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."
..came on.. (Score:5, Funny)
Really? You came on this article? (Score:5, Funny)
Some people have the weirdest fetishes.
Re:..came on.. (Score:5, Informative)
Did anyone even bother to check the date of this so called news? The photo thread shows May 2010 as the posting date.
Some of the photos in that thread are even 7-8 years old. The one about Pilot Helmet (post #21) show the defense minister of Iran in 10 years ago!!!
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Well, looking at which countries do what, the United States need to change a department name to "Department of Attack" soon...
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:..came on.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The way forward is forward, with remote piloted drones. The human being is one of the most finicky parts of the plane, and the whole contraption has to be bigger, slower, and more expensive to accommodate it.
They're spending untold billions on trying to get a piloted plane to match the performance of a drone, and failing. We don't need to go back; we just need to stop being attached to an old idea. Air power changes, as do all military tactics.
Human beings are actually more important than ever, doing things that pilots can't do even in the most expensive planes: talk to people. That is incredibly hazardous, but the combination of the two is as effective a tool as we currently have.
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Asimov's ideas for computers seemed to revolve around the idea that they'd be too big to move around, and so they'd be placed out of the way but accessed from anywhere... what goes around comes around, apparently.
I seem to recall one story in which they megacomputer was placed in hyperspace because there just wasn't room for it anywhere else. We haven't hit that yet, but one a' these days...
Re:..came on.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you know we have yet to use the F22 ANYWHERE? Why? too damned expensive to risk, and I'm betting the same will be said of the F35.
The more likely reason the F-22 hasn't seen combat use is that the United States hasn't been involved in a conflict that has required it. The B-2 is quite a bit more expensive and they have seen use, so this calls into question your reasoning. I'd trust the people in charge of planning missions on deciding the equipment used to execute the mission before I'd trust your hunches about their motivations.
The German WWII anology is silly. If the United States decides to attack all of Europe and Russia, I'd expect early successes as the Germans experienced, followed by a war of attrition that would eventually be hopeless (not counting nuclear, of course). This attrition would happen whether F-15s or F-22s are used. You think the Germans would have been more successful with inferior equipment? I don't. Their problem was that they attacked everybody, not their advanced equipment. They were fighting pretty much all of Europe, Russia, and the United States. That is a lost cause no matter what equipment is used.
Frustration with the cost overruns with the F-22 and F-35 are understandable. I agree it's a mess. I think everybody does. I don't know what to do about it, but the answer is certainly not stocking up on old designs. The F-15Es, F-16s, F-18Es, and Warthogs will still be in service for a long time after introduction of the newer planes. If a conflict arises where the capabilities of the F-22 and F-35 are needed, those planes will be there. Until then, I guess you can continue to post your comments about how the reason they haven't been used is that they are too expensive, even though that's not the reason at all.
I don't think that taking a page from Iran is an idea worth even the slightest bit of respect. You really think that the chance of the United States gaining air superiority during an Iranian conflict would be better using Iranian hardware? You think chances are hurt by having the F-22?
Re:..came on.. (Score:4, Informative)
You realize that in Red vs Blue combat exercises, F-22s are so dominant against F-15e aircraft (and everything else) that they don't allow the F-22s to engage BVR anymore and actually start a lot of the sorties with multiple "red" aircraft behind each F-22 to give them a chance? Most Gen4 aircraft have a very hard time locking an F-22 even if it's sitting right in front of them.
During Exercise Northern Edge in Alaska in June 2006, 12 F-22s of the 94th FS downed 108 adversaries with no losses in simulated combat exercises. In two weeks of exercises, the Raptor-led Blue Force amassed 241 kills against two losses in air-to-air combat; neither Blue Force loss was an F-22. Shortly after was Red Flag 07-1 in February 2007. Fourteen F-22s of the 94th FS supported Blue Force strikes and undertook close air support sorties themselves. Against superior numbers of Red Force Aggressor F-15s and F-16s, 6-8 F-22s maintained air dominance throughout. No sorties were missed because of maintenance or other failures, and only one Raptor was judged lost against the opposing force's defeat. F-22s also provided airborne electronic surveillance.
