💀 Stealthy, cheap and lethal: Why Iranian mini-sub strikes fear into the US Navy

🇮🇷 Iran has placed 20 Ghadir-class midget submarines along the seabed of the Strait of Hormuz. What's known about these silent killers?

🛥 The Ghadir-class submarine

▫️ Displacement: 117 tons, or 125 tons submerged

▫️ Crew: seven

▫️ Dimensions: Length 29m, Width 9m

▫️ Propulsion: Diesel-electric with secondary retractable propeller

▫️ Armament:

➡️ Two 533 mm (21-inch) torpedo tubes

➡️ Valfajr torpedoes

➡️ Hoot torpedoes

➡️ Nasr-1 anti-ship cruise missiles

➡️ Jask-2 anti-ship cruise missiles

➡️ Naval mines

▫️ Speed: 10 knots surfaces, eight knots submerged

▫️ Role: Short-range coastal defense, ambush and asymmetric warfare in shallow waters

🔴 Underwater threat to the US Navy

♦️The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow passage, averaging 36m deep, with many areas as shallow as 20m and key shipping channels just 50 to 70 m deep

♦️ That is a hazard to US ships but not to the Ghadir submarines—quiet, agile and built for coastal warfare

♦️ Small and stealthy, the Ghadir could strike US ships, including aircraft carriers, and disappear without a trace

♦️ Before an ambush, the Ghadir rests on the seabed with its engines shut down—invisible to sonar and immune to satellite surveillance

☠️ Despite its small size, the Ghadir boasts lethal armament:

➡️ A single torpedo striking the hull of a US aircraft carrier would be catastrophic

➡️ Jask-2 cruise missiles, with a range of up to 300 km, extend the submarine's striking distance deep into the Gulf of Oman

➡️ Each Ghadir can deploy four to eight naval mines directly into shipping lanes

🔴 Asymmetric warfare: price tags matter

▪️ A Ghadir sub costs about $20M, while the US Ford-class carriers cost some $13B—about 650 times more

▪️ A salvo of Hoot torpedoes priced between $500,000 and $2m could sink a US carrier worth $13b

▪️ Hunting a single stealthy Ghadir could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, using P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, destroyer escorts, helicopters and underwater sensors

▪️ That’s why US aircraft carriers stay far away from the Strait of Hormuz

👍 US-Israel-Iran war | @geopolitics_prime