Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader started writing this post last week. Last week before he fell into his routine of watching “Scrubs” re-runs and going to be early. He decided to just slap it up here and see if it sticks…

Did you catch the headline off the Bloomberg News service? The one that reads: “Navy lacks plan to defend against “Carrier-destroying” missle.” The Russians have had the “Sizzler” missle for a number of years and have offered it for sale to the Chinese and possibly the Iranians. The missile, it is speculated, may foil the US Navy’s Aegis system. The Aegis system is the Navy’s current defense system against missile attack. According to the article:

Charts prepared by the Navy for a February 2005 briefing for defense contractors said the Sizzler, which is also called the SS-N-27B, starts out flying at subsonic speeds. Within 10 nautical miles of its target, a rocket-propelled warhead separates and accelerates to three times the speed of sound, flying no more than 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level.

On final approach, the missile “has the potential to perform very high defensive maneuvers,” including sharp-angled dodges, the Office of Naval Intelligence said in a manual on worldwide maritime threats.

The Sizzler is “unique,” the Defense Science Board, an independent agency within the Pentagon that provides assessments of major defense issues, said in an October 2005 report. Most anti-ship cruise missiles fly below the speed of sound and on a straight path, making them easier to track and target

Now, your Maximum Leader is not a rocket scientist (although he knows one or two); but even he can tell this is a very serious threat to US naval strength around the world. A supersonic missle that doesn’t fly straight is a potent (and reasonably inexpensive) deterrent to anyone who might want to thwart US foreign policy.

Of course, it is not comforting to know that the Navy has been aware of the threat for 6 years and doesn’t seem to have made a lot of progress is countering the threat posed by the Sizzler. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t doubt for a moment that the Navy (and the good people at Lockheed Martin - makers of the Aegis system) will figure out something they can do to try and neutralize this threat. But your Maximum Leader is not so naive to think that any system is foolproof. Certainly in the interim, the acquisition of a number of these missiles by Iran would have a chilling effect on US operations in the Persian Gulf.

By the way, did your Maximum Leader mention that the USS Stennis and USS Eisenhower battle groups are in the Persian Gulf now? No… Well they are.

Carry on.