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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."
...came on... make it open source. !!!
Some people have the weirdest fetishes.
No! Haven't they watched Stargate SG-1?
It's all going to end in tears.
I'm sorry for being slightly off topic, but this is important:
Do you know of any studies/argumentations about the likelihood of
Iran using atom bombs against Israel? There are 1,573,000 Israeli Arabs and 1,240,000 Israeli Muslims (many, but not all, of the Arabs are Muslims) - not counting the people in the Palestinian territories that are not Israel citizens.
Would Iran really kill countless innocent Muslim civilians, including women and children?
I mean, Ahmadinejad may be a buffoon, but AFAIK he is no Hitler and no Stalin.
I would like to see this debated.
I have seen news that Israel is about to perform a preemptive strike against Iran, and this is horrible. Not only because of the direct loss of life, but because it fosters anti-semitism, anti-Christianism and anti-Americanism among the Muslim population, and countless people are being killed because of this hatred.
I'm curious what their ability is as far as mass production. I'm also curious why they are producing a 40 year old variant instead of targeting a newer one - I suppose it's a lower barrier to entry and probably a lot easier to get pieces for...
I find it interesting that they didn't release any specific armament specs. This may suggest they don't have any arms plants with sufficient production.
everyone will just copy whatever is developed.
, 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
Blast them with patent infringement suits. The mullas are screwed now.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This smells of a scapyard buy to me, they bought a ton of boneyard cobra chasis and engines and re-armed them. Big deal, Move along...
I can see them off-shoring production to China and getting 100's a month. Their big problem is going to be training pilots fast enough.
As far as the "age" - it was a good design then and is still a good design. Upgrade the weapons to something more modern and they are going to be very dangerous on a battlefield.
Tear up some rug, pesian rug !!
Wait until they get a taste of our theatre-wide laser weapons. We could blind and crash their entire fleet in a few seconds from across the Gulf.
On the red plate in this http://www.jamejamonline.ir/Media/images/1389/02/11/X00873991516.jpg picture is that writing in English?
I'm sorry for being slightly off topic, but this is important:
Do you know of any studies/argumentations about the likelihood of
Iran using atom bombs against Israel? There are 1,573,000 Israeli Arabs and 1,240,000 Israeli Muslims (many, but not all, of the Arabs are Muslims) - not counting the people in the Palestinian territories that are not Israel citizens.
Would Iran really kill countless innocent Muslim civilians, including women and children?
I mean, Ahmadinejad may be a buffoon, but AFAIK he is no Hitler and no Stalin.
I would like to see this debated.
I have seen news that Israel is about to perform a preemptive strike against Iran, and this is horrible. Not only because of the direct loss of life, but because it fosters anti-semitism, anti-Christianism and anti-Americanism among the Muslim population, and countless people are being killed because of this hatred.
(Posting again because some dishonest a**hole moderated me down - see http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2876637&cid=40124517)
Some moderator keeps moderating down as "Troll" everything I post
regarding politics, even though my posts are respectful and reflect
my honest political views. This has happened some 5 times.
I hope this idiot is caught by the metamoderators.
Meh, I think they bought some boneyard cobra chasis and engines, then re-armed them. Move along, Move along...Why build new when you can buy cheap!
Seriously, the AH-1 Cobra was based on the UH-1 Huey. It's a fifty year old airframe and one of the most common helicopters in the world and has been so for decades. It's a good bird but seriously, it's like they figured out turn an old ford cargo van into an APC.
The moderators apparently know no honour.
The post above is a bit inane, but it is not Flamebait,
nor does it deserves to be moderated down twice into
-1.
Shame on you, moderator.
Have we made any advances in helicopter technology that is beyond Iran's reach? I understand the purpose of this article is to mock Iran, but what if they start copying nuclear weapons from that era? And how long will it take them to build equivalents to our modern helicopters?
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I just figured out that the "more photos" link actually points to a forum thread from 2010.
Given Iran's apparent 40 year turnaround time between gaining possession of a piece of military technology and producing reverse-engineered copies, I suppose I should start preparing for Iran's version of the RQ-170 Sentinel drone around 2041.
