Iran Reverse Engineers Cobra Attack Helicopter 532
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."
Next they'll off-shore them (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Actually this isn't a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:1, Interesting)
Would Iran really kill countless innocent Muslim civilians, including women and children?
Of course they would (and they have on a smaller scale). If a Muslim dies as part of an attack on Israel they are martyred and get guaranteed entry into paradise. So there is little downside from a theocratical perspective. Plus the Palestinians are probably Sunni, the Iranians are Shiite. There is no shortage of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites, apparently each has little problem with killing the other. Each side believes the other to be heretics to some degree.
Re:lulz (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
You say that like they'll be building guns out of steel pipe and ball bearings. But the truth is, making guns in a new caliber and making ammunition to match is easy enough that some hobbyists do it in their garage.
There are, apparently (I Am Not A Military Expert), valid military reasons to make your guns and ammunition incompatible with the enemy's. America and the rest of NATO were the first to use 5mm-caliber small arms - the M16, FAMAS, L86, etc. are all chambered for a standard 5.56mm round, and I believe most even have compatible magazines.
The USSR and the rest of the Warsaw Pact could have used the same, but that would mean that, in a war, any ammunition supplies the enemy captured would be usable to them. While that would also mean that any ammunition supplies they captured could be used by them, they decided not to take that risk, and instead created an essentially-the-same-but-incompatible 5.45mm round. The Chinese, likewise, eventually created their own version, this one in 5.8mm. While none of their ammunition can be used in anothers' weapons, they have essentially the same performance characteristics.
Iran is simply doing the same thing. Instead of using NATO-standard 7.62mm miniguns, 20mm autocannons, 40mm grenade launchers or 2.75" rockets, they'll use ones that are just slightly incompatible, but nearly identical in performance.
From a theoretical standpoint, there's two reasons for doing so. One reason is economics - trying to stimulate their own arms industry, rather than import from others. If you mandate the use of incompatible ammunition and weapons, foreign production becomes useless, while the domestic industry gets nearly-guaranteed profitability.
Another could be that they are more concerned about being invaded, rather than invading others. You are, after all, more likely to be the one capturing supplies, rather than having your supplies captured, when you are on the attack. History would seem to bear this view out - during the Cold War, neither side used intercompatible ammunition, and as it turns out, neither side much wanted to invade the other. The most notable case of cross-compatible weaponry was in WW2, when the British designed the Sten gun to use the same ammunition as the German MP40. And guess what (spoiler alert)? Britain later invaded Germany!
OK, that's probably a massive simplification of things (remember, IANAME), but still, look at things from Iran's view for a second. The US, a country they have *very* poor relations with, just invaded two countries next to them and occupied them for years. And now it almost seems like they are, once again, manufacturing evidence of WMDs and putting out agitprop to get the citizens ready, once again, to invade some Middle-Eastern country. Even if they actually *are* guilty of trying to build nukes (honestly, I wouldn't be that surprised if they were), can you blame them for worrying that the 1st Armored is going to be driving towards Tehran sometime soon, and planning to defend themselves?
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, and the good news? Mitt Romney has already stated that he's going to hire all these same psychopaths to advise his administration on foreign policy. He's putting the pro-war band back together, and this time with an extra helping of St John's Revelations, LDS-style.
He's already started it. The entire board of the Foreign Policy Initiative all except for William Kristol himself are part of his foreign policy team.
And the only reason why WK isn't on the team is that it would be too obvious.
There is *nobody* in the Press talking about it. The silence and tacit approval from the Fourth Estate is fucking disgusting.
You know what I see? I see rampant electoral fraud this November geared to get Romney elected and we're all just fucked. The fix is in. The fix was in two years ago. The loony-tunes unelectable candidates were picked by the GOP leadership to ensure that Romney, their patsy, would get the nomination. There is no other logical explanation for the disgusting crew of unlikeable and shit-for-brains candidates like Crazy Bitch, Mr. Hairpiece, Pizza Guy, etc.
Yeah, I know, tighten the tinfoil, bmo, but the more you watch what's going on, the more it seems like tinfoil is required.
And so we head toward Permanent War.
--
BMO
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Interesting)
The use of nuclear weapons against Israel presumably has to potentially include Jerusalem as a target. Nuking 'just' one location, such as Tel Aviv, means starting a war of total distruction with the surviving elements of the Israeli military, so it makes no more sense than, say, nukeing just New York and expecting the US to say "Oh, if it's only NY, we won't use nukes back." Ergo, use nukes at all and it's necessary to hit the Jerusalem area to kill Israeli military assets that will otherwise be nukeing you back. That means one of your hypothetical Iranian bombs takes out one of the most major Muslim holy sites (The Dome of the Rock). It also opens the door to retaliation against Islamic sites in general, presumably including even Mecca itself, as a risk. The question becomes, how far would Israel go with a 50% population loss? The real answer is, there's a reasonable likelyhood of a nuclear power using its weapons in response to just fallout from being downwind of a target nation, or similar possible triggers, let alone being faced with genocide and the possible total distruction of their nation. Asking what people would rationally do in such cases is starting from a false assumption that people in such cases remain rational if they started out that way .