According to Lt. Col. Larry Bruce, 65th AS commander, aggressor pilots turned up the heat on the F-22 using tactics they believe to be modern threats. For security purposes these tactics weren't released; nonetheless, they said their efforts against the Raptors were fruitless.
"We [even] tried to overload them with numbers and failed," said Colonel Bruce. "It's humbling to fly against the F-22." This is a remarkable testimony because the Red Flag aggressor pilots are renowned for their skill and experience. Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, 94th Fighter Squadron commander, said the aggressor forces represent the most lethal threat friendly forces would ever face. http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123041725 [af.mil]
The F-22 is an air dominance aircraft. You don't fly F-22s against Iraq (where there's no air force) or Afghanistan (where there's no air force). You fly them against countries fielding Gen4 aircraft that could actually give F-15s some trouble. You do that because the F-22 will shoot down everything in the sky that isn't friendly before the unfriendlies know there's an enemy in the area. The F-22 is the hedge against a country using Russian, Chinese, or French built aircraft.
If you want to talk about costs, you need to look at the costs of an AIM-120D ($700,000) vs the cost of one of those Russian/Chinese/French aircraft ($40 Million - $60 Million). Add to that the cost of training a modern fighter pilot ($2.5 Million) and I'd say we're stupid to not have these things in play. The F-22 dominates anything on any drawing board anywhere in the world. With the time and expense of designing and building modern aircraft, that means we could sit by without doing any upgrades on the F-22s for the next 15 years and still dominate any airspace on the globe. The simple fact is, there isn't a nation on Earth with aircraft that can do anything but die horribly against the F-22. So let's throw our $700,000 missiles at their $50 Million planes and bring our pilots home to their families. Or we can try it your way: mass produce slightly cheaper aircraft and lose tons of them the next time we face someone with an actual air force.
The F-35 tries to do too many things. I'd be happy to see that thing scrapped in favor of more specialized (and functional) replacements, but we can't because it'd piss off everyone who put money into the program (which is just about all our allies). Typical stupid political crap. The same is said for the scrapping of the F-22. First they cut production to a fraction of what it was supposed to be, then they rolled up all the R&D costs and complained about how much each plane cost the country. That'd be like a major pharmaceutical company spending $30 Billion on R&D for a drug that cures cancer, then deciding to only make 10 pills and bitch that each pill cos
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Plenty of militaries (including the US) operate very old aircraft. The "newest" B52 is nearly 50 years old.
To be fair, the B-52 fleet has been upgraded repeatedly over its lifetime. New avionics, upgraded engines for better range and carrying capacity, better onboard radar... pretty much only the airframe is original, and even that I think they've done some upgrades to the skin in order to give it better survivability and "stealth" (in so far as it's possible to stealth something that size).
That being said, I'd be surprised if the Iranian-built attack helicopters aren't also sporting some new technology that did
Re:..came on.. (Score:5, Informative)
List of military equipments produced in Iran: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_equipment_manufactured_in_Iran [wikipedia.org]
Iran has built :
frigates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Frigate_Jamaran [wikipedia.org]
fighter planes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa'eqeh [wikipedia.org]
fully reverse engineered Bell 214: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_214 [wikipedia.org]
stealth drone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofreh_Mahi [wikipedia.org]
Normal drones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karrar_(UAV) [wikipedia.org] , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohajer [wikipedia.org], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ababil [wikipedia.org]
long range radars like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matla-ul-fajr [wikipedia.org]
copies of Hawk SAM upgraded with phased array radars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersad_(Air_Defense_System) [wikipedia.org]
copy of SM-1(RIM-66) SAM: http://www.irandefence.net/showthread.php?t=70624 [irandefence.net]
2nd country producing anti-ship ballestic missiles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalij_Fars [wikipedia.org]
Sina class missile boats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_missile_boat_Paykan [wikipedia.org]
Three classes of submarines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaaem_Class_Submarine [wikipedia.org] , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghadir_(submarine) [wikipedia.org] , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahang_1 [wikipedia.org]
To name a few.
Re:..came on.. (Score:4, Informative)
considering they have 70 or so million people, which is about on par with France or the UK (actually slightly larger) you would expect them to be able to quite a diverse range of equipment.
