Slashdot Mirror
Iran Reverse Engineers Cobra Attack Helicopter
Hugh Pickens writes "Continuing its tradition of reverse engineering and fabricating its stockpile of 40-year old American weaponry, Iran announced that it is about to unveil its first ever domestically produced Cobra attack choppers. Nearly 50 years after the U.S. introduced the legendary Bell AH-1 Cobra, once the backbone of the U.S. Army's attack helicopter fleet, Iran's locally-grown Cobras will be armed with 'different types of home-made caliber guns, rockets and missiles,' according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. 'All the phases of designing and manufacturing of the chopper have been done inside the country and the helicopter enjoys some capabilities which make it preferable to Apache Choppers,' says Brigadier General Kioumars Heidari. Iranian officials stress that Iran's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country, reports the FARS news release. More photos available here."
, Iran's locally-grown Cobras will be armed with 'different types of home-made caliber guns, rockets and missiles,' according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. 'All the phases of designing and manufacturing of the chopper have been done inside the country and the helicopter enjoys some capabilities which make it preferable to Apache Choppers,' says Brigadier General Kioumars Heidari. Iranian officials stress that Iran's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country,
So, basically, you're copying 40 year old tech from your enemies, but because you can't buy the bullets or missiles to shoot, you're going to arm them with whatever you can cobble together. It's like Junkyard Wars, only with dictators instead of teams. Yeah... I can see why they say we shouldn't perceive it as a threat... but it's not because they're dangerous or anything. They'll probably kill more of their pilots in training flights than we would with a bombing run or twenty.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
We could debate the situation between Israel, palestina, and Iran all we want, but we have no idea what the facts are here. Journalism isn't what it used to be, and every single story about those three are biased beyond all reconing. Not in outright lies, but in leaving out "details" and drawing lots of attention to others.
How can we give judgement if we have no idea of the conditions these people live in?
Give me facts, and I will give you arguments.
One thing we can say for sure is that Nuclear bombs (fission or fusion), will always be beyond a last resort. The backlash of using one is so tremendous, that countries rather go to war in the traditional means (tanks, generals, the occasional trumpeteer) than anything involving massive genocide.
It's the reason people are terrified of terrorists getting nuclear arms. Because they simply don't care about the backlash.
I'm also curious why they are producing a 40 year old variant instead of targeting a newer one -
Its a wee bit difficult to reverse engineer a helicopter that you dont own.
No, I don't really believe you would.
I think you'd like to see everyone agree with you that Iran would not kill "countless innocent Muslim civilians" and that we should somehow take comfort in the fact that Ahmadinejad "is no Hitler and no Stalin". I'm sure that late neighboring buffoon, Saddam Hussein, was "no Hitler and no Stalin" but he had no compunctions about killing "countless innocent Muslim civilians". In fact, just about every time I look at the news I see muslims killing "countless innocent Muslim civilians", and more often than not, it's thanks to some "buffoon" who's "no Hitler and no Stalin". So pardon me if your assurances about Ahmadinejad do not really convince.
We have seen this news since about 2002. Every six months or so, a parade of neoconservatives who have failed at foreign policy (Ledeen, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Podhoretz, etc) shows up at the right-wing talk shows with breaking news that Israel is going to launch a strike against Iran "within 60 days". No joke, this is as regular as Autumn follows Summer. If you tune into any of the Salem Radio talkers, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, you will hear these predictions at least once a week. The funny thing is that not one of them has ever mentioned their own long string of failed predictions.
I don't know if Israel is going to launch a strike on Iran, and I don't know if Israel wants to launch a strike on Iran, but I know for sure that Israel doesn't want to launch a strike anywhere near as badly as this string of former foreign policy advisers to Republican administrations. And this act has been going on since at least the 1970s.
Oh, and the good news? Mitt Romney has already stated that he's going to hire all these same psychopaths to advise his administration on foreign policy. He's putting the pro-war band back together, and this time with an extra helping of St John's Revelations, LDS-style.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Decades later....doh....
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I don't recall there being any backlash when the U.S. used nukes on Japan, they became one of Americas closest allies soon after.
The devestation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't really much different than the firebombings of Tokyo by the U.S. or Dresden by the British, excepting for radiation sickness and long term cancers, but fire bombing led to burns that were pretty much as bad. The nukes just required fewer air planes to do the damage, but they were still massively expensive to make.
Needless to say a fusion bomb on a large city would be horrific but very few nations have those. A fission bomb would certainly be worse than 9/11 if an Al Qaeda like group managed to set one off in a Western city so its obviously something to be avoided.
But the U.S., Britain and Russia have been killing large numbers of civilians since World War II with little repercussion so I think your statement "will always be beyond a last resort" is a little overly breathless.
