Iran unveils latest high-tech weapon...

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I hate the Iranian president - but I also oppose any attack on Iran (whether by Israel or the US) and I don't want my opposition to be construed in any way as backing Western aggression.

I did however take part some in Iranian community protests in my city support of the Green Revolution.

The Iranian people would be glad to hear this. They hate their president too.

But here is a question: If the Iranian government suddenly has Soviet based technology do you think they could be gettng this stuff from Russia?

What is more disturbing; is Russia helping them get these weapons?

If yes to the above questions, Iran might get more dangerous and modern technology in the near future.

I wouldn't worry too much - the Soviets played with these things for nearly 30 years, and never really got them to the point of being practical. It's not like they sold the Iranians Soyuz technology - more like they had a clearance sale of the less-useful ideas in the back room.

Here's what would happen to these flying boats in a conventional war with the US: They would take off, begin the initial climb, and then blow up never having seen their enemy.

That's pretty much how the Iraq MIGs fared, and that was almost 20 years ago. They'd take off, retract the landing gear, and blow up right over their own airfield, from a missile shot fired 50-60 miles away. US has even more capable planes and missiles today.

No, here is what would happen in a real war. Iran would fire all their Soviet made Sunburn and Mosquito anti-ship missiles.

These would zig-zag in just above the water at twice the speed of sound and sink every American ship and aircraft carrier within range.

American cruise missiles and aircraft would have the advantage in the air but the American fleet would be toast.

In the mean time Iranian missiles would be hurtling towards every American base in the middle east.

Who would win? In the long run America would but it would be a very costly victory.

Except that these things are clearly just an extension of the Iranian "This is OUR pond" mentality. Scooting around, buzzing fishing boats and trying to catch small enemy craft on the wrong side of the invisible line. (Which they do, all the time.) Then they can capture the crew, and embarrass the pertinent country by making ridiculous demands over the "hostages", and the country in question will realise that its useless government have so devalued their once powerful navy that they can't actually do s**t about it. Either way, its not FOR front-line combat or air superiority. Its also an internal propaganda thing, much like a Red Square parade.

People do get so ridiculous about these things. If the Iranians had revealed that they had made a new type of combat knife which was superior in design to the previous one (maybe it has a compass in the handle, or a widget for getting stones out of horses hooves) would people immediately start laughing and going "OUR airforce has ultra-invisible flying whirligigs that make a mockery of your crappy little knife." ? What would be the point? They are two incomparable things.

If Iran had just unveiled some Arabic variant of a joint strike fighter, with all the bells and whistles on it, THEN some comparison could be drawn.

Iran is not an Arabic nation. It is, however, a Muslim nation.

ruveyn

More accurately, Iran would fire all their Soviet.made Sunburn and Mosquito anti-ship missiles.

Due to the Iranian focus on ideological purity over practical value, the lack of maintenance received by the missiles since their purchase would result in the majority either misfiring or crashing into the ocean; any remaining would be dealt with by American AEGIS point-defense systems (whose sea-level radar, incidentally, also renders the ekranoplan's "fly below the radar" technique useless).

The Americans immediately seize on this excuse to declare war on a nation that's been a thorn in their side since 1979, and the Iranian military (being every bit as fearsome as the late Iraqi military) goes down to defeat in jig time. Hopefully, this time the Americans don't screw up the occupation, and the locals actually do welcome us as liberators, rather than a new wave of oppressors...

You see, there's a reason why the Iranians haven't tried this strategy yet - they know as well as we do what the inevitable outcome would be. Prayers to Allah don't amount to much against a Tomahawk cruise missile. This whole "flying patrol boat" nonsense is intended purely to impress the ignorant (with which the Gulf seems plentifully supplied) with Iran's imaginary naval might, saving them from potential conflicts with some of their more aggressive neighbors.

Near point defense would take care of most of those missiles. Phalanx guns are awesome. Some missiles would connect the the aircraft carriers would not be sunk. The only thing the aircraft carriers have to worry about are small tactical nuclear anti-ship missiles which the Iranians do not yet have.

If an American CV is ever sunk by Iran we would nuke Iran until it became a glassy parking lot that glows blue at night.

ruveyn

They could be wholly native Swahili. That's not the point of the post. Maybe it could be a Persian one, with those little tassels they like to put in car windows.

And the fallout indiscriminatly kills millions of innocent people for the next several decades. Jingoism at its finest

Collateral damage never deterred the U.S. from doing its war thing.

For which I am grateful.

Here is the drill. Sh*t happens. Get used to it.

ruveyn

I can well see that sprayed on an overturned tanker stuck through a burning Empire State Building after American jingoism and "collateral damage" turns into an unholy multi-player nuclear cluster-fuck, just before the whole place gets turned into pretty dust.

So, MacBeth, because you fear that American "jingoism" will lead to an all-out, world-destroying nuclear war (with whom, exactly?), we should therefore cower in fear of Iran's primitive ekranoplans?

Look, champ, a) weapons sold to Iran - to anyone - by the Soviets are going to be twenty years old, and twenty years out of date, because the USSR folded twenty years ago; b) sinking a naval vessel of any sovereign nation is widely understood to be tantamount to a declaration of war against that nation; and c) if the Iranian leadership should be loony enough to attack the United States, ain't nobody out there loony enough to join them, not even Kim Jong-Il. No "nuclear war" - heck, we wouldn't even need nukes to plaster Tehran, should someone think the city would look better flat (I doubt even that would happen - too much history, not enough compelling reason to destroy it all. We're not all going to react like, say, the UK in WWII, fire-bombing the china factories in Dresden for being too close to Nazi munitions factories...). A few thousand-pound MOABs should suffice, one would think. And contrary to the depictions in popular movies and video games, nuclear-launch controls are not in the hands of a collection of trigger-happy cowboys who don't understand what they're doing. It's not that easy to get even a single nuke release authorized, especially with no credible incoming threat.

Come join us in the 21st century. It's a lot nicer here, what with all that "worldwide nuclear devastation" stuff having been left behind back in the '90s...

Twenty thousand nukes and six minutes on the Clock say the world ain't exactly safe from the threat of apocalypse.

That "six minutes on the Clock" crap has to come from someone too young to have lived through the Cold War, when we actually did expect Armageddon to come any time. The Soviet Union was fully capable of losing its s**t and blowing up the whole planet in a fit of pique - look at what happened to the Ukraine under Stalin, just because he didn't think they were trying hard enough!

The Chinese, though, have no interest in either ruling over or trying to maintain trade with a steaming crater. The Russians don't have the launch capability any more (if they ever did - some declassified Soviet-era documents suggest their much-vaunted "nuclear readiness" was in fact a ruse to placate the commissars, who couldn't be expected to know any better). And nobody else has the power, the launch systems, or the standby warheads to start problems on more than a local scale.

(Well, except the US - but as I've pointed out previously, and as anyone can learn just by asking, the procedures to launch the nukes are long, involved, and require multiple code checks at each level, as well as the connivance of at least two launch officers for each land missile, and two launch officers plus the captain for submarines. No one person can just go nuts and decide to launch; the President has to give the order to the Joint Chiefs, who then have to concur, before the procedure can even start. And without coded Presidential orders, those launch officers can turn their keys all day and all they'll get is exercise.)