Given sanctions and their GDP you expect it to not necessarily be as good as comparable western productions, but it can still be in quantity and respectable quality.
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Even with these weapons the US could still take out the entire countries infrastructure in about 3 - 5 days.
Because we enjoyed Afghanistan and Iraq just so darned much over the last decade, we can't wait for another?
3-5 days is about enough time to rough the place up and make some pretty craters. You'd be lucky if the full war were less than 3-5 years.
Mass Production? (Score:2)
I find it interesting that they didn't release any specific armament specs. This may suggest they don't have any arms plants with sufficient production.
Re:Mass Production? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also curious why they are producing a 40 year old variant instead of targeting a newer one -
Its a wee bit difficult to reverse engineer a helicopter that you dont own.
Re:Mass Production? (Score:5, Informative)
They are great helicopters, and their size and simplicity are reasons the US Marine Corps still use both UH-1 and AH-1 variants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_AH-1_Cobra [wikipedia.org]
SuperCobra are up to a Z variant.
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There was hardly any WWII equipment used in Nam. The only such aircraft were old Douglas Invaders used briefly in the early years before being grounded for corrosion. The Skyraiders, while definite throwbacks, entered service after Japan surrendered.
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Well, the WW-II C-47 Skytrain was used in Vietnam in both electronic warfare and gunship configurations. Other WW-II military equipment which saw use in the Vietnam war (by the US) included the M-3 submachine gun, the M2A1 105 mm howitzer, the M1 Garand rifle, the M1911A1 pistol, the Thompson submachine gun, WW II era ships. Peripheral to the Vietnam war, lots of old planes were used by Air America in and around Vietnam.
this is why it is stupid to spend on military R&am (Score:2)
Re:this is why it is stupid to spend on military R (Score:4, Insightful)
Decades later....doh....
Precisely (Score:3)
In terms of what the US has, well have a look at the AH-64D. That's the current unclassified nifty toy, though it has been around for a bit. Particularly look at the longbow package, the thing that makes a D variant what it is. It is a rather big upgrade. Remember that with things like tanks n' choppers n' so on the fundamental design may be kept for many years with various upgrades made to it. The US still uses B-52s but they are far more advanced today, despite being the same airframe.
You could look at it
Re:this is why it is stupid to spend on military R (Score:2)
Yes, but they'll only do so 40 years later ... at which point, what's the problem exactly ?
lulz (Score:4, Insightful)
, 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,
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. It's like Junkyard Wars, only with dictators instead of teams. Yeah... I can see why they say we shouldn't perceive it as a threat... but it's not because they're dangerous or anything. They'll probably kill more of their pilots in training flights than we would with a bombing run or twenty.
Re:lulz (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't really a military threat to anyone, at least not as a conventional military. It's doubtful they could produce reliable engines for this helicopter - even the chinese seem to have trouble with this.
Who knows what they'll do when they finally make a nuke, but that's another issue.
The main threat is their export of radical islamic revolution. This is a sideshow. Heck it might just be a dog and pony show and all they did was refurb an existing one.
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In war there is no script and the other guy is going to be an ass.
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In all honesty defeating nato is like defeating the french when they're not even trying.
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Iraq or Afghanistan both of which just defeated NATO
You cannot honestly think this is true.
In Iraq NATO got the regime changed, put in place a democracy, built up the military to defend the fledgeling regime from terrorists (sponsored from neighboring countries) and then left. There new regime is still shaky, but not really in danger of falling a part despite the Americans leaving Baghdad almost a year ago.
In Afghanistan the Taliban have been pushed into Pakistan, hence all the drone strikes in Pakistan. So while they have not given up, that is mainly bec
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You're essentially arguing that USSR won its Afghan war.
Re:lulz (Score:5, Informative)
"In Afghanistan the Taliban have been pushed into Pakistan"
In case you haven't heard the U.S. and NATO are going to cut and run on Afghanistan in 2014, France is leaving sooner than that according to Hollande. The current Afghan government, which is completely corrupt and despised by the Afghan people, is unlikely to last a week on its own. When it collapses the Taliban will inevitably return to power and they will have won a war that cost NATO over 12 years, over a trillion dollars, and 3,000 dead so far.