I'm pretty sure the muslims have a secret society, We have our own controlling everything. They want peace, but ours want control. They want defense, we like offense. Wars will continue to rage until everyone reaches and grasps democracy and capitalism. Irans next on the hit list, and it will make the NWO, terrorism and things that intrude our lives much more prominent over the coming years. Without these secret societys we could have peace on earth. With them there will never be peace, and our ability to govern our world through real democracy will cease to exist.
Cispa, and all the other laws aren't making it so its available to federal law enforcement agencys; they already have the technology. Simply its bringing it down to the local level, where your neighbor hood cop can look up and see that you purchased a fleshlight two years earlier. It's a scary situation and terrorism and the threat of terrorism will just further their cause. Secret societys like evil in the world because it helps their goals of furthering survillencing of every living soul on this planet.
Terrorism is helping the secret societys, and they are the one portraying it as a daily occurance, they are most likely funding both sides of the conflict.
Call me a conspirator, but if you look over everything thats been going on in the government, whether 9/11 was done by terrorists or the government, you'll notice that a police state is arriving, secretly its already here, but openly its not.
If you want to bring them to their knees accidentally loose some F-22s over Iran. If they tried to reverse engineer then deploy them it'd bankrupt the country. Even better yet would be a 30 year old Osprey prototype. The point is we're the only country that spends enough on their military to maintain such cutting edge aircraft. They can mimic 40 year old aircraft but the modern ones are too expensive to build and are drastically more expensive to maintain. It's not just that all they have access to is 40 year old aircraft it's that they were far more practical than modern aircraft. Look at the A-10s they are phasing out. They were wildly successful and the basic technology wasn't all that different than was used in the 50s. The joke is the technology has both gotten so good and so delicate as in the breakdown rate that far more planes are lost due to mechanical failure than enemy gunfire.
Some moderator keeps moderating down as "Troll" everything I post
regarding politics, even though my posts are respectful and reflect
my honest political views. This has happened some 5 times.
I hope this idiot is caught by the metamoderators.
It's because you don't have the "correct" opinion for these losers.
In related news, Adobe announced that the Iranian government has purchased several licenses of Photoshop CS6.
Read the parent post.
Can it possibly be construed as "Troll"?
They often seem to portray President Ahmadenijad as one of the world's greatest geniuses. I expect to see a patriotic picture of him flying one of these.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Decades later....doh....
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
The arabs (well, muslim arabs) are famous for having far more genocides in their history than anyone else, and if you discount the latter part of the 20th century, they're in a completely unchallenged first position (no, the number 2 position has absolutely nothing to do with Germany). And yes, they generally used knives, not atomic bombs.
Their last 3 wars on israel were all attacks as muslims, all started by these muslims (involving multiple countries simultaneously, only really common factor is the paedophile prophet's faith), not as Egyptions or Syrians, and the goal was to start another genocide in all cases.
If these people get access to nuclear bombs, a nuclear war will start in a matter of months, how can you possibly interpret their history in any other way ? Iran is a tossup. It's muslim, has a history of aggression, but not nearly as bad as that of the arabs. But frankly, do we really want tossups here ? Besides, Israel is not going to risk it, if Iran goes nuclear Israel has shown in the past that they'll make the first strike.
There are many aircraft in the US Fleet that are decades old in core design I think most of you are missing the point, Iran has a good relationship with Russia and can fit any new aircraft with modern surveillance and weapons
Saudi Arabia are more active much more then Iran on a Global scale supporting Islamic Jihad, Iran operates more on its back door, the US most impotent friend and Partner in the Middle East is the Islamic funding Terrorist Monarchy called the Saudi Loyal Family whos next emphasis is in the Balkans remember the Balkans and Clintons support of Islamic scum and their establishment in that region
Everything comes full circle it always does
because all the trained ones go down thud. God/Allah/yo'momma forbid they ever try and fire any of that backyard armament. gas pipe ain't good gun barrels. and I'm not going to say why ;)
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"We have used the finest bubblegum, paper maiche, and Legos to build a custom attack helicopter that has abilities that the Apache could never achieve. It's mostly how fast it shakes apart, but that is a mere engineering problem to be solved when our latest shipment of Bazooka Joe gum arrives! Halla malla hoobooey!"