So yes, you are drawing a reasonable inference when you question how much Ahmadinejad is like Hitler or Stalin, as one of the major questions is "Is he crazier than either of those two?". Probably not, but he does what the Grand Ayatollahs direct, maybe with some other influences, but just who those might be is terribly unsure from outside Iran. The real question may be how crazy a bunch of mostly 70 yeal old + spiritual leaders are.
However, you should keep in mind that most Iranians are not Arabs, although most are Muslims. Actual Arabs are only about 2% of the Iranian population according to the CIA world factbook. People who even speak fluent Arabic in the region total only about 3%, from the same source. Add to this that the version of Islam endorsed in Iran is Shia, while the majority of Palestinian Islamic practitioners are Sunni, and there are not as many ties between these peoples as most assume. There may well be Iranian hardliners who regard the Sunni as damnable heretics anyway, or, more secularly, strongly resent the occasional Sunni tendency (as seen particularly in Wahhabism, which is a Sunni/Saudi based half religion/half nationalism splinter), to treat all non-arab Muslims as second class Muslims.
Please don't be cynical/pessimist (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Iran is a tossup (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with most of that, but the Mongols had the biggest and most genocides. And while the crusaders and the Spanish were big on killing Arabs, virtually all the enslaving was done by the Moslems.
Re:Help Me Out Here (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Iran is a tossup (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with most of that, but the Mongols had the biggest and most genocides. And while the crusaders and the Spanish were big on killing Arabs, virtually all the enslaving was done by the Moslems.
Sweden, or rather a part of the Hansa League based in Stockholm and Visby, had a ginormous trade of slaves from non-Christian parts of (what is today) Finland and the Baltics states, during roughly the same time as the Crusades in the Middle East. Small nations was depopulated to fill the need for slaves in pre-feodal and early feodal Europe. All the Christian crusades in the Baltics and Finland was poorly wielded slave hunts; I have hard to belive that the same was not true for at least some of the Crusades in the Middle East, albeit, the Crusading around the Baltic Sea was made by professional soldiers motivated by profits, not by a mix of amateurs with a plethora of motivations like in the Crusades in the Middle East. It was taboo for European Christians to hold other Christians as slaves, hence the huge demand for heathen slaves. Of course, once the slaves discovered that they would be released if they where to be baptised, they promptly converted to Christianity. Then people discoverd loop holes in the Churchs ban on Christians as slaves and the feudal systems was invented (Sweden is the only part of Europe, except for some really small, isolated areas, that haven't had a feudal system), that made almost all people in Europe de-facto slaves.
Ironically, slavery was made illegal in Sweden during heathen times, centuries before the profitable slave trade was initiated. So Sweden, despite being the largest exporter of slaves to continental Europe for a couple of centuries, never had any slave workers, neither heathen nor Christian, within the country borders, while the slave trade made Stockholm grow rich and influential, it would eventually become the capital of Sweden as well as Sweden propers largest and most populated city; that never would have happened without the slave trade.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Iran is a tossup (Score:4, Interesting)
Intriguing how the slaves shipped to Europe are completely ignored. Also intriguing how the fact that much of Africa was in fact forcibly converted to Christianity at that point and the fact that you're trying to pretend that current population split on religion and one that existed before the major islamic push in the last two centuries are actually the same.
Re:Iran is a tossup (Score:4, Interesting)
Citation needed? Where the fuck did you got that numbers?
Re:Iran is a tossup (Score:2, Interesting)
Like the other AC above mentioned, tu quoque statements don't refute what I said above about Muslims. The Muslim 'achievements' you refer to are all work done by others, and I refuse to let Muslims pretend that they are the ones who brought this to the world - be it the number system (including zero), or trigonometry, algebra, optics, sociology and medicine. Also, the statement about the Arabs, Turks and Afghans being violent nomads before Islam is crap. Turks and Afghans were a part of the Persian empire, which was very civilized, while the eastern Afghans of Gandhara were Buddhists and Hindus. Yeah, the Arabs were nomads, but even they were far more civilized than they became after Mohammed (great example being Mohammed's first wife Khadijah, who was an independent merchant, whereas under Islam, women pretty much lost all their rights), which is a part of why he had few problems taking over. Had he lived today, he'd have been in jail, hunted down as a cult leader.
The Hindu caste system never claimed any lives. What it did was in an era where vocational training was absent, it prescribed that a son follow the trade and practices of his father, and over time, the number of castes - initially 4 - multiplied. Yeah the problem of untouchability was evil, as were restrictions on inter-caste marriages - neither of which is practiced today, and nor are Hindu fundamentalists demanding it back. Another point - the caste laws, bad as it was, was restricted only to Hindus - there were no attempts to put the rest of the world under Manu's smritis.
This is different with shariah, which intends to bring all people - Muslim and non Muslim alike, under Islamic law, where Muslims would be privileged people, and all others would either have to be dhimmis, or second class citizens, and if they refuse both, be killed.
I don't have an agenda. Islam (i.e. the Qur'an and Sun'nah) does, and it has an indeterminate number of Muslims who are committed to carrying it out, no matter what the costs. If its agenda didn't include covering non-Muslims, or trying to convert them so that they can become a supremacist majority, I certainly wouldn't bother.