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Iran Builds Mock-up of Nimitz-Class Aircraft Carrier
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "The NYT reports that US intelligence analysts studying satellite photos of Iranian military installations say that Iran is building a mock-up of an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with the same distinctive shape and style of the Navy's Nimitz-class carriers, as well as the Nimitz's number 68 neatly painted in white near the bow. Mock aircraft can be seen on the flight deck. The mock-up, which American officials described as more like a barge than a warship, has no nuclear propulsion system and is only about two-thirds the length of a typical 1,100-foot-long Navy carrier. Intelligence officials do not believe that Iran is capable of building an actual aircraft carrier. "Based on our observations, this is not a functioning aircraft carrier; it's a large barge built to look like an aircraft carrier," says Cmdr. Jason Salata. "We're not sure what Iran hopes to gain by building this. If it is a big propaganda piece, to what end?" Navy intelligence analysts surmise that the vessel, which Fifth Fleet wags have nicknamed the Target Barge, is something that Iran could tow to sea, anchor and blow up — while filming the whole thing to make a propaganda point, if, say, the talks with the Western powers over Iran's nuclear program go south. "It is not surprising that Iranian military forces might use a variety of tactics — including military deception tactics — to strategically communicate and possibly demonstrate their resolve in the region," said an American official who has closely followed the construction of the mock-up. The story has set off chatter about how weird and dumb Iran is for building this giant toy boat but according to Marcy Wheeler if you compare Iran's barge with America's troubled F-35 program you end up with an even bigger propaganda prop. "I'm not all that sure what distinguishes the F-35 except the cost: Surely Iran hasn't spent the equivalent of a trillion dollars — which is what we'll spend on the F-35 when it's all said and done — to build its fake boat," writes Wheeler. "So which country is crazier: Iran, for building a fake boat, or the US for funding a never-ending jet program?""
I had one of those. Don't remember if it was Airfix, Tamiya or Revell...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Iran is crazier.
By why cloud a good jab at the US with facts?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
But the F35 is more or less combat ready in its basic form, it's mainly extended feature sets like the USMC's VTOL variant that are holding it back from being in use now.
Moral of the story, though... the people who mocked the F22 as the boondoggle to the F35 should have been fired from the DoD and run out of Congress. The F22 ended up being cheaper and still better (IIRC). There's no excuse for being naive enough to believe "oh yeah, we'll be much cheaper" when building something like the F35.
Like verifying targeting systems? Or perhaps (I don't know if it is needed) checking radar response to compensate for stealth techniques?
...between a mock up and the real thing is if your planes can actually take off and land.
Isn't this the 2nd one they've built? The first one is an office building and only looks like a carrier from above. We never figured that one out either. I couldn't find a link because "Iran aircraft carrier building" only brings up this story now. lol Maybe it was china that did it? I can't remember.
There's probably for a movie in the making. To get some footage of the carrier, the movie company is building their own. It's going to be filmed in that area, so its build near there to avoid shipping (haha) costs. Also, labor is cheap in that region.
I think Iran has computers and 3D artists, and blowing up a CGI USA aircraft carrier would be cheaper and indistinguishable from the real thing on tv screens.
It's very likely to be for training purposes.
Like verifying targeting systems?
HTML co ban
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/... & http://defensetech.org/2011/08...
...is a little out of date. https://www.google.com/maps/pl...
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Seriously? The best you could do is "fake boat"?
Here's my theory, They've come up with some fancy new weapons system that they think can down a Nimitz-class, and they want something that actually looks like one for the demo.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No. I predict some sort of staged attack, which will be broadcast as a triumphal attack on the Great Satan.
Because the Iranian people are nearly as daft as Americans, to judge by the election results.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
This doesnt make sense. What do you mean its not a real aircraft carrier and Iran can't build a real aircraft carrier? If you can land a plane on it it's a fuckiing aircraft carrier. It doesn't need nuclear propulsion to be an aircraft carrier. It about the size of the biggest aircraft carriers from WWII.
Of course I don't know anything about it, but a bunch of FUD from the us navy doesnt mean anything either.
No. I predict some sort of staged attack, which will be broadcast as a triumphal attack on the Great Satan. Because the Iranian people are nearly as daft as Americans, to judge by the election results.