Next they'll strap some jets to a camel and call it a stealth fighter.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Iran sent their own children into minefields, walking slowly through them to clear a path by getting hit by mines, until the mines were exhausted. But no worries ! They gave them small little plastic keys, that the government claimed would take them to heaven "if" they died. They sent all the orphans they had. Why ? Because that's what muslim law says, orphans become slaves of the caliph, which Iran takes to mean they owe their lives to the government.
The keys called attention to the fact that, according to the highest authority of shi'a islam "to kill and be killed for allah is the purest part of islam".
http://www.themodernreligion.com/ugly/unholy.html
Islam is a barbaric, monstrous religion, and it's the real threat.
80% of the benefit is achieved at 20% of the effort. That ratio is improved by stealing IP in manufacturing, historical operational experience, and hindsight.
In the unlikely event they are ever in a military conflict they will be disposed of quickly so Iran can move on to the next one. Maybe they will export to Russia, North Korea and Cuba. :D
JJ
Wow! Those instruments are increadibly old mechanical indicators. I think the only special advantage they will have is in posing as a sitting duck!
Yes, but they'll only do so 40 years later ... at which point, what's the problem exactly ?
To fire the weapons, you must think in American
Having a nuke is the ONLY way to make sure your country is
not taken over by the US.
That's why N. Korea, Iran, and any other country which doesn't want to
end up being a puppet of the US wants nukes.
The US acts like it is waging a war on terror, but the sad truth is that much of the
terrorism has been done in response to things the US has done. This is something
that is well known within the Pentagon and in the White House. All that "war on terror"
propaganda is put out for the consumption of the idiots in the US who will provide
their bodies or the bodies of their children for use by the US military.
If you do not believe what I have written, you need to educate yourself.
The moderators apparently know no honour.
The post above is a bit inane, but it is not Flamebait,
nor does it deserves to be moderated down twice into
-1.
Please mod it up to recover the guy's Karma.
Shame on you, moderator.
It must be so embarrassing for the Iranian government to be in a dick-waving contest with the US and the world when the best they can show is a tiny example of 50 year old technology. The fact that they'd even think to brag about it shows how much their internal media must be censored, or how stupid they think their people are for them to be impressed by this "accomplishment."
What happened to their threats to reverse engineer the drone that crashed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H they captured. Can we expect to see that in 2061?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This blatant stealing is killing the industry! Right?
It was this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_K._Van_Riper
Caused quite a bit of embarrassment to Rummy and his friends. He was retired at the time.
The photos show the "Cobras" sporting Royal Air Force roundels. Are these also used by the Iranian Air Force out of some love for the British occupation or is it just some sort of Photoshop fail?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Oh please, it does not even begin to compare.
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.
I did want the debate, I'm honestly curious. I have no strong opinion here. How could I? Middle Eastern politics is insanely complex.
People provided me with tons of new information, including links, and after reading them I will be much better informed.
Regards
Some moderator keeps moderating down as "Troll" everything I post
regarding politics, even though my posts are respectful and reflect
my honest political views. This has happened some 5 times.
I hope this idiot is caught by the metamoderators.
I once found myself on the bad side of some similar assholes. It took over 5 years to get to the end, but my karma recovered. Since I'm sympathetic to your plight, I'm going to take a look at your posting history. If I see some unfairly modded down posts, I'll use my mod points to bring them back up.
gas pipe ain't good gun barrels. and I'm not going to say why ;)
Just an FYI, your ignorance is showing.
Iran isn't Zimbabwe or even Afghanistan. Iran's essentially a modern country. They have Internet - Twitter was a major part of the protests a while back. They have a space program that's successfully launched satellites. They're actually considered a leading country in stem-cell research and nanotechnology. They helped build the Large Hadron Collider. They export automobiles. They're considered a creative player, a rising star, in cinema. Their GDP sits between Turkey and Australia. On the UN Human Development Index, they are listed as High - the same category as Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, and above China, India, and South Africa.
