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Iran Unveils Its First UAV Bomber
ms_gen writes "Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled today the first UAV bomber produced by Iran. The drone, named Karrar (farsi for Striker) can carry various types of bombs. It can reach up to 900 km/h in speed and has a range of 1000 kilometers (620 miles). The Iranian president mentions that 'Karrar is a symbol of the progress of defence technology in Iran.'"
Damn straight. Heaven knows naming your UAVs something ominous is a sure sign of evil. Killing a few hundred innocent civilians per month with the lilly-themed "Predator" drones is something entirely different...
All of these anti-war people complaining about the tens of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan don't seem to understand: Iran has leaders who threaten violence, with really mean sounding words. How is it that they only seem to criticize America?
Right, just to clear this up: the fact they've developed their own UAV bomber is purely to spite the 'West' whereas any similar defense technology development by a western nation should never be construed as antagonising the Middle East, let alone Iran. Furthermore, Iran should not by any means be allowed the same fear sodden defense industry that the West so covets and they should simply accept that.
OK, thanks, I think I've got it now - you're schlepping the same drag-and-drop late-night-international-espionage-TV-drama idiocy that practically defines the geo-political arrogance of our precious West in the eyes of others.
You ought to remember that many countries see the supposed leader of the West, The U.S, as a terrible and amoral aggressor, having willfully used WMDs against civilians (carpet bombing, nuclear weapons), continues to stockpile nuclear weapons munitions while chastising the rest of the world for doing so using trade and political embargoes, trades big-brother-style protection rackets to arm-bend smaller countries into accepting U.S military bases, has camps in which they not only 'disappear' but spiritually and psychologically humiliate the prisoners using methods not seen since Vietnam (the list goes on). This is the stuff they see in talk shows on their TVs, read in their opinion columns in their newspapers, talk about in political science classes at high-school, etc...
Just to point you to the other side of the coin where the opinions of 6 or so billion other people may differ from your picture of it all.
Well, to be honest, it does seem like more of a "we can do that too!" type of gesture. The US employs UAVs because, right or wrong, our military presence is effectively everywhere.
The UAV does seem to be the poster-child of US military power in the region. Whether or not the Iranian weapon system is effective on the battlefield probably isn't as important as the propaganda it will generate.
And yet, in the fifty-five years since the two times they were used, we've managed to avoid sliding down that slope. So far, we've done something right; I just hope we can keep it up.
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The rest of my defense would involve the army stripping down into civilian clothing the second the invasion hits and dispersing into the population with a plan, and giving everyone a (civilians included) gun.
Iran would never want their people to have weapons. The Iranian people would only use them to revolt against their own government.
And if you don't actually win, you pull out and declare victory and brag about how ruined the country is.
Can you tell me this: did Iran invade USA to 'free' US people after the US police shot students? Should some country have invaded USA to free its people from its brutal government?
You can't handle the truth.
Reasons? We don't need no steekin reasons! They got oil baby! Those damned Canadians also better smile when they say hello, after all they got all that oil shale up north. I smell WMDs!
Seriously though, I think the Chinese are gonna kick back and laugh as the US and Russia play their old cold war roles, and then they'll quietly just take Africa. The US and Russia have had their time in the spotlight, I think China will be the next global power. And sadly we here in the USA have so many slips of bad paper held by the Chinese that we won't be able to say boo about anything they do. We'll probably end up a broken mess just like the Soviets in 89. Oh well, nothing lasts forever.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yep, it's a cruise missle from the 60's with RTB functionality.
But lets look at who it will be used against.
1. United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan. No, They are theocratic, not stupid. Their war against the US is propaganda only. Even weakened, NATO could crush them like a paper cup if given any motivation.
2. Israel. No, aside from having the most advanced air defence network in the middle east, attacking Israel is stupid for political reasons. The Persians and the Israeli's get along like a house on fire, giving Israeli Persians a reason to liberate their former homeland is suicide for the Islamic Republic. So again their war is purely propaganda.
3. Remnants of Iraq. Quite possible if things get even more out of hand there, which is likely. If more extremist pro-Arab groups take root Iran becomes threatened (as does Saudi Arabia).
4. Syria, also possible. Despite getting along in the past, relations between Damascus and Tehran have become strained in recent years.
5. Pakistan, maybe. Pakistan is having it's own problems with extremist Muslim groups. Pakistan the state is no threat to Iran but if that state falls who is to say.
6. The other Stans (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan), not likely, they dont have the money or organisation to strike Iran but still possible.
