Now. this is one of these times. I'm going to take your word for it Pat, so honestly, hand on your heart as an impartial observer, if these missiles havent been tested how can you know they have a 1% chance of hitting a target? I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt so please without hyperbole, supposition or unfounded assumptions please tell me how this missile is in no way, shape or form a detterent. I'll take your word for it this once, so please explain it to me if you make the claim.
Alright, here is what I really think about this without any sarcasm.
1.) As has been stated by others here as well, Isreal and US military bases are already in range of Iranian missiles. Hell, 5th fleet HQ and Central Command in Bahrain and Qatar are within the range of your typical SCUD and have been since they were built. If the Iranians intend to use this missile on our bases instead of their cheaper, tested and proven models (assuming it is real) then it is an insanely ridicuolous waste of limited resources by Iran. It would be like us using ICBMs to provide artillery support.
2.) This missile is not a tactical weapon. The none to overt message here is that if we wanted to we could put a nuke on this, ummm, if we had them of course. It is a long range strategic weapon. How big of a conventional warhead could they fit on this thing? 1000lbs? 2000lbs? Probably not even that. They could put one square in the middle of our Bahrain base and destoy maybe two or three buildings, kill a few dozen soldiers/sailors. A tragedy to be sure, but reletive not a big deal in the grand sceme of things if we have already decided to attack Iran and suffer whatever those not trivial consequences might be.
Hell, we are talking about losing whole ships and dozens of aircraft, both of those things Iran is in a far better position to pull off. So like I said, a missle attack with little chance of hitting anything period, assuming it won't get shot down first, and if it does hit anything can only do minimal damage is not a deterrent.
3.) We can easily (relative, as always) shoot it down. We can get a good number of Russia IRBMs, this home grown Iranian crap will be just that, crap. The real world doesn't work like James Bond, you can't build world class weapons programs in a secret volcano fort.
4.) Why would you announce a weapon as active when you have never tested it. If Iran had shot an IRBM into the Gulf of Oman, over the heads of the warships of a dozen Western nations don't you think we would have heard about that? That leads me to believe it is fake. At the very least its reliability is suspect, would you trust being a passenger in a plane that never got off the ground before?
5.) Its an area weapon. Unless Iran launched a network of global navigation satelites that we don't know about, has imaging satelites or has been violating the airspace of ever nation around it with spy planes to get ara mapping data, or developed inertial guidance to rival everything Russia, the US, China, or ever European country has ever produced it is not going to be an accurate weapon.
Think about it, how do you get a missile to hit a target 1x1 miles (Bahrain/Qutar bases) 200-300 miles away or a city 20x20 1000 miles away with what, because of Iran's capabilities to install guidence, is nothing more than a glorified artillery shell? US and Russian ballistic missles don't hit 105 West Farrington Street, Seatle. They hit Seatle. Even the better ICBMs that are used against silo sites hit within a few miles only. Thats well and good with a nuke, but for attaking specific tactical targets inside a specific military base with a conventional warhead it is not so good.
Like the ballistic missiles China threatens to use all the time, most of these things are bombardment weapons. Fire off a thousand at Taipei and you get a good deterrent. Fire one at anything and you will just piss someone off enough to beat you to death.