They produce, legally and under license, H&K MP5 sub-machineguns and G3 rifles and Rheinmetal MG3 machine guns. They have designed and built their own helicopters, UAVs, flight simulators, ballistic missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, smart bombs, you name it. Their standard infantry rifle is arguably an improvement over ours - literally, as it's a bullpup-modified variant of a Chinese copy of the M16.
If we ever go to war with Iran, it will not be like Afghanistan. It will not be like Iraq. It would be like invading, say, Norway - we would win, eventually, if only through sheer bloody-mindedness, but it would be a nasty, brutal fight, bloody on both sides. It would be months, even years before we even get to the "barely-armed guerrilla insurgency" phase.
I didn't mod you down, but I can guess you were modded down for needlessly bringing politics into a tech thread. And not only politics, but ME politics that results in flamewars every time. Mods probably did the right thing by putting out the firestarter before it could catch and ruin a discussion about technology and engineering. We'll talk about Iran, Israel, nukes, and ME politics when the topic is about Iran, Israel, nukes, and ME politics -- its not as if we don't get plenty of that around here.
Thank you for replying.
But honestly, how could a story about Iran reverse engineering American military helicopters possibly not generate
politics-related comments?
And no one had to moderate me down twice and hurt my Karma. They could simply have ignored me and moded up
something else, so my post would be smothered.
Fortunately, I have plenty of Karma to burn, and the dishonest moderators are just wasting their mod points
and taking the risk of being caught by metamoderation.
Regards
At least against western countries. The only way you can effectively operate these aircraft is if you have air superiority on the region, as they are extremely vulnerable to any fighter aircraft. They could build hundreds, but they will all get shot out of the sky by western air power before they can get near our tanks...
to make a GI Joe joke here.
The base design they used as a starting point might be based on a chopper from 50 years ago ... but what do you really know about
those choppers? Ask how may they have compensated for limitations with software, ask what kind of materials they're using and
at least X mm steel armor was a good idea in its day and with modern materials it might even be a better idea today. Fact is you don't
know what ingenuity they came up with but I can tell you these people are just as smart engineers as you and me are and even if
they have to work with less they might just come up with more. More than you're expecting you arrogant little fucks!! Don't give me
this bs you all know what software can do, maybe theirs is just quiet a whole lot better.
Again get it through your head - they, your enemy, the people who rape little girls and then whip and hang them in public, the people ... they may be fucked up and very evil, yet they are just as
who cut off people's hands for stealing, the people who even hate dogs
smart as any of us.
Attack helicopters are only useful if the military has air supremacy. The only people Iran is ever going to have air supremacy over are its own people.
Figures . . .
They are a fine design, presuming Iran has all the parts working right (there's more to making a perfect copy than making it look similar). However they've got nothing on modern choppers. It isn't even so much the actual bits that have to do with flying, but the electronics for communications and attack.
What makes the AH-64D so fearsome is the whole "longbow system". So one helicopter with longbow radar, could even by a Cobra with it, sneaks forward and peaks its radar dome up over the trees or buildings. This gets an accurate map of all the enemy forces, and cross decks it to all the Apaches lying back in waiting. The scout makes itself scarce, and the other pop up and fire off a volley of hellfires from around 5 miles away. These all go for their designated targets, there aren't any unintentional overlaps, and hit.
The system lets a mass targeting like that take place. One platform finds them, the rest blow them up and you don't have any problems of multiple designations where like 4 choppers shoot the same tank or something.
So if Iran has a longbow system ready to go, ok then maybe they have something. Notice the article says nothing about that and they'd probably be bragging on it if they did.
I find it amusing that you think that the Persians living in Iran have any kind of ethnic kinship with Arabs
I never said that Iranians are Arabs. I merely theorise that Iran may fear the Arab backslash if they killed a million Arabs.