I'm pretty sure NATO knows the Taliban will return to power, they apparently consider that to be a lesser evil than continuing to squander blood and treasure to prop up Karzai and the warlords that always take power when the Taliban is out of power. When faced with a similar situation in Vietnam the U.S. assassinated Diám to try to install a government that wasn't completely hopeless, it didn't work either.
The Taliban's predecessor, the Mujahideen, was "pushed" in to Pakistan too, when the USSR occupied Afghanistan, or actually they used the tribal areas of Pakistan as a base for a very successful insurgency that ended when the Soviet Union fled and the loss contributed to the Soviet Union's collapse soon after.
Iraq didn't exactly "defeat" NATO. The Sunni insurgency did heavily bleed the U.S. for a number of years. The U.S. and NATO lost in Iraq because the whole invasion was deeply flawed from the get go. As soon as the U.S. and NATO let the Shia majority vote they inevitably voted in a Shia government which promptly aligned with Iran and told the U.S. and NATO to get out. By invading Iraq, NATO eliminated the dominant counterforce to Iran in the region which was Saddam, and replaced him with a pro Iranian regime. They lost another 10 year trillion dollar war, not on the battlefield, but by following the Bush administrations wildly misguided plan. Bush's dad actually had enough brains to realize toppling Sadam was a horrible idea if you were trying to contain Iran's theocracy which is why he didn't do it when he had the chance in the first gulf war.
All in all you don't seem to have a firm grasp on history or the current state of war and politics in the world.
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In Iraq NATO got the regime changed, put in place a democracy, built up the military to defend the fledgeling regime from terrorists (sponsored from neighboring countries) and then left. There new regime is still shaky, but not really in danger of falling a part despite the Americans leaving Baghdad almost a year ago.
You have a pretty low bar for democracy. In Iraq we killed somewhere between 150,000 and 600,000 people, most of them civilians, and drove millions out of their homes and outside the country. There were entire neighborhoods in which Shiites massacred Sunni or vice versa, leaving segregated neighborhoods like the (Christian) Northern Ireland. The entire professional class left. Doctors were regularly being kidnapped for ransom and killed anyway. (Iraq had the best health care systems in the Arab mideast, and
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:lulz (Score:4, Insightful)
That's making one, or at best a small handful of weapons that will babied on the range. It's cool and all... But it's not building weapons by the gross lot capable of withstanding field conditions, being maintained by the lowest common denominator, etc... That's a very different problem.
Yet, that doesn't stop you from pontificating at length.
Re:lulz (Score:4)
should not be perceived as a threat to any other country,
They're not a threat to other countries. They're a threat to their own people [latimes.com]. Currently the regime discourages dissent and protests through beatings and jailings, but people still stand up against them. How many will still do so when threatened with a helicopter gunship... Whether it works as advertised or not?
Unleash the lawyers (Score:5, Funny)
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.
the big problem is going to be getting new pilots (Score:2)
because all the trained ones go down thud. God/Allah/yo'momma forbid they ever try and fire any of that backyard armament. gas pipe ain't good gun barrels. and I'm not going to say why ;)
No not really (Score:3)
They are a fine design, presuming Iran has all the parts working right (there's more to making a perfect copy than making it look similar). However they've got nothing on modern choppers. It isn't even so much the actual bits that have to do with flying, but the electronics for communications and attack.
What makes the AH-64D so fearsome is the whole "longbow system". So one helicopter with longbow radar, could even by a Cobra with it, sneaks forward and peaks its radar dome up over the trees or buildings. T
English writing? (Score:2)
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Yeah, and so is the "Rescue" label and some other printing on the side of the cockpit. The plate says something like " TOP IMPORTANT REMOVE BEFORE OPERATIONAL FLIGHT."
Why would they do that?
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Maybe they got those parts as surplus and just used them :)
What advances have we made? (Score:2)
Have we made any advances in helicopter technology that is beyond Iran's reach? I understand the purpose of this article is to mock Iran, but what if they start copying nuclear weapons from that era? And how long will it take them to build equivalents to our modern helicopters?
