Further to my mention of Sunburn missiles in the Target Iran? post, here’s an interesting article by W. Joseph Stroupe from last year that I’ve been trying to track down for a while:
With respect to the military sphere, the old adage “When you’re handed lemons, then make lemonade” applies here with regard to post-Cold War Russia. Russia’s concerted efforts to repeatedly make very potent “lemonade” on an unprecedented scale and to use such to take global power and influence to her have gone mostly unnoticed. With regard to the arms race then, Russia’s relatively inexpensive but deadly “lemonade", in the form of a wide array of asymmetrical weapons systems and platforms, will very effectively limit U.S. ability to project military power in various places in the event of a crisis. Since Russia sells such asymmetrical weapons to its friends and allies, this cutting short of the American military arm is already evident in places such as the Taiwan Strait, within which no admiral will dare place an aircraft carrier battle group as the U.S. did during the 1996 crisis.
If its true that Iran has Sunburn missiles then the US fleet (and the oil traffic) in the Gulf could be very vulnerable in the event of a conflict.
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