In terms of what the US has, well have a look at the AH-64D. That's the current unclassified nifty toy, though it has been around for a bit. Particularly look at the longbow package, the thing that makes a D variant what it is. It is a rather big upgrade. Remember that with things like tanks n' choppers n' so on the fundamental design may be kept for many years with various upgrades made to it. The US still uses B-52s but they are far more advanced today, despite being the same airframe.
You could look at it sort of like a computer: Maybe you keep the same case and powersupply, that doesn't mean you don't upgrade the components.
Then of course there's whatever the US has that it wont' tell people about. The Bin Laden raid inadvertently revealed that there is something. The tail of the helicopter that didn't get destroyed was from no known design out there. So the US has a classified helicopter. Big surprise there. Who knows what precisely it is capable of (hence why it would be classified)?
Also don't confuse propaganda with results. Iran says they have a bunch of helicopters. Ok, how well do they work? Where they proof? We know the AH-64Ds the US have work, not only are there plenty of videos of the playing around in training simulations, but they've been used in actual combat. There's no question they do what they say. Iran says they have a domestically produced Cobra. Ok, does it even fly? If it does, is it any good at combat maneuvers? How are its weapons?
If there's no answer to that it could be because they want to keep it secret, but that would be a little silly given the US already knows what the Cobras do. It also could be because the thing doesn't work near as well as it should.
Think about the cheap Chinese knockoff market for devices: You find these things that look nearly or completely the same, but don't work at all as well as the device they copied. One that readily comes to mind are EOTech holographic weapon sights. Real EOTechs cost $400 and up and are combat sights, as in the military actually DOES use them in combat. Very rugged and reliable, they don't lose their zero, are waterproof, and have great optics (the best anti-glare coating I've ever seen).
The Chinese knockoffs? They cost maybe $50-100 in the US, probalby less there. They look like EOTechs, they try to copy as much of the markings as they can and they are physically similar, though built out of different plastic and plastic in some places the EOTechs are metal. However that's where it ends. The optics are garbage, they aren't waterproof, the "nightvision" button doesn't make them work with NV just changes the colour, they lose zero with the recoil from fired shots, and they break down easily.
That they make a copy doesn't mean they make a good copy.
Production of battlefield equipment is often not the bottleneck. Training a suitable number of troops is.
Just as in the 1300's and 1400's the English Longbow was a devastating weapon. However, they just couldn't keep up the skilled men to operate the 6 ft, upto 200lb draw strength required.
These helicopters are largely for moral.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Disclaimer1:
I hit the 50 comment limit of users with Karma (yes, I have been much of an addict in the past two days) and,
to continue the hot discussion, I created another account (Veritatis_splendor) with which I made 3 comments,
but didn't think of disclosing this fact. On the other hand, I used the same verbiage in those 3 comments as
I used with the other account, so no once can honestly accuse me of hiding. I since then updated both accounts
to disclose it. And this was _after_ the abuses, so it cant be a justification.
Disclaimer2: I am half conservative and half libertarian, and I am pro-life, and I am aware of how much some
people dislike pro-lifers. But I did try to make thoughtful, respectful posts.
Anyway, I thank you for your sympathy but you don't have to spend your mod points on me right now.
I have plenty of Karma, and the dishonest mods happened very recently and haven't hurt my Karma yet.
If I ever drop from Excellent I could ask your help.
Regards
All of you brainwashed dangerous psychopaths religious ignorants you think killing in the name of GOD is good! YOU ARE THE BASTARDS.
You can kill me I don't care, you will NEVER HAVE MY LOVE NOR MY SOUL!!!!
using a military website whos advisory board includes two former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to downplay the fact that
iran so far, just as russia had in the cold war, has outstriped our laughably conservative estimates of its military capability. After all, we've been banging this war drum for far too long to see its support base dwindle in the sight of things like the ability to capture, disable, and reverse engineer americas newest drone.
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-building-copy-captured-us-drone-083944692.html
investors like lockheed and boeing need politicians, and the american public to maintain the hardline opinion that iran could and should be easily crushed by the US military. The boogeyman must remain frightening enough to win the hearts and minds of constituents, but not so frightening as to make them reconsider the cause and effect of another real war without drones that sends kids home with missing limbs or a full scale IQ of 85.