Amazing how daft a people can be when their media and their political parties are all bought and paid for.
it's to test their radar and tracking systems. the mock ship helps them create a radar signature which will be similiar to the real ship. the painted number is there to test their optical recognition systems.
the article is propaganda to show that "the enemy" is no match to the homeland's capabilities.
Iran here. Once I thought Slashdot is a *neutral* news for nerds site, but now it seems it is just another funny tail of the nonsense emitting propaganda machine.
Granted that life in Iran is super-funny (recently gov. vowed proudly that they are squashing anti-filter softwares) but I wonder don't any Slashdoters ask themselves why the US officials are *exposing* this very FACT(?) now in the middle of the IRAN-5+1 negotiations? Just search 'Iran' in this very site and see for yourself the flood of insolent news about we poor bloody Iranians
Love the comments from the crazies out there that Iran is going to use this to con American pilots into landing on their fake carrier so they can capture them, or that they're going to sail it into a naval port to detonate an explosive. It's a freaking mockup that may not even be seaworthy and definitely wouldn't be mistaken for an actual carrier. Idiots.
When police kicked in the door to his University District apartment on April 19, there, on a couch, lit by a flickering TV, next to several spray-paint cans on the floor, not far from a small stash of cocaine, near two crack pipes on the coffee table, reposed the remains of the rock musician.
This was debunked days ago, its a movie prop about the US shooting down an Iranian commercial fight in 1988. Don't the Slashdot editors have access to Google?
Well, at least the barge floats, while the F35s are only good as boat anchors.
"The mock-up, which American officials described as more like a barge than a warship, has no nuclear propulsion system..."
Duh, how could it have nuclear propulsion when two-thirds of the world's diplomats and spooks (the USA's own plus its faithful servants, that is) spend most of their time ensuring that Iran never gets any nuclear technology, no matter how simple and peaceful?
OTOH, a moment's thought reveals that it doesn't need nuclear propulsion, whose main advantage is the ability to sail around the world several times without refuelling. It's unlikely that Iran wishes to indulge in "force projection" in the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific, since it's actually a very peaceable nation. (Please check the history books before violently disagreeing).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Any connection between the F-22 and the F-35?
The F-22 seems finished enough, or so is my impression anyway. :) Could they possibly have shared the same budget somehow?
Government leadership on both sides could use an extended stay in a psychiatric facility. I thought US/Iran relations were supposed to be warming? With active gestures from both sides? In regards to that, I can think of stupider moves Iran could have made but this is dumb and disappointing all the same. When things progressed so far that President Obama and President Rouhani spoke by phone - a major accomplishment on both sides - I hoped things would keep getting better from there. That they would open up their nuclear efforts and that we could then lift sanctions with a real friendship on the horizon. What happened to all that? It was recent and a major news story for sometime. I guess I was naive. If the nations of the world could only humble themselves before one another... In most cases I suppose religion is the big barrier there. The planet is (figuratively) shrinking at an exponential rate and if we don't learn to actually truly get along as a planet of independent nations, we will see a mass thinning of the population at some point, under unfavorable circumstances.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Google news doesn't give me anything like this? Would you like to share your links, please?
Seriously folks we get it. You fscking HATE America so much that you'll come up with any idiotic comparison you can to make us look bad, even false comparisons that are a fine display of stupidity, inability to think logically, and a dandy non sequitur to boot.
I wonder how a war between these barges and jet fighters would turn out?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They could simply build it to study tactic on how to better blow it up, should it attack them. You know. Like the US does in its wargame and planning. Heck some US department had plan to blow their own people to start a war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods). It is just that the US is a bit more discreet. In fact speaking of propaganda, when it relatess to the Iran, we see far far more jingoistic propaganda coming from the US (and israel) including murder commited or foreign nationals than from Iran. just sayin'.
Star tourist attraction of their new Imperialist theme park with fiscal cliff roller coasters and WMD hunts for the children. It will also be the set of a grand Farsi remake of Steven Seagal's Under Siege, which will be premiered at the Deserted Outdoor Theater in Sinai Desert.
What is the summary on about? These seem pretty easy:
"So which country is crazier: Iran, for building a fake boat, or the US for funding a never-ending jet program?""
Crazy? The never-ending transfer of wealth from the American people to the military-industrial complex is exactly what the F35 is designed to do. I mean, hello, duplicate engine contracts? Stop trying to pretend this is primarily a weapons platform - it makes you look naive.