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The Cobra is a widely used and available helicopter. The US uses the chassis for forest fighting: they aren't exactly difficult to find or examine closely. They probably could have bought one on the open market (maybe even indirectly from the US itself). Nuclear weapons are slightly harder to find.
However, with that said, the problem with building a nuclear weapon has never been (not for 40-50 years or so) the design. That is actually quite easy, most physics graduates could probably design you one. The ba
The additional photos are from 2010(!) (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually this isn't a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
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IIRC the plan is to retire the A-10 beginning in 2028.
Trust no one (Score:5, Funny)
In related news, Adobe announced that the Iranian government has purchased several licenses of Photoshop CS6.
Where's Ahmadinejad flying? (Score:2)
Those aircraft have one flaw (Score:3, Funny)
Help Me Out Here (Score:2)
Re:Help Me Out Here (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
We could debate the situation between Israel, palestina, and Iran all we want, but we have no idea what the facts are here. Journalism isn't what it used to be, and every single story about those three are biased beyond all reconing. Not in outright lies, but in leaving out "details" and drawing lots of attention to others.
How can we give judgement if we have no idea of the conditions these people live in?
Give me facts, and I will give you arguments.
One thing we can say for sure is that Nuclear bombs (fission or fusion), will always be beyond a last resort. The backlash of using one is so tremendous, that countries rather go to war in the traditional means (tanks, generals, the occasional trumpeteer) than anything involving massive genocide.
It's the reason people are terrified of terrorists getting nuclear arms. Because they simply don't care about the backlash.
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't recall there being any backlash when the U.S. used nukes on Japan, they became one of Americas closest allies soon after.
The devestation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't really much different than the firebombings of Tokyo by the U.S. or Dresden by the British, excepting for radiation sickness and long term cancers, but fire bombing led to burns that were pretty much as bad. The nukes just required fewer air planes to do the damage, but they were still massively expensive to make.
Needless to say a fusion bomb on a large city would be horrific but very few nations have those. A fission bomb would certainly be worse than 9/11 if an Al Qaeda like group managed to set one off in a Western city so its obviously something to be avoided.
But the U.S., Britain and Russia have been killing large numbers of civilians since World War II with little repercussion so I think your statement "will always be beyond a last resort" is a little overly breathless.
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So maybe you could share with us the dire consequences the U.S. suffered for nuking Japan.
You can't can you, loser AC.
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was alive when US nuked Japan. Parent statement sounds right to me.
I just happened to be reading the U.S. military's strategic bombing report of the atomic bombing of Japan. I also read a recent hospital report on a severe burn victim.
I don't see any difference between being burned to death (or killed when a building collapses) in a nuclear blast or in a conventional firebombing. It's a long painful process in either case. The best you could hope for would be enough morphine to put you out, and they didn't have much morphine after those attacks.
The AC's comment is part of a bad Internet practice of calling everything that you disagree with "inane drivel", as a substitute for thinking about it and making an intelligent comment.
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:4, Insightful)
So you are seriously trying to grade how people die with nukes versus a fire storm and you think somehow dying in either one doesn't completely suck? If anything the nuke tends to be somewhat more merciful, at least for all the people near ground zero since the death is instantaneous, slow roasting or searing suffocation in a fire storm has to be one of the more brutal ways to kill someone.
Their are monuments in Tokyo and Dresden too. The Tokyo monument is a statue of a group of children.
The Dresden monument reads,
""How many died? Who knows the number? In your wounds one sees the agony of the nameless ones who burned here in the hellfire made by human hands.""
Once you start killing large numbers of civilians the details of how you go about it don't actually matter.
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If they ever try anything like Pearl Harbor again they should be summarily eliminated from existence.
Say the warcrimes in China and Korea that the Japanese committed, but Pearl Harbor...
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Informative)
Erm, talk about half the story?
"Pearl Habor was no rationale at all for doing anything to Japan. The U.S., Britain and the Dutch had embargoed Japan's oil supplies in July 1941. Japan made it quite clear then that they considered that an act of war since it was going to completely strangle Japan militarily and economically."
Have you never heard of the rape of nanking? Japan was war mongering well before even the war in Europe had gotten underway, it was an imperialist nation no different to the Western nations you criticise for provoking them, it's whole purpose for war against China starting primarily in 1937 was because it wanted to take it over.