Good people go to bed earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Cobra
Some moderator keeps moderating down as "Troll" everything I post
Slashdot could fix this. I'm guilty of being pissed off with modpoints (years ago) and it is too easy for a moderator to target an individual. Simply gauging moderator behaviors and applying some limits(max 1 mod per individual) would take care of this problem.
I think we can rightfully call this the "reddit effect".
http://barnstormers.com/classified_525683_BELL+AH-1G.html
I'm sorry for being slightly off topic, but this is important:
Do you know of any studies/argumentations about the likelihood of Iran using atom bombs against Israel? There are 1,573,000 Israeli Arabs and 1,240,000 Israeli Muslims (many, but not all, of the Arabs are Muslims) - not counting the people in the Palestinian territories that are not Israel citizens. Would Iran really kill countless innocent Muslim civilians, including women and children? I mean, Ahmadinejad may be a buffoon, but AFAIK he is no Hitler and no Stalin. I would like to see this debated.
I have seen news that Israel is about to perform a preemptive strike against Iran, and this is horrible. Not only because of the direct loss of life, but because it fosters anti-semitism, anti-Christianism and anti-Americanism among the Muslim population, and countless people are being killed because of this hatred.
Iran is very much an enemy of Arabs - Sunni Arabs in particular, which is what virtually all the Muslims within Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza are. Besides, as per the Sunnah, colateral damage of Muslims is fine if it's done in the process of killing Infidels, which in this case it would be. Also, despite Iran's support to Shias in Iraq, Bahrein, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, all is not hunky dory between Iran and Shia Arabs - the Arabs who live in the South Western area of Iran bordering Basra are among the groups persecuted by the Farsis, despite them being Shia.
The argument about Ahmadinejad not being a Stalin or Hitler is not all there is. First of all, he's #2 in the Iranian regime, if that - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the head honcho, and it's he who'd get to decide whether to wipe out Israel or not, once Iran gets nukes. Aside from that, Ahmadinejad came to power on a platform to bring in the Mahdi, or the 12th imam, who is said to reside in a well in Qum, and would return along with Jesus Christ to assist in the hastening of the acopalypse. (Christ's role, in this Islamic version, would be to either covert all Christians to Islam or kill them.) That is the reason that Iran wants the bomb - so that they can fulfil those eschatological fantasies.
About Israel doing a pre-emptive strike against Iran, if their reading of the situation is that Iran is working on a nuke with which to threaten them, it sounds only logical that they'd consider such a possibility. However, unlike Iraq in 1981 or Syria more recently, Iran has several, not one uranium enrichment facility, and they are scattered throughout the country. Therefore, in the absense of the US doing it, Israel's only hope has been to do it behind the scenes - w/ Stuxnet, and other such adventures.
Israel is said to have had a nuclear arsenal since the 70s, although they maintain a policy of being deliberately ambiguous about it, to keep both their erstwhile allies, as well as their enemies guessing. But if Israel had the same genocidal ambitions that Muslims and their supporters project onto it, Israel could have nuked Iran in the 80s (when it would have been popular, given the Iran-Iraq war, and Iran was universally hated). After all, Iran had that hatred of Israel since 1979, so had Israel gone into this with the very attitude that Israel detractors accuse it of going with, they could have allied with Saddam and nuked Iran, and enabled Iraq to completely occupy Iran.
I don't recall there being any backlash when the U.S. used nukes on Japan...
Are you really, REALLY comparing the USA's and Japan's positions in the WWII and the state of the world back in 1945 with anything current?
Besides Japan being an island country and an aggressor in the region (meaning that most their neighbors were at best not celebrating in the streets when they got nuked), and a huge military machine, and allies with fucking Nazi Germany in their world conquest...
There's this tiny little thing about there being a single-digit number of atomic bombs back then - all of them belonging to the U.S. of A.
So not only was the USA "the victorious good guys who've just defeated not one but TWO evil empires" - they also had the nukes. ALL of them.