Cmdr. Jason Salata. "We're not sure what Iran hopes to gain by building this. If it is a big propaganda piece, to what end?"
Seriously? This is military intelligence?
Let's play this out. You go and attack Iran with a bunch of battleships and you expect them to come out and counter-attack with their battleships and aircraft? Of course not - they don't have the resources and so they need to have an asymmetrical counter-attack plan. Here's one: get some small boats out to the aircraft carrier under dark of night and board it. Have your men know the layout of the ship like the back of their hands, and kill all the sailors aboard, except for the ones you need to keep alive to extract any command codes that may be required to operate the free battleship. Start with your 'special forces' to disable the counter-attack resources and then overwhelm it with manpower. Make your enemy either destroy their own asset or lose it.
Propaganda piece? Come on.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It seems to have built a complete mock-up of a democracy, complete with a mock-up judiciary, a mock up legislature and even a mock up of a functioning economy.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But by all means, carry on your entertainment.
how else would you train to capture a carrier?
I love how this story gets morphed into an anti-F35 rant. The Iranians are probably building the mock aircraft carrier for some type of training range. It's that whole train as you fight thing. As for the F35; the U.S. is probably pretty smart since most of the airplanes in the U.S. inventory are reaching the end of their service life. The F35 is also not a "never-ending" program. The program is supposed to last 55 years. Spending 1 trillion dollars over 55 years means nothing to the United States. Take 1 trillion dollars and divide it by 55. Then take that figure and compare it to U.S. GDP.
just to clarify, which side were you talking about?
Who are these silly yanks trying to fool. To what nefarious propagandic purposes will they be used?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The summary is full of stuff, but I won't say what.
The United States Navy has, as its primary air-delivered weapons test site - also used for training, a facility out in the Mojave Desert called the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. On that test base (larger than Rhode Island) is a test location called "R-Range" (R is for radar). Out on R-Range is a sort of ship shaped hill called Sea Site that bristles with ship electronics. It is used for testing targeting systems and training -- and it is intended to be a reasonably realistic simulation of a ship equipped with all manner of electronic gear, radar, communications, electronic counter-measures, etc. And it is a hill out in the desert.
This somewhat sub-scale ship is a far more realistic test and training target than that hill out in the desert.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The US, of course. In Iran, you needn't buy any media, the law makes sure already that they stay in Islamic line.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Even if it is a military training aid*, it's not like this isn't completely standard practice. America's own 11th Armored Cavalry is an entire regiment of troops using equipment modified to look and act like enemy equipment (still Soviet, both because most of our enemies are still using Soviet or Soviet-derived equipment, and because it seems like Russia wants to start WW3 again). They're used for training - every other army unit cycles through, "fighting" against them in a really, really advanced version of laser tag, with the 11th acting as the "opposing force", mimicking as best they can the enemy's tactics and capabilities.
Iran and US are currently enemies. We're not at war yet, and I hope it doesn't come to that, but expecting neither side to train for that war is preposterous.
* Given that it's size is wrong, it seems ill-designed for military training. If they were training for an air or sea assault, they would need a properly-sized target, and if they were training to try to capture it, they'd need more detailed internals. It seems more likely to be prop for a propaganda film.
Their plan is to come in at night and steal the real Nimitz, leaving the duplicate in its place
Yeah, they may even dismiss Creationism.
You guys have it all wrong.
Iran needs a little bitty aircraft carrier to land it's little bitty aircraft..
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So this is where they are storing the Malaysian flight they hijacked?
I follow you, then they get bombed and martyred and all Iran gets psyched for a war.
BUT NO, I think they are just bored out of their heads and went over to Instructables, found a project and built a boat.
Kinda like building a model rocket or camel or something. Maybe it will be full of model Iranians so it can only look like theyre martyring brave fighters.
Or maybe its just for an Iranian TV knockoff of McHales Navy. They are pretty modern after all!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
What are they building, in a shipyard, under an obviously phony large carrier deck?
The Progressive side. That they suit up on opposing teams for election theater is purely for hysterical raisins.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I get the impression that too many think of Iran as pathetic, they've started doing their best to chill the world police out. There are very few stable countries in the middle east and this seems to be one of the best.
