What if Moskits with 200 kt warheads can be detonated within predetermined distance proximities from major targets? Intercepting missiles? Iran may already have nukes in this form, be they Iranian, or Russian crewed.
If Iran had 200 kt nukes that would fit on a ASW, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Ahmadinejad would be talking about them every chance he got, the Iranians wouldn't bother with enriching weapons grade uranium, and other nations would be trying to contain the spread of nuclear weapons from Iran to other less stable regimes instead of preventing Iran from getting the nukes in the first place.
Iran's whole point of obtaining nuclear weapons is in preventing other countries from invading. Why keep one in secret, only use it when you have been invaded, and risk retribution in the form of nuclear obliteration?
Shkval was under developement by the Russians in the 1960s, can be armed with a tactical nuclear warhead, and they were selling an export version in Abu Dhabi in 1999. That is almost ten years ago.
It supposedly launches from standard tubes; the rocket propulsion does not engage until it is out and clear of the tube. While it is guided by predetermined target information and input, it can simply be fired back along the path of an incoming torpedo.
Regardless of what the best torpedoes do, our carriers and other surface ships have no defenses against Shkval "as we know it", and ten years later it may be alot more than that.
The threat from the Shkval have been consistently overstated by the US military in public in order to obtain more funds for R&D and more advanced weapons. As with every such case, the media picks it up and runs with it as an example of how doomed any military action that we undertake is. I'm rather shocked people don't realize this as it's been the case for every single other frigging Soviet weapons system since World War 2.
The Shkval's been around since the late 70's. It's old. In all this time, we haven't bothered to field our own copy. If it was a good idea, we would have arranged for one to have one delivered to us, reversed engineer it, and created our own version. The fact that we haven't done so should tell you something. Mainly, the idea sucks. The standard Shkval is a outright crappy weapon, the homing Shkval is a serviceable torpedo with novel ways of being crappy.
The standard Shkval is a terrible weapon. It's got a range of a 7 km compared to the MK48's 50 km range. Its guidance system is WWII primitive. The sub's electronics estimates the current location of a target, that location is programmed in to the Shkval, and the Shkval, using it's internal guidance, motors itself out to that point and explodes. Needless to say, CEPs are huge and the target may have even moved from the time the Shkval was fired. It was rather unlikely that a Shkval would get within any conventional warhead's kill radius, so the Russians did the prudent thing and drastically increased the kill radius by strapping on a nuke. Since tactical nukes are unlikely to be used in the near future (see above), the Shkval's back to being unlikely to kill anything. Even the defensive "force the other dude to cut the guidance cables" is unlikely to work since the Shkval is horrifically outranged and SOP is to have a torpedo make a dog leg during it's course. In either case, the Shkval would come nowhere near the enemy submarine. But wait, it gets worse! Launching a Shkval offensively pretty much reveals your location to the entire enemy fleet since the supercavitating rocket part of it is frigging loud. Given it's short range, there's no way a Shkval launching submarine would be able to escape.
The homing Shkval is somewhat better in that it actually has a chance to kill something. Same crappy range, same crappy suicide risk, but now it can actually chase a target instead of just heading out to some arbitrary spot. Just like a regular torpedo. But, there's always its novel way of being crappy. A regular torpedo in terminal guidance maintains a constant lock on it's target throughout the attack. That allows for all sorts of fancy programming that would allow it to avoid falling for the many torpedo evasion tricks that navies have developed. The Shkval... not so much. It can't track anything when it's moving at supercavitating speeds. So every time it wants an update on the target location, it has to decelerate out of the supercavitating regime, use it's sonar, find the target, discriminate between it and decoys, reposition, and accelerate again. Difficult enough when a torpedo has a constant lock. Ridiculously so in the case of the Shkval. It also loses much of it's only advantage, speed, by implementing the primitive homing function.
Both would probably work decently in mass volleys, but then again, what wouldn't? Not that it's going to be an issue. As Manedwolf said, it's highly unlikely that any of the primitive Iranian submarine would be able to get within Shkval range.
The Moskit/Sunburn seems like a fairly capable weapon, but it's really only a military issue if we invade Iran by sea. Which, considering the nice border the share with Iraq and the potential risks posed by these things, is fairly unlikely. We'll be safely out of range from any littoral craft and launch sites that Iran has, and the risk that a Iranian aircraft would be able to penetrate a carrier's fighter screen is laughable. The effects of the missiles on shipping however... That'd be nasty.