And I'm not even going to go into Marshal plan and all the other aid programs USA did back then.
Seriously, what kind of global or local "backlash" would you expect in such a case?
No country in the world today is in either USA's or Japan's position from back then, nor is the world of today ANYTHING like the world of 1945.
There are thousands of nukes laying around, and there are almost 3 times more people now, making the world a much smaller place.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Ok, so US nuked Japan, and some 50 years later, a tsunami damages a Japanese built nuclear power plant, and that's a dire consequence of the US nuking Japan? Talk about the butterfly effect, moron!
Demachina's claim about there being no repercussions on the US for using nukes is historically borne out. Far from US being subjected to attacks - conventional or nuclear, Japan surrendered, and the war ended. Maybe you can fill in whether people within the US condemned the US for nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the first time it was condemned was when the Soviets started using it during the Cold War as propaganda against the US. Never mind that 2 days after Hiroshima, the Soviets declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria and Korea.
You are right - for the victims, there's not a difference between being bombed by a nuke vs being at the receiving end of, say, a JDAM. Difference is more strategic - a nuclear attack is guaranteed to completely destroy everything within a certain radius, whereas conventional weapons only work on their precise targets.
It's ironic how a huge portion of ISRAEL's population is Muslim, as well as how the 'Pali' population in Gaza and West Bank have been growing. If Israel was a state that practiced ethnic cleansing, the overwhelming majority of people in not only Israel, but also Judea, Samaria and Gaza would have been JEWS, not Muslim.
NAZI was a German acronym for 'National SOCIALIST German WORKER's Party'. It beats me why they are refered to as Right Wing, when their economic philosophy is not much different from Marxism. Only difference between Nazism and Communism is that the former assumes that they (the people who constitute their members) are a master race, while the latter has goals of a worldwide fraternity of the proletariat. But both are only too happy to employ genocidal means in order to achieve these utopian goals.
...it will fire female ninjas at the enemy.
I know someone who knows someone who did training for the Iraq.
Basically if anything broke or happened, it was "hands of the controls and start praying" - no corrective measures, no evasion, no ejection.
They had to pound that out of them, and did so with only limited success. Seems to be a cultural thing.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
But you know what'd be even more awesome? Airwolf blowing up an every expanding supply of Cayuse and Cobra attack helicopters, provided courtesy of Iran!
Middle eastern diplomacy here we come! :)
If the US had a valid casus belli for a war againt Iran you would be foolish to assume that the US would try to fight a nation building war where they would keep population centers intact. Iran has an outdated air force and would be completely dependent upon SAM coverage to prevent US air superiority from leveling every building between their landing site and Tehran. I would bet that within 3 months Iran would have a completely obliterated C&C structure and be unable to put up an effective resistance short of using guerillas, which only works if you give a fuck about protecting civilians and giving them a place to hide.
Nah. Their Iran-Iraq war performance was pretty horrible in the beginning because in Iran theology trumped military experience and know-how. Only later on when they got regular military in their forces were they able to start turning the tide around (yet they still had to resort to human-wave tactics to win). The main problem with invading Iran is that it is a mountainous earthquake prone shithole similar to Afghanistan but only larger. The country has a much larger population than Iraq and is close to developing nuclear weapons. Norway in comparison has better weapons but next to no population in comparison.
"I would like to see this debated."
I don't think it will happen, but it may. Your turn.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Iranian officials stress that Iran's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes
Ha-ha. We say the same thing about ours in the U.S.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We just need to have a mole high in Iranian government smuggle plans for the Ford Pinto into their industrial complex. Within 5 years, Iran will be a smoldering cinder! Of course the plan must never get out or the U.N. will be all over us for human rights violations... Doh!
So all those 80's fighter movies were prophetic. All of those "migs" that were really F5's are actually Iranian.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The west should totally start reverse-engineering chinese products and learn how to make steel, computer chips etc
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Eh? They were at war with Iraq for years, and the US reduced that country to "barely-armed guerrilla insurgency" in days. It will be exactly like attacking Iraq, only the US probably won't bother invading Iran because there would be no point.
