The Swarm

It is very easy to look at this technology and be dismissive... but that is our weakness isn't it? We are a technology society and look at the specifics of technology to form the basis for our judgments. If a technology doesn't conform to our conceptual expectations regarding capability, then 'it doesn't pass the smell test' and is usually dismissed with sarcasm. I expect there is plenty of sarcasm to be easy shared upon examination of this little piece of tech being fielded by Iran.

Iran's state TV says the country's powerful Revolutionary Guard has received its first three squadrons of radar-evading flying boats.

The report says the domestically made craft can be used for surveillance and can carry guns and transmit data. Its production is part of Iran's effort to boost its arsenal and military capabilities despite international sanctions over the country's controversial nuclear program.

Iran announced last year it had successfully tested the plane, dubbed the Bavar-2, or Confidence-2. A flying boat is a seaplane with a hull that allows it to land and travel on water.

Radar-evading? Not likely. I'd also add that as a small sea plane this little thing almost certainly requires sea state 1 to land and take off in water - meaning it is highly dependent upon environmental conditions. Finally, as a machine of war I am skeptical how reliable its communications suite is, not to mention unimpressed with its token machine gun.

See how easy it is to dismiss this stuff solely on the examination of technology? I'm being kind to some of the comments I have already seen from others...

But as I observe Iranian military capabilities in the maritime domain, it isn't the specifics of the technology that concerns me - it is the commitment Iran is making at the tactical level to technologies that fit a certain capability set intended to exploit specific capabilities fielded by their opponents. The Iranians appear to believe that swarm tactics give them advantages over the capabilities of western naval powers (specifically the US) to which they define as their greatest threat. The question is: In the confined waters of the Persian Gulf, does quantity of small, agile forces leveraging swarm tactics offer a tactical advantage over the capabilities of high quality, larger but numerically inferior naval vessels of the US? Is the break point the number of assets or is it a capabilities based metric of combined arms that can be leveraged?

When you start going down the road of what 20 small boats at 35+ knots attacking a destroyer looks like, the questions that come to my mind are - how many .50 cal machine guns do you have on your ship? How quickly can you get ammunition to those guns if they must sustain fire over long periods of time? How protected are those positions from incoming machine gun fire?

The weakness of our Navy isn't air attack from a tactical fighter, nor is it the ASM attack from a fast attack missile craft - indeed fighting those capabilities are the strength of our ships. The weakness comes in the form of swarms - and mixing several of these flying boats with a couple dozen boghammers in a swarm attack will result in:

• CIWS ammunition being exhausted quickly
• SeaRAM ammunition being exhausted quickly
• Reliance on small arms to fight off the attack

Are we ready for that? This isn't WWII where we still understood the value of small caliber on a battleship - this is the 21st century where missiles define our conceptual foundations for naval warfare - or the kind of naval warfare we would prefer to fight. 5" guns are great, but the enemy will fight inside your bubble.

How will those doors work when a grenade goes off on top of your MK 41? I have seen folks laugh at the idea of the MK 46 30mm guns on the LCS - but I'd like to see these guns incorporated into all surface combatants, and specifically located in a way where they can decompress the angles and shoot targets very close in.

I'm the first to admit I am completely unimpressed with the technologies fielded by the Iranian Navy and IRGC - but if deployed by tactically leveraging their numerical advantages with sound formations and dedicated trained personnel, our ships will find themselves in a world of trouble if we have to fight numerically superior swarms in confined shallow waters. The Navy talks about not wanting to fight fair, but the question is whether our Navy ships have enough weapons to combine combat power against an enemy - and at point blank range that can be problematic for ships designed specifically to fight at standoff ranges.

And fighting at point blank range is exactly what all these fast, low signature platforms Iran is developing are intended to do.