So this weapon was not designed to deliver righteous death to the western capitalist pig-dogs but rather to defend against Iran's real threats, Syria, Former Iraq and possibly the Stans. It is Iran's neighbours who have the capacity, motivation and gumption to draw Iran into a lengthy and costly conflict where such weapons will be needed.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's the way to go, and beats suicidal gestures by conventional forces.
The US is sufficiently beholden to modern laws of war (whose goal is to outlaw effective war and whose outcome is frequently PROTRACTED war) that it can't fight unconventional wars without spending too much money. The US can reduce own-side casualties to historically trivial levels, and can stay as long as it will spend money, but it can't fight economically.
This wouldn't work against a genuinely unconstrained opponent (who could cheerfully destroy the whole country) but genuinely unconstrained nation-state forces haven't existed since WWII.
There IS a conventional bomb suitable for fighting urban warfare. The FOAB ensures Russia has a much nicer option than fighting in cities, which didn't work out so well. The best way to fight in urban areas is to destroy them and kill everyone in them, which until recently required inconvenient and embarrassing nukes. The US can't ever use such a thing, but it is impressive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cpnq4wFx0&feature=related
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Thing is, UAVs can be used offensively against low technology targets. For example dropping missiles on Taleban targets in the middle of the night. You can't use it against Israel because they know how to use radar, and a UAV will be easy to shoot down.
What Iran needs is a terrain hugging cruise missile. It needs to be fast enough to get ahead of observations phoned ahead along the ground track. Ballistic missiles are less effective now that ballistic defense is more mature.
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> The Palestinians, a people screwed over for millenia, finally get to make their homes out of glass, where they can't throw stones!
Screwed over for millenia eh?
Is that a joke? Really. You go back millenia and there are other people to start playing violin over.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As opposed to the US, where you just have to be extremely rich (or sell your soul to other that are) to run. Getting to choose from two brands of strawberry ice-cream ain't the same thing as choosing what to have for dinner.
It just goes to show how morally bankrupt the Left has become, when they scoff and sneer at some poor illiterate woman who's facing death by stoning, claiming that her case is over-hyped and overblown. That's not the kind of liberalism I was raised to respect - kids these days (sigh).
How about this for a liberal value: LEAVE SOVEREIGN NATIONS ALONE. If we have to invade Iran for stoning women, we've got about twenty other countries with worse human rights records - including some of our biggest allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan - that we'd have to invade. And those other allies I mentioned are far less democratic than Iran.
Hezbollah did not appear out of Iran's magic crystal ball. It appeared directly as a result of Israeli and American forces invading Lebanon in 1982. If you'll remember at the time, Iran was fighting an all out war against the US backed henchman Saddam Hussein, because we didn't like their chosen government back then either. I don't think they had time to form a commando unit and invade Lebanon while they were losing that war. (Gee, and that was around the time that Reagan and some current Fox News personalities were committing treason by selling weapons to sworn enemies, taking the money to Colombia, and playing the other side of the drug war to fund the unconstitutional CIA. Fascinating!)
We like destroying secular Arab nationalism and getting absolutely shocked when it turns into extreme islamic fundamentalism. We destroyed the Iranian government in 1953 and ended up with the Islamic Revolution in 1979. We destroyed the marxist government of Afghanistan and eventually got the Taliban. We destroyed the PLO and got Hamas. We destroyed Lebanese movements and we got Hezbollah. We destroyed Iraq and I'll guaran-fucking-tee you we're going to get some crazy Shia elements there as well. Amazing! It's like if you subject people with war and misery for decades, they come out the other side with some kind of chip on their shoulder.
Can we see a pattern here? Just like if you invaded South Carolina and took out their army, you'd have a bunch of fanatical Christians blowing themselves up trying to take just a piece out of whoever invaded. It's a rational response when you have no options left.
So, seriously, shut the fuck up about Iran. You can get all offended and moral about their religious laws when you stop Catholic priests from using their separate religious rules to rape children and get away with it. Oh, but I guess child-rape is morally sound in your sad, fucked up world, huh? Either that, or you think it's easier to go halfway around the world and start another war in the same spot for the third time this decade to stop some injustice.
If you really think that's the case, I have only one thing to say: go. fuck. yourself.
Sincerely,
A "Liberal" Who Has Values,
Including Calling A Spade A Spade
And a range of 620 miles? Isn't that about the distance between Iran and Israel? How sweet of them.
(This "coincidence" is the surest sign to me that it doesn't have nearly the claimed range.)
"620 miles" is just the converted value from "1000 kilometers" which is a nice round approximate number. No coincidence is required. Just a lack of understanding of significant digits
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