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Originally Posted by noexcuseforignorance
An unnamed source in Iran has you crying on a Sunday morning? Did you ever think that the story might not be true? They could have shot it down in Iraqi airspace.
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Iraq is east of Iran?
I don't think so. Pakistan and Afghanistan are east of Iran.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sanrene
Well, there has been 2 mysterious explosions supposedly at or in close proximity to Iranian nuclear sites over the last few weeks.......a good bet as any.
You think Iran is blowing up their own facilities?
Who has the capability and justification for such an action? US, Israel.
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Missile fuel is extremely dangerous.
Liquid fuel more so than solid fuel, but they're both problematic. In January 1985 a bunch of kids were mating the 2nd stage booster to the 1st stage motor of a Pershing II at Camp Redleg and it ignited and burned torching 9 people to death.
It wasn't sabotage or terrorism, it was the static electricity generated from the rotors on my helicopters (specifically the Chinooks) while we played the 3 Card Monte trying to land and deliver missile components.
A grounding strap that cost something like $0.0067 each to manufacture could have prevented it. Too bad no one thought about static electricity
before the incident.
Anyway, such accidents are infrequent, but expected. Two or more close together could be sabotage, but not necessarily so. We stood down after that incident and no one touched Pershing components (or any other staged motor components for other systems including HAWKs) until someone figured out what went wrong (which took about 4 months).
If Iran did not stand down and thoroughly investigate the matter, then another incident was bound to happen if there is a systemic problem or design flaw.
It certainly smells like sabotage, but it's kind of hard to say for certain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by djacques
Does Iran have SAMs deployed in places other than Iran?
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Slant range.
Some SAMs have a down-range of slant of about 75 nautical miles. That would be like launching from New York and hitting a plane somewhere over New Jersey.
Quote:
Originally Posted by slackjaw
So Iran has an accident at a rocket site and you conclude it must be American cruise missiles? They are incapable of having an accidental explosion? What sense would it make to launch a cruise missile at an Iranian facility, with a conventional payload it isn't going to destroy it or set their nuclear program back. It makes no sense.
Do you have any proof besides tenuous leaps of logic that back up your assertions about US cruise missile strikes into Iran?
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Iran is cognizant of the threat of cruise missiles and uses observation posts manned by humans who scan the horizon. Your average Iranian pilot would get bored shooting down cruise missiles with air-to-air missiles and probably switch to guns just for the thrill of it.
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Originally Posted by woodworkingmenace
Surgical strikes?
If we can disarm thier Nuclear capabilities, with only a few drones, the better for it.
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Well, you can't and your government knows that (and so does Israel).
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Originally Posted by HappyTexan
I like that explanation.."we lost control last week and don't know where it is" so if it goes into your country it's not really our intention. Total accident. We're not really the bad guys.
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You'd make a great government spokesman.
Quote:
Originally Posted by skoro
Iran simply doesn't want a war with America. They couldn't handle Iraq, remember?
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Yeah, I remember. I remember the Iranian military driving the Iraqi military out of Iran and back into Iraq and I remember the US government in a total panic attacking and sinking all 5 of Iran's destroyers (so that they could not provide sea cover for Iranian units moving into Basra -- in Iraq).
Those destroyers were all outfitted with SPS-29Cs. You know, air search radars, right? Range of about 270 nautical miles, right? They've got RGM-66E SAMs (I don't know -- range about 20 nautical miles).
Destroyers cruise through the Persian Gulf along the coast and provide air defense/warning to Iranian units moving along the coast, right? 5" gun turrets (I think 127mm) fore and aft. Can hit targets close to shore. You follow the military logic there? No, probably not.
Khomeini summarily executed the head of the US created SAVAK and most of the military commanders.
Why? Because Carter sent General Hugyens to Iran to convince the military to take over in a coup and rule the country, right?
Oh, yeah, you conveniently ignore that part.
Khomeini forced the retirement or imprisoned most of the other military commanders who were in on the coup attempt that never materialized. That literally decapitated the Iranian military, so no, they did not fare too well during the first few years of the conflict, yet they were for the most part able to hold their own, until the new military commanders got up to speed on the learning curve.
