Iran's Sunburn anti-ship missiles pose a severe threat to US forces if conflict were to break out in the Persian Gulf.
Designed in Russia and manufactured in Russia and China, the Sunburn missile was designed to defeat America's AEGIS missile defense system. The missile can fly just nine feet above the ocean at Mach 2.1, more than twice the speed of sound. It executes a violent pop-up maneuver for its terminal approach to confuse a ship's last-ditch inner-circle anti-missile systems.
The Sunburn is twice as fast and has twice the range of the French-made Exocet missile, which Iran also possess and which Argentina used during the Falklands War to sink the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sheffield and another British ship.
Tensions are running high in the Persian Gulf as Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic in response to tightened Western-led sanctions against its nuclear program. Some 20 percent of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, the only access point to the open ocean available to major oil exporters Iraq, Kuwait and the Gulf states.