@de_machina
You're going to have to tell us what happened to all the christian massacres that easily trumped arabs both numerically and in terms of quality (as in being quite sophisticated about the ways used to kill people). No one was as good at brutally slaughtering people in the name of the God (and his installed representative on earth, the blessed king/tsar/pope/etc) as fellow christians. Hell, the colonialist period and its massacres alone probably killed more people then arabs during entire history of islam. That's not even touching dark ages, which were full of both internal as well as external savagery. Ever wondered why we use arabic numbers? Because when islam was the progressive religion driving greatest scientific minds of its time, christian Europe was hell bent on killing and enslaving as many muslims as possible. Crusading was a great way to earn money, fame and reputation. Read about that stuff sometime.
Islam has a reeeeeeeeeeally long way to go if it actually wants to even compete for #1. Even discounting WW1 and WW2, christians have long held the trophy, and they're not going to be relinquishing it any time soon.
I was alive when US nuked Japan. Parent statement sounds right to me.
I just happened to be reading the U.S. military's strategic bombing report of the atomic bombing of Japan. I also read a recent hospital report on a severe burn victim.
I don't see any difference between being burned to death (or killed when a building collapses) in a nuclear blast or in a conventional firebombing. It's a long painful process in either case. The best you could hope for would be enough morphine to put you out, and they didn't have much morphine after those attacks.
The AC's comment is part of a bad Internet practice of calling everything that you disagree with "inane drivel", as a substitute for thinking about it and making an intelligent comment.
The Chinese don't exactly subscribe to Nazism but there was a counter revolution when Mao died and they did swing hard to state Capitalism and something closely resembling Fascism. Its comical for the Chinese to still claim they're Communists when their leadership are increasingly very wealthy and very successful capitalists.
The two regimes in the Middle East that were closely aligned to Fascism recently were the Ba'ath regimes, Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria. It is a real stretch to claim Turkey is anywhere close to being in the same class.
If you want to name another regime in the Middle East with issues with ethnic cleansing and far right leaning its probably Israel. Its ironic how similar they've become to their bitterest nemesis.
@de_machina
"It means you are able to criticize the government, and people who want to hear you can find a way to hear you."
Apologies, I'm not following your point. Are you saying Occupy somehow had no right to say the things they were saying?
The occupy movement was criticizing the U.S. government and just trying to be heard. As soon as they started being heard, and they started to cause discomfort to Wall Street and the government, they were systematically crushed in every place they had critical mess, New York, Oakland, UC Davis, Denver, Boston, LA etc.
The Federal government was actively aiding and coordinating the cities as they used riot police to break up the entire movement. How often have you heard anything about it since the last encampments were broken up by riot police.
Iran's supression was somewhat more brutal, but in terms of intent, goals and effect what the U.S. government did to the Occupy movement was exactly the same kind of oppression Iran's government did to the Green movement. The Green movement was actually trying to topple the regime in Iran. Occupy was just saying the current regime in the U.S. sucks (i.e. Wall Street seizing control of our government and using that control to loot America).
@de_machina
So you are seriously trying to grade how people die with nukes versus a fire storm and you think somehow dying in either one doesn't completely suck? If anything the nuke tends to be somewhat more merciful, at least for all the people near ground zero since the death is instantaneous, slow roasting or searing suffocation in a fire storm has to be one of the more brutal ways to kill someone.
Their are monuments in Tokyo and Dresden too. The Tokyo monument is a statue of a group of children.
The Dresden monument reads,
""How many died? Who knows the number? In your wounds one sees the agony of the nameless ones who burned here in the hellfire made by human hands.""
Once you start killing large numbers of civilians the details of how you go about it don't actually matter.
@de_machina
Actually the speed with which you kill people doesn't matter at all. Slow death in Hitler's concentration camps or Stalin's gulags are, if anything much worse, because they caused massive and prolonged suffering. At least nukes are quick except for the people who get high doses of radiation and burns and aren't killed instantly.
As for the collective guilt of Americans, I am relatively sure its non existent. All the interviews I've seen with the crews who dropped the bombs they were of the opinion the Japanese deserved it, and it was better than the carnage, and mass casualties that would have resulted from an invasion of the main Japanese islands. They'd also been pretty well propagandized in to hating the Japanese at that point. Obviously some American's were torn up over it, Oppenheimer included, but people were torn up by concentration camps, the Bataan death march, Dresden and Tokyo too.
You seem pretty confused about the position I'm advocating. I am not in the least advocating the use of nuclear weapons anywhere. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of the people who somehow think they are exceptional. I'm mostly pointing out it doesn't matter how you do it, once you start killing civilians, and rationalizing it, you are pretty seriously fucked up and you don't deserve a free pass no matter who you are or how righteous you think you are.
