The First U.S. Military Engagement in
an Expanded Israeli War Has Begun

Tsk, tsk....memories are soooo short. Same type ship, USS Mason? Nearly same calendar Oct 6-16th 2016. Multiple cruise missile and antiship missiles launched from Yemen. The third in a series of these attacks ended up with the very first confirmed shootdown of a cruise missile by the vert launch SM2 system, Response? We sent cruise missiles in an took out Yemen radar sites. NOW they say they shot down over a dozen drones as well...Drones are not able to target something 1300 miles away, This was not an attack on "Israel" this was an attack on "The United States"

Re #1, some Iranian drones (which can be used as low tech, low spee cruise missiles) are reported to have ranges of "up to 2,500 km". This converts to about 1,550 miles. So, they can reach Israel. How accurate these things are, I'm not sure, but if they just want to repeat the German WW2 terrorist attacks with V1 cruise missles and V2 ballistic missiles....basically hit a city, probably can do that. Free target practice for US missile ships. Normally we have to buy target drones or aircraft and operate them, lots of $$. Iran provided us with free target drones and missiles.

Commenter 2. At a cost of $4.3 million per sm6 missile, this was hardly free. To bad we did not shoot back to the launch points…

My error..they were only sm2 ‘s, at a cost of 2.3 mill per each

the problem with this scenario is: can we even trust a dispatch from the Pentagon and the higher up military brass who are beholden to comrade obama? not me, I wouldn't trust anything that comes from the present command structure in the Pentagon as far as I could throw the place comrade obama is neck deep in this whole thing and he's using his cardboard cutout, diapers biden, as a front man to take the shots while the comrade makes more plans with the Iranians ... against everybody!!

Re #3, sure the missiles are a sunk cost in any live fire exercise. But typically we also pay for the drones or aircraft which were expended, a large cost. So, clarification.....FREE targets. Yes the "bullets" always have to be paid for. And this is one of the question marks in modern warfare. When you have cheap attack "missiles" and shoot them down with high tech, high bux modern SAMs, sure, you prevent loss of life and property, and the property may be in millions of dollars. But exchanging a cheap drone for an expensive SAM too many times can be economically bad. A friend works on the MADIS system, Marine Air Defense Integrated System. There are two stages, and they are intended to shoot down anything from drones to helos. The Mk1 system uses Stinger SAMs as their kill vehicle. Stingers are reported online to cost about $120K each, so shooting down a $3000 or even $20,000 drone is an economically poor trade.....until you think that the drone may have killed 2 to 10 people and destroyed something that may cost millions of dollars. The not yet available Mk2 will have a M240 7.62mm (.30 cal) machine gun as one of the multiple weapons guided by multiple sensors. So.....for cheap drones, out to (estimating here) maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of a mile range will be pretty cheap kills. One or two bullets will make hash of small quad rotor or small fixed wing drones, even splatter those Iranian drones pretty effectively, too. This is a serious issue for future weapons planners, having enough cheap anti-drone weapons platforms. The German Flakpanzer Gepard systems that were retired from German service and sent to Ukraine have apparently been extremely effective at knocking down the Iranian drone/cruise missiles that the Russians have been fielding since they have expended most of their "high tech" cruise missiles. The weapons are a pair of 35mm (about 1.4 inch projectile diameter) cannons with explosive projectiles, guided by radar, optics and a laser rangefinder. The Germans had retired it, deciding that gun anti-aircraft systems were obsoleted by man portable air defense missiles like the Stinger. For a helo or other manned aircraft, a $120K Stinger is more effective than guns and an reasonable economic exchange. For cheap unmanned drones and cruise missiles.....it would seem that gun based systems, probably with improved sensors to better see the smaller drones, will be making a comeback. What is was old is now new again...sort of.

This seems familiar, perhaps in an ancient book of wisdom. Ending is okay but the before stuff is so not good.

For what it's worth - the USS Cole was attacked off the coast of Yemen in October 2000. The place is overrun with radical Islamists.

Once again, our government is being evasive. You can bet we know exactly where these originated, what they were, and where they were headed. If, in fact, our ships were the target then credit to whomever for not wanting to turn the Red Sea into the Tonkin Gulf but instead wants to allow our missile-defense capability to simply speak for itself. Regardless, one of our "G ships" is down 9 birds.