That's why Japan was under embargo - because it had rolled into China, before Hitler had even rolled into Poland.
Christ, I'm probably one of the least pro-American people you'll meet but Pearl Harbour WAS rational for doing something to Japan, because it was a further extension of Japan's military aggression in the Pacific.
They weren't some innocent country who we just embargoed because we thought it'd be a bit of a laugh, we did so because they were a major destabilising force in the region, we attempted political pressure through embargos and it didn't work. From that point on the only option was full out war against Japan - they started the war in the Pacific long before the west really got involved. The West gave them 4 years to give up their imperialist ambitions and during that time they committed countless massacres, mass-rapes, and general destruction of Chinese cities and infrastructure, when they finally hit Pearl Harbour it was no fucking wonder the West decided enough was enough. No rationale? seriously? You think Japan should've just been allowed to go on destroying, raping, and pillaging the whole Pacific, extending it's war it started in 1937?
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the speed with which you kill people doesn't matter at all. Slow death in Hitler's concentration camps or Stalin's gulags are, if anything much worse, because they caused massive and prolonged suffering. At least nukes are quick except for the people who get high doses of radiation and burns and aren't killed instantly.
As for the collective guilt of Americans, I am relatively sure its non existent. All the interviews I've seen with the crews who dropped the bombs they were of the opinion the Japanese deserved it, and it was better than the carnage, and mass casualties that would have resulted from an invasion of the main Japanese islands. They'd also been pretty well propagandized in to hating the Japanese at that point. Obviously some American's were torn up over it, Oppenheimer included, but people were torn up by concentration camps, the Bataan death march, Dresden and Tokyo too.
You seem pretty confused about the position I'm advocating. I am not in the least advocating the use of nuclear weapons anywhere. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of the people who somehow think they are exceptional. I'm mostly pointing out it doesn't matter how you do it, once you start killing civilians, and rationalizing it, you are pretty seriously fucked up and you don't deserve a free pass no matter who you are or how righteous you think you are.
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You're going to have to tell us what happened to all the christian massacres that easily trumped arabs both numerically and in terms of quality (as in being quite sophisticated about the ways used to kill people). No one was as good at brutally slaughtering people in the name of the God (and his installed representative on earth, the blessed king/tsar/pope/etc) as fellow christians. Hell, the colonialist period and its massacres alone probably killed more people then arabs during entire history of islam. Th
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:Iran is a tossup (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, Muslim genocides - starting from the time of Mohammed and going on to this day, far dwarfed anything done by the Mongols, the Crusaders, the Conquestadoras, the Nazis and the Communists - all of them put together. In India alone, some 100 million non-Muslims died at the hands of Muslim conquerors over 700 years (1000AD to 1761AD). The GP AC is correct - overall, some 270 million people people died in the Muslim jihads - and that was before 9/11.
Luckyo is also full of shit regarding 'Arabic numbers'. They were called Hindu numerals, and originated in India. In fact, almost everything the Muslims claim to have invented was already invented elsewhere, like China, India, (pre-Islamic) Persia and Egypt, and so on. The Arab 'contribution' to this was taking some of it and spreading it around. This meme about a golden age of Islamic civilization is a complete myth, and what's more, it flies in the face of the logic of apologists who claim these as being Muslim/Islamic achievements, while claiming that Islam is not a monolyth when it comes to exhibits of their savagery. Never mind that that savagery is common to Arabs, Turks, Farsis and Afghans, and driven by exhortations to jihad in both the Qur'an and Sun'nah.
Re:Iran is a tossup (Score:4, Insightful)
This meme about a golden age of Islamic civilization is a complete myth
The Romans of antiquity were similar borrowers. And yet they had a golden age as well. Creating a common culture and political system and a huge trade network has vast value in itself. Among other things, it permits borrowing of technologies and ideas between otherwise disparate groups and creates a mixing pot of such things.
So the very borrowing of stuff which you decry is a huge part of the Muslim contribution to human development in that time.
What really has changed isn't that Muslim society has gotten worse, but that the rest of the world has found something better.