@de_machina
Pearl Habor was no rationale at all for doing anything to Japan. The U.S., Britain and the Dutch had embargoed Japan's oil supplies in July 1941. Japan made it quite clear then that they considered that an act of war since it was going to completely strangle Japan militarily and economically. War was inevitable from that point and FDR and the U.S. military knew it. Japan had no choice but to seize the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to restore their oil supply, and to do that they had to neutralize the U.S. Pacific fleet.
The specifics of when and where the Japanese would attack might have been a bit of a surprise but the U.S. knew full well it was coming. Its up to the conspiracy theorists to make the claim the U.S. intentionally let the Japanese maul Pearl Harbor because FDR needed a day of "infamy" to goad the American people in to entering World War II, something the very isolationist American people had been loathe to do up to that point. It did a great job of whipping Americans in to a war frenzy, and producing a gusher of volunteers for the military, something that simply wouldn't have happened if FDR had just declared war on Germany and Japan without a provocation.
@de_machina
And how much of the current US arsenal is from the 70s and 80s? that would be the majority. Just because its an older design doesn't mean it can't royally fuck you up, Israel still uses them as does the USMC and with missiles and its ability to use terrain to conceal and then pop up and fire the Cobra can still be VERY deadly. The problem with the Hind is they tried to build a craft with the troop carrying capacity of the Huey with the attack capability of the Cobra and ended up with a VERY large target. Not saying it isn't deadly but its huge size made it a pretty inviting target in Afghanistan and unlike the Cobra nimble it wasn't.
so I can see why they wanted to copy 70s US tech because sadly IMHO all we have produced since is overpriced tech turkeys like the F22 that are insanely priced and spend more time being worked on than flying. The Cobra is proven tech and is nimble while giving them plenty of firepower at an affordable price. if the pics in TFA are correct they also have a Huey knockoff which means they probably don't need the troop carrying ability of the Hind, just pair it with the Cobras as we did.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well, looking at which countries do what, the United States need to change a department name to "Department of Attack" soon...
Look! My anti-Muslim views are completely supported by all there anti-Muslim blogs! I MUST be right!
Unfortunately this would require that there be death on the part of the Palestinians in a systematic way. There isn't. I'm sorry, you fail. NEXT
This meme about a golden age of Islamic civilization is a complete myth
The Romans of antiquity were similar borrowers. And yet they had a golden age as well. Creating a common culture and political system and a huge trade network has vast value in itself. Among other things, it permits borrowing of technologies and ideas between otherwise disparate groups and creates a mixing pot of such things.
So the very borrowing of stuff which you decry is a huge part of the Muslim contribution to human development in that time.
What really has changed isn't that Muslim society has gotten worse, but that the rest of the world has found something better.
The way forward is forward, with remote piloted drones. The human being is one of the most finicky parts of the plane, and the whole contraption has to be bigger, slower, and more expensive to accommodate it.
They're spending untold billions on trying to get a piloted plane to match the performance of a drone, and failing. We don't need to go back; we just need to stop being attached to an old idea. Air power changes, as do all military tactics.
Human beings are actually more important than ever, doing things that pilots can't do even in the most expensive planes: talk to people. That is incredibly hazardous, but the combination of the two is as effective a tool as we currently have.
Did you know we have yet to use the F22 ANYWHERE? Why? too damned expensive to risk, and I'm betting the same will be said of the F35.
The more likely reason the F-22 hasn't seen combat use is that the United States hasn't been involved in a conflict that has required it. The B-2 is quite a bit more expensive and they have seen use, so this calls into question your reasoning. I'd trust the people in charge of planning missions on deciding the equipment used to execute the mission before I'd trust your hunches about their motivations.
The German WWII anology is silly. If the United States decides to attack all of Europe and Russia, I'd expect early successes as the Germans experienced, followed by a war of attrition that would eventually be hopeless (not counting nuclear, of course). This attrition would happen whether F-15s or F-22s are used. You think the Germans would have been more successful with inferior equipment? I don't. Their problem was that they attacked everybody, not their advanced equipment. They were fighting pretty much all of Europe, Russia, and the United States. That is a lost cause no matter what equipment is used.
Frustration with the cost overruns with the F-22 and F-35 are understandable. I agree it's a mess. I think everybody does. I don't know what to do about it, but the answer is certainly not stocking up on old designs. The F-15Es, F-16s, F-18Es, and Warthogs will still be in service for a long time after introduction of the newer planes. If a conflict arises where the capabilities of the F-22 and F-35 are needed, those planes will be there. Until then, I guess you can continue to post your comments about how the reason they haven't been used is that they are too expensive, even though that's not the reason at all.
I don't think that taking a page from Iran is an idea worth even the slightest bit of respect. You really think that the chance of the United States gaining air superiority during an Iranian conflict would be better using Iranian hardware? You think chances are hurt by having the F-22?