Category: war

The Russian state owned arms manufacturing firm Novator Design Bureau in Yekaterinburg was aggressively marketing the “Sizzler” anti ship missile at last month’s IDEX 2007, said Steve Zaloga, a missile analyst with the Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based defense research organization. The IDEX is the Middle East’s largest weapons exposition and is reported to have good information about the Russians pitching the Sizzler to Iran.

The Sizzler is a weapon that the US Navy has known about for more than seven years but still has not developed a proven defense system to counter the threat. The Sizzler is a unique highly dangerous missile. Conventional anti ship missiles fly at sub sonic speeds and fly in a straight line. They therefore can be tracked and brought down by multiple missile defense systems deployed on American aircraft carriers.

The Sizzler is a much more capable and dangerous weapon. “This is a carrier-destroying weapon,” said Orville Hanson, who evaluated weapons systems for 38 years with the Navy. “That’s its purpose.”

The Sizzler can be launched from a new class of silent diesel powered submarines. It starts out at subsonic speeds but about ten miles from a target the warhead separates from the projectile and a rocket fires increasing the missiles velocity to three times the speed of sound, about 2,000 miles per hour. As if the high speed didn’t present enough of a challenge to an aircraft carrier’s defense system the Sizzler is capable of sharp high speed evasive maneuvers that makes it highly difficult to defend against.

The Chinese are known to have deployed these missiles. If the Chinese ever decide to invade Taiwan American aircraft carriers at their current level of protection may prove to be defenseless against the Sizzler threat.

The Russians are known to have had talks with the Iranians about selling them Sizzler missiles. With tensions in the Gulf region heating up one would guess that the Iranians would convert some of their oil money into Sizzler missiles. With Sizzler missiles deployed the multi billion dollar United States aircraft carriers with their 5,500 man crews would be extremely vulnerable not only to crippling attacks but to being completely destroyed.

The war Gods are cruel and fickle. Powerful armies lead by confident generals can made small mistakes in their planning and execution of battle plans and lose battles and wars to vastly inferior forces.

Powerful nations can win all of the battles yet still lose the war. The war Gods must laugh at man’s follies just as much now as in ancient times. War seems to be hard wired into the human soul. Foolish humans always think that their side is right in their cause and that they will prevail. Even when history eventually proves that their war goals and ambitions were pure nonsense, even crazy.

In the end all parties to wars are losers. Lost husbands, lost sons and daughters, lost friends, lost homes, lost hope, the losses are numbing, life changing, life ending.

Here is a poem about famous battles in famous wars. Read it and weep for mankind.

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All of history’s wars are painted crimson,
crudely smeared with the blood of mankind.
The final stroke was often unforeseen,
when sure victors ended a war not won,
when one battle changed the War God’s mind,
underdogs having reversed the whole scene.
Turning point battles, historians find
altered history then and in between.

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The remainder of this epic 272 line poem will be found at Poetry Mine