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...except no one pretends that the Romans weren't some of the biggest plagarists of all time. When you are presented with something Roman that is a copy, you are told that it is a copy. No one tries to pretend that the Romans were something they weren't.
There is no nonsensical notion of political correctness that causes people to try and sugar coat them.
If the Islamic nations had a golden age, it was likely DESPITE of Islam in a manner very much like our own experience in the West.
If the Iranians have anyth
Re:Iran is a tossup (Score:4, Interesting)
Citation needed? Where the fuck did you got that numbers?
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I think your history teachers have really glossed over the whole slave trade part during colonisation era. It made muslim-done enslaving look like employing unionised people.
Tears of Jihad [politicalislam.com]
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, Insightful)
Look! My anti-Muslim views are completely supported by all there anti-Muslim blogs! I MUST be right!
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Informative)
Which numbnuts modded this drivel up?
using depleted uranium munitions is actually a great cost saver for US taxpayers. It's a cheap way to dispose of nuclear waste while irradiating a foreign civilian population
Um. No. DU has all the nice and very slightly radioactive U235 removed. It isn't nuclear waste.
U-238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years. If you ate it, the problems from heavy metal poisioning would be much worse than the radioactivity.
It's not like they're firing shells filled with Cs-137 which is what the parent is blatantly trying to imply.
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Ever read about this guy on the bible named Samson?
Based on him, I can assume every Christian country is a super strong whoremonger terrorist.
Yeah, Troll, generalizations are bad for everyone.
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Informative)
Would Iran really kill countless innocent Muslim civilians, including women and children?
Yes. You may not be aware of the brutal suppression of the Green Movement. [wikipedia.org]
Any regime that suppresses free speech is an oppressive government.
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Actually, it does.
However, in practice there are limitations on free speech which most reasonable (and some unreasonable) people would agree are necessary to a functioning civil society, limitations that prevail even in countries that claim to be committed to freedom of expression.
It's the limitations most people feel are unacceptable that cause the problem. Right here, right now, right in what many of us consider to be "the f
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:4, Insightful)
"It means you are able to criticize the government, and people who want to hear you can find a way to hear you."
Apologies, I'm not following your point. Are you saying Occupy somehow had no right to say the things they were saying?
The occupy movement was criticizing the U.S. government and just trying to be heard. As soon as they started being heard, and they started to cause discomfort to Wall Street and the government, they were systematically crushed in every place they had critical mess, New York, Oakland, UC Davis, Denver, Boston, LA etc.
The Federal government was actively aiding and coordinating the cities as they used riot police to break up the entire movement. How often have you heard anything about it since the last encampments were broken up by riot police.
Iran's supression was somewhat more brutal, but in terms of intent, goals and effect what the U.S. government did to the Occupy movement was exactly the same kind of oppression Iran's government did to the Green movement. The Green movement was actually trying to topple the regime in Iran. Occupy was just saying the current regime in the U.S. sucks (i.e. Wall Street seizing control of our government and using that control to loot America).
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Apologies, I'm not following your point. Are you saying Occupy somehow had no right to say the things they were saying?
They do have the right to speak. They don't have the right to say it in any way they want, or to become squatters.
Iran's supression was somewhat more brutal,
No, it was significantly more brutal.
The point of free speech (from a government perspective) is that You need freedom of speech to get the message out that a government is bad, and get your ideas out for how to improve it. If people aren't interested in your message, you can't force them to listen to you by blocking bridges and yelling in their faces. The Iranians weren't trying to topple the
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"They don't have the right to say it in any way they want"
Well yes actually they do. I don't totally disagree that they may not have had the right to "squat" but they were trying very hard to camp in public spaces, and limit traffic disruptions, and I think that is different than intentionally "squatting" on private property.
You might not like it but if you are going to demonstrate and express your displeasure with your government it almost inevitably results in large numbers of people needing to be in the
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Excepting for the obvious fact that so far the Tea Party hasn't actually slowed spending or reduced corruption at all. They mostly seem to have just made Congress even more bitterly partisan, disfunctional and deadlocked than it already was and that was a real feat considering it was completely dysfunctional before they got there.
