Iran's Underwater Missile

Not sure why this is getting the press all excited. The Russians had an underwater missile and it never was such a big deal.

The Iranian-made missile has a speed of about 350 kilometres an hour underwater, claimed Gen. Ali Fadavi, deputy head of the navy.

If those claims are true, it would rival the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval missile, developed in 1995, which can travel three or four times faster than a torpedo.

and

"It has a very powerful warhead designed to hit big submarines," Fadavi told Iranian television. "Even if enemy warship sensors identify the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed."

He did not say whether the missile contained a nuclear warhead.

I'm going to remain skeptical. The Russians developed theirs in 1977, not 1995. (Apparently the MSM has a difficulty understanding the difference between "development" and "deployment.")

The first (domestic) version of the underwater missile entered service back in 1977 with the Russian Navy under the designation VA-111 Shkval jet torpedo/missile.

This early version, not available for export, was armed with a nuclear warhead and provided a guaranteed kill capability at distances of up to 10 kilometers against submarines moving in depths of up to 400 meters with speeds of up to 50 knots.

The Shkval was powered with a jet engine, running on solid hydro-reacting fuel. As a result, at that time, the torpedo could develop an underwater speed of 195 knots, or 100 meters per second. However, the VA-111 was unguided and was only armed with a nuclear warhead, the latter feature being the reason for the removal, ten years ago, of all the Shkvals from the Russian multi-purpose submarines, under a mutual agreement signed by the Presidents of the USSR and the USA.

I wonder what form of guidance the Iranian missile has. Guidance systems being the hardest part to develop, I'd guess theirs is unguided as well. And a test-firing isn't a proof of effectiveness.

Then there is the thought of how they would deploy the system. If on a ship, does anyone really think the US Navy couldn't destroy such a vessel from over the horizon? Or from a plane? I'm going to guess that these have limited range and any ship seen on an attack coarse to a US ship will probably leak heavily after a couple of minutes.

I guess this is again proof that the US military stands no chance in taking down another large military complex, like Iraq say, or a tough military like Afghanistan's.