Models and paper are cheap. If you are going to build something really complicated, build a small scale model where you can test out what you are trying to do. Models are cheap compared to building the real thing, then finding out it doesn't work, then fix, build, break, fix, build, break. You don't know what Iran is building inside its fake-o-Nimitz. Are they even using steel or is it made of wood? If Iran spent more than $1million I would be disappointed. That the US has already spend a $ million-million on this plane that has problems is good for Lockheed Martin shareholders and no one else. Americans can laugh at the 'Target Barge' Iran is building, and Iranians can laugh at the 'Money Pit' America is building. Neither of which will do what is being asked.
It's pretty obviously for training. Even if Iran wanted to do some sort of fake film, it would be easier to do it digitally (and that is how they have done it -- poorly -- before.) It's much more likely that this is a training target, and not for shooting at. The painted marks are the key. This is for training on and testing optical devices. They want to train their people -- probably their speedboat fleet -- on how to recognize and pick out the carrier in a fleet.
There is no "progressive" side. That would imply progress, and that we are not making.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This is nothing more than the Iranians tired of waiting for Hollywood to produce a Top Gun sequel that takes place in the middle east.
Yes, both the Germans and Japanese used bolt-repeaters, and both were at technological (though not industrial) parity with the USA.
The Western Allies had the Germans and Japanese beat in electronics (primitive electronic computers, widespread employment of mechanical computers for fire control machines, proximity fuses, and radar), aerospace design (particularly by war's end), and practical nuclear fission.
The Germans had the Allies beat in a select few technological areas, rocketry and chemical weapons come to mind. The former of course came too late to affect the result and the latter was never used for fear of retaliation. The Japanese didn't beat the Allies in any technological realm, theoretical or practical, though they did have a few bits of engineering (the Type 93 torpedo) that came as a very rude surprise for the Allies.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...as internal propaganda, as in "look, we can sink the mighty amerikan carriers!".
Reminds me of "Comical Ali"...
Probably less as a propaganda attempt, and more likely as war exercises. Its a totally logical policy to use mockups as practice. The US and other countries do this all the time. Its probably a very good use of limited Iranian defense money, as it will give them a much better idea of how to attack a carrier in an actual hot conflict.
Lats time I checked, American Nazis were carrying out military training exercises in mock-ups of Russian cities they purposely built. Why wouldn't Iran military want to build a mock-up of American aircraft carrier for the very same purposes? Most likely this is indeed a Target Barge, exactly what the simpletons in the Fifth Fleet suggested, except that they lack the intelligence to understand that the joke is actually on them.
Which country is crazier, the one defending its own bounds or the one going half-way around the world to attack it?
Because the Iranians are all peaceful and stuff, right?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
There you go again with the rationality. Listen, tough guy: it's all farce. "Progress" means, far from effecting improvements, talking about improvements as if they had been effected.
Our government consists of no-talent rodeo clowns who figure that they can utter the word "jobs" and trigger 1,000 hires.
The actual mechanisms of economics in particular, and reality in general, elude these pencil-necks.
Redistribute power, not wealth, and see if the sign on the slope coefficient doesn't flip positive.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Redistribute power, not wealth, and see if the sign on the slope coefficient doesn't flip positive.
You say that as if it would happen just by sheer will, as if you can separate power from wealth. The two are permanently fused in this country as it is exactly how the true ruling class want it and nobody has the power to change that. Your own claim is no different from your own statement of
utter the word "jobs" and trigger 1,000 hires
Redistribute power, not wealth...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
An excellent job of reading half the sentence, sir. Stay beautiful, hear?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
When dividing by zero, whatever remains is irrelevant... You can't separate leprechauns from unicorns.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
he quoted the impossible part, the rest of the sentence was speculation on what one could do upon accomplishing teh impossible.
The aircraft carrier mock up will be used for making a movie directed jointly by Iranian and American film makers. It is about USS Vincennes shutting down an Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf on 3rd of July 1988.
All of the above was witnessed by a large press corps that very flown in for the occasion - hence the very stupid "show the flag" political exercise that did not go so well as intended. If you are going to butt your nose into the middle of a war (escorting a tanker hastily reflagged from Iraq to Kuwait the night before) it's a good idea at least put on a helmet.