Quote:
Originally Posted by skoro
To put things in perspective, Iranian sponsored terrorists attacked the US embassy in Teheran in 1979, illegally holding the embassy staff hostage for over a year.
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That is not what happened.
What happened was Khomeini gave a speech at Tehran University, where he detailed the plot of the US government to have the Iranian military overthrew the government and take over, and that inflamed the students and they stormed the embassy.
What right to you have to interfere in the political, social and economic events of a country?
None whatsoever.
Imagine that Blow Job Bill really did get impeached and in the interim, between the time that Blow Job Bill left office and the Gorebot was sworn in, France intervened and tried to coerce the US military into taking over the government.
What would Americans have done? How would Americans have reacted?
What right would France have to interfere in the political process of the US?
None whatsoever.
You would have destroyed everything with a French-sounding name and probably stormed the French embassy and took hostages.
So don't blame Iranians for doing something you yourself would have done.
One day you'll figure out that "Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't work.
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Originally Posted by txgolfer130
They are incredibly easy to detect. The RQ-170 is a recon/emit drone. It's simple, just like the lessons learned on how to detect the F-117 and why they're easily shot down now is to look for the flying hole in the sky and/or the spot where all of the electronic signals are coming from/disappear in the middle of the sky. Then lock your missile on to it, and blast it out of the sky. The iranians use "copies" of Russian built S-400 (aka SA-21 Growlers) and the older S-300 (SA-20) surface to air missiles specifically designed to shoot down "stealth" aircraft/systems. The Iranians were provided access/specs/training on the systems and their "copies" since the original sale to them was banned by the UN.
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Yes, and SA-6s too. You can use phased array radar to negate the advantages as well. The Serbs did.
Radar is just basically math.
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Originally Posted by Drover
Yay, three cheers for the regime that has vowed our nation's destruction and is doing their level best to obtain the means to follow through on their promise!
If there's anything worse than reflexive patriotism, it's reflexive oikophobia.
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You controlled Iran for 60 years, ostensibly "building democracy."
You had 60 years to create a stable prosperous Middle Class with a stable democratic form of government, yet you did neither, primarily because you were too busing stealing the oil, natural gas, uranium ore, profits and wealth from Iran, and wrongfully imprisoning, torturing and murdering "dissidents" with your SAVAK.
And now you have the gall to whine because the dog you kicked and slapped for 60+ years is biting you in the ass.
I guess you'd love it if another country raped you of your resources, wealth and profits for 60 years, while simultaneously oppressing you.
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Originally Posted by Neuling
That whole move towards cyber stuff, drones, stealth equipment is a troubling development. It sets the stage for the world to be oppressed by the few countries who can afford the research on the underlying technologies.
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Yes, it does. You raise a good point. Eventually it will devolve into another "arms race" of a different sort.
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Originally Posted by oz in SC
Satellites do not enter a nation's airspace,drones do.
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Depends on the altitude of the satellite. Some are very low orbit.
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Originally Posted by Joe_Ryder
I was under the impression they were considerably harder to detect due largely to their minimal mass.
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Surface area, not mass.
In large part it's reflectivity. In your aircraft, say you have a search radar like an F-18 with an APG-65. The range is 100 nautical miles, but you're not going to see targets at that distance. Now here, this is both a surface and air radar and what you see and when you see it will depend on its reflectivity. A really small fighter aircraft might not show up on your scope until it's firing at you. Anything that is crossing your face is going to have a larger profile than something coming directly at you (say matched bearings).
This was a problem with the original Nike-Hercules SAM. The radar was incapable of distinguishing between aircraft flying in a tight formation, so that 14 Soviet bombers would show up as only 1 bomber, and the radar couldn't even lock on it. That created a panic and so the search was on for a small nuclear warhead that could be retrofitted to the Nike-Hercules, but there was none, so they had to develop a nuclear warhead specifically for the Nike-Hercules that would not too terribly alter the flight characteristics and performance of the missile. They ended up with a small 2 kiloton plutonium-based warhead.
I mention that only because people don't seem to understand much about nuclear weapons and missiles.