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Submarine test launch by Iran of cruise missile fails

How’s that Iran deal working out for you? An Iranian test launch of a cruise missile from a submarine yesterday appears to have been a failure.

Iran attempted to launch a cruise missile from a submarine in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday but the test failed, two U.S. officials told Fox News. An Iranian Yono-class “midget” submarine conducted the missile launch. North Korea and Iran are the only two countries in the world that operate this type of submarine.

In February, Iran claimed to have successfully tested a submarine-launched missile. It was not immediately clear if Tuesday’s test was the first time Iran had attempted to launch a missile underwater from a submarine.

This test is not surprising, considering that it also appears that Iran is using the billions they obtained from the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal to fund a massive military buildup.

Iranian officials announced late last month that Iran’s defense budget had increased by 145 percent under President Hassan Rouhani and that the military is moving forward with a massive restructuring effort aimed at making it “a forward moving force,” according to regional reports.

Iranian leaders have stated since the Iran deal was enacted that they are using the massive amounts of cash released under the agreement to fund the purchase of new military equipment and other armaments. Iran also has pursued multi-million dollar arms deals with Russia since economic sanctions were nixed as part of the deal.

But hey, what’s a few bombs between enemies, eh?

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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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12 comments

  • LocalFluff

    How could a midget submarine launch any missile? I see on Wiki that it has two torpedo tubes. Very scary, NOT! The Persian Gulf is clear as a bath tub. Every submarine is as visible as any surface ship there. An Iranian sub fleet can only operate in the Indian Ocean.

    If Iran is launching missiles from midget submarines, then I’d be damned! I call it impossible.

  • wayne

    LocalFluff–
    Keep in mind, it’s a cruise-missile
    Ref–
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine-launched_cruise_missile

    They can be launched through torpedo tubes horizontally or vertically, although I do not know which is more difficult.

  • LocalFluff

    Torpedoes flying up in the air? Well, I’m not current with what gadgets are popular today. Even my beloved smart phone is getting old. Whatever.

  • BSJ

    What worries me about N. Korea is them packing a large nuke into a submarine and then sneaking it into a large sea port and just setting it off. No ballistic missile technology needed…

  • LocalFluff

    NK subs should be sunk already. US navy knows exactly where each of them are at any time. I’d say that submarines are totally worthless for NK. Also China is said to be completely lousy on submarine warfare, they have nothing useful there, either offensive or defensive. Equally mysterious is China’s tiny nuclear arsenal. They have no deterrence.

  • LocalFluff

    Cute little boat! World War one retro. Are they for sale at Walmart?
    http://carllavo.blogspot.se/2015/02/iran-building-new-submarine-to-lay.html

  • LocalFluff

    A couple of the iranian arapes’ high tech accomplishments:
    Stealth aircraft
    http://nordic.businessinsider.com/irans-qaher-f313-stealth-2017-4

    An arape in space
    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/20132345746618903.html

    Kim Jong-Un’s comment: “And they say that I am crazy!?”

  • Early Bird

    Torpedoes flying up in the air? Well, I’m not current with what gadgets are popular today.

    The Americans fielded a flying torpedo more than a half-century ago (and nuclear-tipped, no less) as an anti-submarine weapon against Soviet subs:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subroc

    While neither a torpedo or a cruise missile, my personal favourite submarine-bourne flying object is the submarine-towed V2 that the Germans were working on (but never completed) near the end of WWII as seen near the middle of this page:

    http://www.uboataces.com/articles-rocket-uboat.shtml

    It would have been a highly interesting development for convoy escort crews if the Germans had ever decided to deploy the Type 41 rockets that they did successfully test in 1942 as seen at the top of that same page. Can you imagine being on watch and suddenly seeing a half-dozen rockets erupting from the sea? Terrifying.

  • Early Bird

    What worries me about N. Korea is them packing a large nuke into a submarine and then sneaking it into a large sea port and just setting it off.

    It’s funny you should say that, because I keep hoping that Japan will do something along those same lines to the North Koreans before things get out of hand.

  • Early Bird

    NK subs should be sunk already. US navy knows exactly where each of them are at any time.

    How noisy are North Korean submarines? I seem to recall that Soviet subs were fairly noisy until Toshiba helped them out by selling them propeller milling machinery in the mid-1980’s.

    Are the NK subs equal to, say, Russian subs from the 1980’s?

  • LocalFluff

    Early Bird,
    As a Swede I can collectively brag with Kockum’s historically very high quality submarines (although none ever was tested in battle). They use Stirling engines to make them quite quiet. However, that’s history. The defense minister of Australia chocked Swedish pride a few years ago when he said that Swedish subs aren’t good enough for them to buy. And indeed they were designed for use in the small shallow filthy Baltic sea during the late cold war. Things change.

    US subs, even the smaller hunters that go after other subs, have nuclear propulsion. Completely quiet. They, and surface ships and naval bases and airplanes, have torpedoes with 100s of kilometers range. And the US has sonars all over the oceans that register exactly which ship is where when. There are no more than about 50,000 ships at sea in the world to track. There’s no doubt in my mind that the US Navy truly rules the waves. (I bet they know exactly where that passenger jet crashed in the Indian Ocean a few years ago, it’s just classified).

    In 1981 a Soviet submarine went ashore near the main Swedish naval base in Karlskrona. It was a Whiskey (on the rocks) class sub built in the 1950s. It had torpedoes with nuclear warheads. After the fall of the wall some guy bought such a Russian Whiskey sub and turned it into a museum I visited. I’m not kidding, the cook could fry potatoes while sitting on the loo. The stove and the porcelain chair were opposed and on each side of the narrow corridor that defined the sub. It was just like in a classic WW2 submarine war movie. Russians youth were forced to do 2 year conscription in these metal coffins, sailing the Atlantic. I think that is what NK has today. Cannon fodder without any ability to harm their enemy.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

  • PeterF

    The news feed has surprisingly little information about this incident. What was the failure mode? In many cases, when a missile launch from a submarine fails, It sinks the submarine.
    These subs look smaller than the drug running subs from columbia.
    Maybe they should have bought it through “Hammacher-Schlemer”? They probably have a “best” listing for miniature missile subs…

    LocalFluff- “Whiskey (on the rocks)” hahahahahaha!

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