Fairy nuff, magical boy.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
This doesn't look like a Nimitz-class. It more closely resembles the deck of a Russian or Chinese carrier with a ski-jump front end.
If Iran is scoring new carrier-capable aircraft, where do you think they'll get them and what kind will they be? Want to bet they STOL using a ramp system?
The shape and size makes me think it is being built as a practice drone target. Imagine a swarm of weaponized drones that use image recognition to zero in on this big shape in the water... Hope the Phalanx is turned on.
Because the Iranians are all peaceful and stuff, right?
As a matter of fact, yes. Iran hasn't invaded another country in over 270 years. (They invaded India and sacked Delhi in 1738-9). Compare that with the United States: http://academic.evergreen.edu/...
A more comprehensive list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Tony.
-- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- Juvenal
... an unmanned drone will also have the ability to perform maneuvers that a manned aircraft would find to be impossible. The pilot sitting within the aircraft has physical limitations. If you take that pilot and put them miles away rather than in the aircraft, you open up a large number of possibilities. Instead of needing to work around the physical restraints of the squishy human inside, you only need worry about the physical restraints of the aircraft itself.
"Please check the history books before violently disagreeing"
I know that I always read history books if I'm going to know whether or not a nation is peaceable. That's why I keep clear of Italy ... that Rome was the opposite of peaceful, so I assume that it must be the same today. And Japan? Hell no, that country is a war making MACHINE!
In all seriousness, the last 5-10 years is going to tell you a lot more about a country's intentions than it's history books. As a historian, I might be interested in the trends of a country over time. As someone wondering if a country is going to make war, I should probably lend more credence to what they are doing now, with simply an understanding of their history.
Hollywood build fake ships all the time.
The year before the US, under Bush and Cheney and Rummy, invaded and conquered Iraq (for no particulatly good reason), there was a naval exercise imitating the invasion.. Gen. Shinsecki, on the defending forces, blew up a number of ships, including, IIRC, an aircraft carrier, by sending small fishing vessels, much harder-to-hit targets than capital ships, in packed with HE.
My personal bet on this imitation Nimitz is that it's a target, to work out similarly effective attacks.
I know, no fun, nothing to laugh at....
mark
Iran hasn't invaded another country in over 270 years.
If embassies are sovereign territory of the other country, then the takeover of ours in 1979 refutes your point. But that's pedantry. I'll even give you the wars with Iraq, where the U.S. supported Saddam, in the 70s & 80s, as they hardly constituted 'invasion' at any point.
You know, if it wasn't for Iran's post-Khomeni record for sponsoring terrorism (Hezbollah et al.), you point might be more than a thought-free equivalency.
Exit question: Howard Zinn; systematic prevaricator, or all-around lying sack?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Maybe they want to use it for launching and landing 3/4 scale radio control toys? I mean really, there must be close to a hundred million youtubing video-kings who could create a better video of the sinking of an aircraft carrier than the Iranians would get from blowing this up. But it would make a good flyby target if you had an air force that needed to practice attacking a carrier, but again, unless it shoots back you'd be better off with a good video game. But for now, I'll watch this space.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Iran actually spends less on their military (as a share of GDP) then their neighbours (and obviously) more than the USA, They never start wars. They had indigenous democracy not imposed on them by anyone (until the CIA overthrew the democratic government and put in a monarchy) Iran has been invaded by the USSR, Britain, and most recently Iraq. They may make a lot of noise about Israel, but its just posturing. Iran has never participated in any wars with Israel. When Iran wants to hurt another country, they support their dissidents with money and weapons, they have not gone to war. They support Hezbollah, Assad, and Iraqi Shiites, (and other Shiites) but they are remarkable peaceful in a dangerous neighbourhood. Their nuclear enrichment program was very suspect, but its likely to go the way of Taiwans, Swedens, Argentina's or Iraq's, not: Pakistan or DPRK
They may make a lot of noise about Israel, but its just posturing. Iran has never participated [directly] in any wars with Israel.
Fixed that for you.
Here is news: the rest of the region (Sunni) tolerated Saddam because he kept the pesky Shiites at bay.
9/11 was a pretext, given the uncertainty of what would happen after Saddam, for the Great Satan to be allowed in to effect regime change. We had proven reliability in Gulf War I, recall.
In summary, the Iranians may not be much worse than the rest of the region, but angels they ain't.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear