Iran's navy developing swarm strategy against U.S. warships

From Gertz, excerpted

The Iran navy has procured hundreds of fast patrol boats as part of what is believed to be a swarm strategy to overcome the firepower of U.S. cruisers and destroyers.

Gulf analysts said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has deployed and trained hundreds of FPBs in the northern Gulf to surround and attack U.S. and Western warships. The analysts said the Iranian concept is to overcome U.S. firepower superiority with the stealth and speed of small patrol boats.

"We are talking about a new sort of warfare that could work or not," a Gulf Arab analyst said. "It's never been really tried."

Under the purported Iranian concept, the FPBs would be armed with torpedoes and rockets that could be quickly fired from short range. The analysts said the radars of U.S. destroyers would be unable to detect small Iranian speedboats in the northern Gulf.

These boats could be filled with explosives and rammed into U.S. surface vessels, the analysts said. They cited the success of an Al Qaida attack that crippled the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Over the past six weeks, the Iranian navy conducted two exercises in the northern Gulf designed to test the swarm strategy. The analysts could not assess the results of the exercises.

Still, the U.S. Navy has been preparing for such an Iranian swarm assault. In 2002, the Navy held an exercise called Millennium Challenge in which a swarm of fast boats sought to destroy a U.S. fleet.

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