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TEHRAN, April 5 (UPI) -- Iran's reported acquisition of a record-breaking British speedboat has raised fears it plans to arm it with high-speed Russian torpedoes to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier in hit-and-run raids if Iran is attacked because of its nuclear program. The Financial Times reported Sunday that Iran has got its hands on the 51-foot craft, the Bradstone Challenger, despite U.S. and British efforts to prevent it from obtaining the high-performance boat.
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The boat was designed by Lorne Camopbell of Britain and is powered by U.S. Caterpillar engines. It was built by ICE Marine of Britain. The project was partly financed by Navatek, a Hawaii-based defense contractor which is developing a naval version.
The Iranians first sought to acquire the powerboat in 2005 after a team led by British adventurer Neil McGrigor set a new record for circumnavigating Britain – 27 hours and 10 minutes, at an average speed of 61.5 miles per hour. Only two of the boats have been built.
The following year the boat was advertised for sale through a broker. The FT said the Iranians tried to buy it, but Britain's Department of Trade and Industry blocked that.
However, the newspaper said, after the boat had passed through two other owners, U.S. authorities learned in January 2009 that the boat, known as the Bladerunner 51, was to be shipped to the South African port of Durban for loading aboard an Iranian-owned, Hong Kong-flagged freighter, the Diplomat, headed for the Gulf.
The Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Commerce Department asked South African authorities to prevent the transfer on the grounds that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps planned to use the Bladerunner as a fast attack craft.
At that time, U.S. Special Forces were on alert to intercept the Diplomat before it could dock at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in the southern Gulf. It is also a key Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base.
However, for reasons that are not known that operation was never set in motion and Iran apparently got the Bladerunner.
During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the Revolutionary Guards' naval arm used packs of armed speedboats and other fast craft to attack tankers carrying Iraqi oil, sinking or damaging dozens of them between 1984 and the end of the conflict.
There are concerns that if the United States, or Israel, attacks Iran's nuclear facilities that Tehran will seek to close the chokepoint Strait of Hormuz, the only gateway to the Gulf with similar tactics.
That would block a shipping route through which 40 percent of the world's oil supplies pass.
But the Americans also suspect that the Revolutionary Guards, who have harassed U.S. warships patrolling the Gulf with dummy attacks by swarms of small craft in recent years, would also use Bladerunner to attack U.S. Navy vessels in the event of hostilities.
The big prize would be a U.S. aircraft carrier or other large warship.
The FT quoted San Francisco-based naval strategist Craig Hooper as saying that Iran is "scouring the world for speedboats with potential military use" to upgrade its current fleet of Chinese and North Korean speedboats.
Further, the Americans fear the Revolutionary Guards would arm the Bladerunner and other such powerful craft with Russian-made Shkval (Squall) torpedoes that have a running speed of 225 mph.
Gen. Ali Fadavi, the Revolutionary Guards' deputy commander, claimed in April 2006 after testing the torpedoes that "no warship can escape from" the Shkval because it was so fast it could not be detected by radar.
The Shkval became operational with the Soviet Navy in the 1990s. Known as the VA-111, it is launched from a 533mm torpedo tube with a warhead of 95 pounds of high explosive.
It operates like an underwater missile. Iran has developed a version known as the 'Hout."
Despite the concerns about the Bladerunner, skeptics are not convinced that the powerboat, armed with one or two torpedoes, would pose a serious threat to U.S. carriers.
Hooper noted: "Though the U.S. navy is very concerned that a swarm of small boats can overwhelm and sink a large warship, the hypothesis is untested. It's never been done.
"A small, fast boat is nothing more than a surprise strike and harassment force. Every time small, fast boats run into helicopters, the helicopters win."
The Financial Times reported that there is speculation the Iranians will seek to reverse-engineer the Bladerunner's revolutionary hull design to build a whole fleet based on the craft.