But I am actually as much a fan of the original Tea Party message, and their attempts to cut spending. as I am the OWS's. I think the two movements should acutally unite since t
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Do you know of any studies/argumentations about the likelihood of Iran using atom bombs against Israel?
About as likely as Britain launching a first strike against the USSR during the Cold War?
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Indeed. Pakistan is far more of a threat than Iran - they already have nukes, and they have an Islamic insurgency that permeates their army and intelligence service to an extent where they half run the state... and those are the same people who fund Taliban, which is already engaged in direct warfare vs NATO troops.
But, hey, so long as their premier keeps saying that we're friends, that's no big deal, right?
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
We have seen this news since about 2002. Every six months or so, a parade of neoconservatives who have failed at foreign policy (Ledeen, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Podhoretz, etc) shows up at the right-wing talk shows with breaking news that Israel is going to launch a strike against Iran "within 60 days". No joke, this is as regular as Autumn follows Summer. If you tune into any of the Salem Radio talkers, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, you will hear these predictions at least once a week. The funny thing is that not one of them has ever mentioned their own long string of failed predictions.
I don't know if Israel is going to launch a strike on Iran, and I don't know if Israel wants to launch a strike on Iran, but I know for sure that Israel doesn't want to launch a strike anywhere near as badly as this string of former foreign policy advisers to Republican administrations. And this act has been going on since at least the 1970s.
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.
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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 *nobo
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:4)
I find it amusing that you think that the Persians living in Iran have any kind of ethnic kinship with Arabs; they are more likely to feel that the very presence of Jews in the Holy Land is an affront to Islam, resent the Arabs for losing Palestine, and see the Palestinians as the physical embodiment of the Arabs dereliction of their religious duty to wipe the Israel off the face of the Earth. I easily see Iran as capable of sending every Palestinian on the earth to paradise as Martyrs in order to destroy Israel.
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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.
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CIA world factbook
Also known as Facebook? ;)
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The biggest single group of victims of Islamic terrorism and militantism is, by a long shot, Muslims. Even Palestinian suicide bombers are/were very indiscriminate and would often kills as many Arabs as Jews in the attacks.
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You mean despite the fact they have *never* said that, in fact quite the reverse - that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral and against the tenets of Isal?
But don't let mere facts get in the way of your knee jerk predjudices.
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That's something many people don't know about. The one place where Nazism, and it's blend of socialism and ethnic genocide is popular, is the middle east. The entire middle east, that is, including Turkey. It is very popular in Iran.
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While I see no indication that Nazism is popular in China, at almost every book sale I pass on college campuses, I see Chinese translations of Mein Kampf for sale. I have never seen one sold, nor even seen anyone pick one up, but I don't hang around the sales for a long time, either. One of these days I am going to have to ask what's up with that.
As for the original topic, if you can't reverse engineer 50 year old technology that you have in your physical possession at least to the point of understanding
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Chinese don't exactly subscribe to Nazism but there was a counter revolution when Mao died and they did swing hard to state Capitalism and something closely resembling Fascism. Its comical for the Chinese to still claim they're Communists when their leadership are increasingly very wealthy and very successful capitalists.
The two regimes in the Middle East that were closely aligned to Fascism recently were the Ba'ath regimes, Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria. It is a real stretch to claim Turkey is anywhere close to being in the same class.
If you want to name another regime in the Middle East with issues with ethnic cleansing and far right leaning its probably Israel. Its ironic how similar they've become to their bitterest nemesis.
Re:Is Iran really such a threat? (Score:5, Funny)
The proper way to get yourself in bad with the head of the communist party at a university is to ask if he owns the Audi he drove up in, but the 30 seconds or so of blank stare as he goes through all the possible reasons why you might be asking that question is freaking hilarious.
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Ahmahdinajad has only titular power.
He's much like the elected mayor of London.
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Wait until they get a taste of our theatre-wide laser weapons. We could blind and crash their entire fleet in a few seconds from across the Gulf.
yeah! sock it to 'em! hit them with weapons that dont exist yet!
Also, why stick to theatre-wide laser weapons ( that dont exist), we could also use antimatter weapons (that dont exist yet) on them too.
Hooray for the USA!
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Are you sure it wasn't Photoshop that got reverse engineered?