There’s supposed to be a protective bubble around American aircraft carriers, both on the sea, and in the air. Come too close, and you will get smoked.
Or, at least, that’s the idea. But the Iranians are now claiming that they’ve punctured this bubble, with an robotic plane. Let’s hope that the footage is fake, as some are saying.
Iran’s Arabic language television station broadcast footage it claimed showed a US aircraft carrier cruising in Gulf waters it said was taken by an unmanned Iranian drone.
The brief minute-long film, which was shown on Al-Alam television’s evening news bulletin, showed wobbly aerial footage of an aircraft carrier stacked with war planes as it sailed.
The television’s anchor said the film, the property of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, showed a vessel from “the US fleet in the Persian Gulf”.
“A source in the Revolutionary Guard said the drone carried out its mission without US fighter pilots reaching it,” the television said.
It said there were 10 such films taken by the drone which showed “more precise information and details about military equipment, foreign forces, and their activities in the Persian Gulf.“
The station did not name the vessel nor did it say when the footage was shot.
The broadcast comes near the end of Iran’s latest 10-day war games, “Great Prophet II”, which military chiefs have said were aimed at showing off Iran’s defensive prowess and testing new military hardware.
UPDATE 12:37 PM: “Iran is sustaining the insurgency against British and American forces in Iraq by supplying terrorists with weapons and cash,” according to the Daily Telegraph.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I think it’s a fake.
I think the after the whole USS Vincennes case, people are not trigger happy in the US Navy. Also with the amount of air traffic in the region, MAYBE they could
Heck, make it out of plywood & cloth, with the engine in a metal box, and its pretty stealth if it is just on a preprogrammed course.
When you transit the SoH you are in Iranian waters. Legaly the strait is international for transit only. Oman and Iran legaly own those waters. You see land on either side when you pass the Musidon peninsula (Oman).
The video has the interference of the air search radar on it. That means a video recorder without proper EM insulation, probably from a Helo.
A complete video is available here:
http://video.google.com/videogvp/IraniandronespingUSa.gvp?docid=-324294841727623684
Some observations:
1. The hull number which is prominently painted on the forward flight deck of American carriers is not visible anywhere in this video.
2. In the upper right corner of the full frame is a much smaller frame. This looks like it might be a magnified image of a portion of the main frame.
3. Later in the video, and aircraft can be clearly seen launching from one of the waist catapults.
4. Aircraft can be observed in flight in the near vicinity of the carrier.
5. A surface warship is visible in the video but not identifiable because of the extremely poor resolution.
We need someone familiar with, ideally actively involved in, modern carrier operations to evaluate this video. It may be someones home movie, or an official video of an exercise.
I doubt that the video is from an Iranian drone, although I do not have sufficient technical knowledge to assert claims about how good our radar coverage is. Can Aegis detect a wooden drone hacked together from model airplane parts?
The question is then where did the Iranians get the video?
Who cares?? They undoubtly were transiting the straits where they could be observed from Iranian airspace anyways, and you are not permitted to launch warplanes either while in transit because that is technically a act of war. I am also willing to bet that “drone” was on everyone’s radar screen and locked up 10 ways to Sunday. If anything had gone down, it would have been smoked quicker than you could imagine. We can’t force them out of the sky- particularily their own sky because it is technically international or Iranian waters, depending where they are. So, the Iranians send up some kind of aircraft- label it a “drone” to make it all sexy and “high tech” and try to provoke a response by A) provoking a defensive reaction, possibly one where they could pick up on our TTPs and B) then hailing it as a “Great Victory over the Great Satan” little bit of propaganda. Standard bating of the US really, and it goes along perfectly with how the Iranians want to style themselves. For all we know, the F-18 tailing it could have been edited out!!! But who cares? It means nothing- unless people make it out to in order to send a political message, which is the more interesting aspect of it.
Asymmetric warfare is something that cannot be dismissed, the smaller more agile opponent always wins over the ponderous monolith. Large carriers are obsolete in real modern warfare; they are large targets that are not easily defended. Any future scaled-war involving carriers fleets will discover losses greater than expected.
The use of cheap EMP(electro-magnetic pulse)weapons will also show much of the US modern weapons systems as defective. Weapons guidance sytems can be easily made redundant with similar weapons taking out satellite guidance, and all of this fairly cheaply (especially when measured against the very expensive US machine). Mobile lasers (like the one the Chinese recently used to disrupt a US satellite) are also fairly cheap by comparison.
America cannot win a war against Iran, its pretty much that simple. Iran is not a pushover like Iraq – a war which America hasn’t won yet, and is unlikely to.
Bill,
So the Iranians are tougher militarily than the Iraqis. Okay. But come on Bill, saying we can’t win a war against Iran is idiotic. We could bomb them into the stone ages WITH EASE, wipe out their entire population, and take their oil. FORTUNATELY saner minds are now in control. There would be too much opposition from the U.S. population, and push-back from other countries. As far as Iraq goes, we should have never gone in, period. Reasoning was fabricated. We went in for the oil, period. There were much better ways of handling the situation. That said, IMHO our strategy now should be to concentrate solely on protecting the oil fields, boosting oil production which will generate income for the Iraqi government, have U.S. oil companies dramatically increase oil exploration in western Iraq, ship every drop of Iraqi oil to the U.S., and let the Shia and Sunnis duke it out in Bagdad. Sounds rude, but if they want to fight, let them fight. Andlet’s face it, oil is the reason we’re there, so let’s cut the crap and get what we came for.
Quick PolSci lesson twimc
Empires that do not integrate culturally experience sabotage, insurgency (assymetrical warfare), internal degradation, and general political and economic attrition until the ruling state is no longer able to support a presence in the conquered states. This is pretty much a given. You absolutely must integrate. This means your soldiers marry their women and open borders need to be established. In this respect, assymetrical warfare ALWAYS wins.
The alternatives, which many people are naively suggesting, are to ANNIHILATE or ENSLAVE the conquered people.
Historically, enslavement has been accomplished with only limited success (even the ancient Hebrews revolted, and received various amenities from the Egyptians, and were known before and after their enslavement as a warlike myrmidon-like people). The “modern” world also objects strongly to slavery, and modern weapons in the hands of a native resistance make the entire idea impractical anyway.
The other option (in the case of total war, that is), annihilation, is also nearly impossible, and again, has only been accomplished with limited success. While a nation or “pure” bloodline may be destroyed, the people themselves are spread far across the Middle East. This is not just Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc… this is Babylon, Persia, the Ottoman Empire… these are families and common histories spread from Africa to Tibet over thousands of years, and sometimes they take each others’ side. We cannot NUKE the entire Mid-East. Nuking all of the population centers in Afghanistan alone would contaminate the Earth for centuries. We cannot continue to STEAL their oil whenever we need it, because we turn more and more of that part of the world against us.
Hate has been spread on both sides. This IS a snowball effect. The only way this is ever going to end is if enough people on both sides of the world say “enough” to our LEADERS and agree to disagree about religion. Slowly but surely this planet is going to integrate anyway; we might as well try to do it without incinerating each other.
Now add some anti ship missiles to drone & verify target in Iran Hqs & NO carrier.
Time to rearm carriers or Find Tech SpyMole in the DoD sending secrets to Iran alone.
Find the Spy.