You knock out the rader, military bases, airforce, power, bridges etc in the first few hours and they're fucked - absolutely no way Iran is going to be able to do the same to the US forces in the neighbouring countries, ships, drones controlled from the US etc.
But can they fight?
Those look like they'll be great targets for us to practice on the next time we get frisky. Hopefully they make a lot of them so we don't run out too quickly.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Crusading was a great way to earn money, fame and reputation. Read about that stuff sometime.
This is very biased. Something that people forget is that the North of Africa and Asia Minor were originally Christian, before they were invaded by Muslims.
After some time, Christians finally stroke back, recovering a small part of the territory that was originally theirs. In the end, the whole affair was a big victory
for Muslims.
And some people manage to construe the whole story as a Christian aggression against Muslims, which is absurd.
Yeah, take a NINETEEN SEVENTIES design & technology, build it, mount somewhat newer missiles, and see how long it
would last against USA or Israel weapons. What a joke! They are about 40 years behind in most weapons technology, only
the Russians & Chinese have supplied them with somewhat modern technology. They still fly F-4 Phantoms as a "front line"
fighter, have a few F-14's that the weapons systems don't work.
Good luck with that Iran....you'll get your butt kicked but good if you try to take on anything other than a Kurdish or Taliban type
"army".
Yeah, in a 4 v 1 situation, the F-22 can out perform the F-15, but at what cost?
Stories show that an F-15 pilot, with just basic skills on the F-22, can "out gun" an
F-22 pilot flying the F-15, but, for the price of the F-22 you can have how many F-15's?
And, the F-15 STILL has not been lost to air to air combat. The F-15 was built at a time
when the USA & USSR were in an arms race to one up each other. The Mig-25 was built
to counter the B-70 because the B-70 was built to counter soviet missiles (after the U2 was
brought down). The Mig-25 was "over built" to counter the B-70, and when the Mig-25 "walked
away" from an Israel F-4 Phantom, the USA "got scared" so to speak, and built the F-15 to
counter the Mig-25. When the pilot of a Mig-25 dropped into Japan and said here's the key
to the Mig-25, can I stay, the USA got its first up close look and found it to be a primitive
design with TWO HUGE ENGINES. So the F-15 became an air SUPERIORITY fighter who's
design is still top notch, and with the ones they played around with that had leading nose slats
it has even more potential. Stealth is ok, but I would take a hundred F-15's over 25 F-22's since
I think you would be better off with shear numbers of those, versus the "advanced" F-22's.
It appears the main problem with the 22's has to do with the environmental systems, which
"should" be an easy fix, and, by easy fix, that means a multibillion dollar "upgrade".
It's arguable whether the Soviets declaring war on Japan and invading Manchuria and Korea was a cause of Japan's surrender, as opposed to the 2 nukes, as the GP suggests. The Japanese ruling establishment was more panicky about 2 of their military/industrial complex cities getting obliterated, as opposed to one of their overseas colonies getting invaded.
Actually, the Japanese would have been willing to surrender before the second bomb - maybe even before the first - had guarantees been provided about the safety of their emperor, who at the time was considered divine. So had that been understood by the US government, they'd have gotten the surrender, w/o the Nagasaki bomb being needed. Or alternatively, had the Japanese known in advance that after the war, the US would establish a new state around the emperor, but with a different regime, they'd have given the US the surrender they wanted.
I see rampant electoral fraud this November geared to get Romney elected and we're all just fucked.
Bush lost in both 2000 and 2004, but nobody cared then, why would you think anyone would care now? I moved the hell out of the US because of that crap. It's only going to get worse. Have fun with 8 years of Romney. I'll come back after the revolution.
I moved out of the US as well, and the break from American neoconservative and religious madness was beyond refreshing. However, I've moved back. I've decided to make my stand here, and defend what this country was founded to be, not the neoconservative, undemocratic theocratic fascism the Republicans and Tea Partiers want to make it. If we leave, we cede the ground to madmen, and eventually they'll cross the Atlantic (or Pacific) and hunt everyone down who doesn't share their hate filled madness.