many other contingencies, the Defense Department has plans for an attack on Iran — the Navy reportedly updated its plans last September at the direction of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen.
But there appears to be little enthusiasm for such a move within the Navy. And none of the analysts and experts interviewed for this story thinks an attack will take place.
“People go to the most dramatic case,” said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who has written on both Iran’s conventional military capabilities and its weapons of mass destruction. “But seapower, and military power in general, is often about containment, intimidation, dealing with limited cases. So I would look at the spectrum, not what is the most dramatic thing we could do.”
The less dramatic spectrum of possible operations, he said, includes beefing up airstrike support for NATO troops in Afghanistan, keeping an eye on Somalia, as well as demonstrating U.S. strength to Gulf allies.
The attack
No one knows precisely what it would take to light the fuse, or what the U.S. would choose to strike inside Iran if the standoff came to blows. Would it be a factory where the deadly roadside bombs are made? Iran’s publicly known, dozen-odd — and perhaps many dozens more — key nuclear facilities? Ballistic missile launching sites, to preclude retaliatory strikes against U.S. or Israeli interests in the region?
The Army wouldn’t be a factor in an attack that would come from the air and sea, not via land. Army troops, tanks and heavy artillery, preoccupied in Iraq, would stay put.
Any U.S. attack scenario would likely include a combination of cruise missiles launched from B-52s, Navy submarines and surface warships, Air Force long-range bomber strikes and short-range attacks by carrier-based Navy jets, land-based Air Force and Marine Corps jets. The Air Force and Navy bombs, like the cruise missiles, would all be precision-guided in an effort to minimize unnecessary deaths and collateral damage at dual-use facilities or those located amidst civilian populations.
If such a strike were launched, military analyst John Pike opined that a possible target date could be Feb. 21 — roughly when the U.N. Security Council’s 60-day sanctions deadline for Iran to cease uranium enrichment and heavy-water related programs, set on Dec. 23, runs out. “And that’s when everything shows up,” he said, referring to the Stennis group’s expected arrival on station.
That’s also how the March 2003 attack on Iraqi forces was launched — early in the morning, minutes after the expiration of President Bush’s demand that Saddam Hussein and his sons leave Iraq within two days.
If an attack was imminent, U.S.-based Air Force bombers would already be en route to their targets as Bush was announcing the strike on national TV. Navy cruisers and destroyers from the Eisenhower and Stennis strike groups would be pre-positioned in the Persian Gulf, their flanks protected by anti-submarine helicopters and attack submarines. The latter would be submerged, simultaneously preparing to fire cruise missiles.
The two carriers would not be anywhere near them. With much uncertainty over the locations of Iranian anti-ship missile ships, high-speed boats or mobile shore batteries and the range Navy jets can produce with the aid of Air Force fuel tankers operating on the periphery of the battlespace, the carriers would likely be situated outside the Persian Gulf, likely in the Gulf of Oman.
“I would get the carriers out, and I would put lots of missile ships in there to defend tankers,” said naval analyst Norman Polmar, noting the disruptive economic impact Iran would create by sinking oil-carrying ships — even though it could slow their own economy. “I think that’s one of the ways they go after the United States, to sink tankers,” he said.
Aircrews, particularly the Navy jets, could find themselves flying missions similar to those flown during the 2003 attack and invasion. Then, many jets flew precision bomb runs, then peeled off to perform close-air support for ground troops.
Without any ground troops, save for possible Special Forces teams to laser-designate certain targets, the U.S. objectives could be achieved with air and naval power alone, analysts said. So fliers could find themselves coming down low to take out coastal anti-ship batteries threatening the surface warships.
The Aegis cruisers and destroyers, likely well off Iran’s long coastline, would defend themselves from those missiles with a combination of Rolling Airframe Missiles and Phalanx rapid-fire 20mm barrages in addition to launching chaff to throw off Iran’s radar-guided anti-ship missiles.
The great unknown would be the missiles’ source and number. Would hard-to-spot Iranian fast small boats, some with anti-ship missiles and others with crew members hefting shoulder-fired rockers, employ a swarming technique in an effort to overwhelm a warship’s defenses? That’s a scenario Navy planners have spent years figuring how to deal with.