Iran is building a fake aircraft carrier...

[Razgovory]

<insert vacuous comment>

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/world/middleeast/a-ship-being-built-in-iran-looks-awfully-familiar-to-the-us.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — Iran is building a nonworking mock-up of an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that United States officials say may be intended to be blown up for propaganda value.

Intelligence analysts studying satellite photos of Iranian military installations first noticed the vessel rising from the Gachin shipyard, near Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf, last summer. The ship has the same distinctive shape and style of the Navy's Nimitz-class carriers, as well as the Nimitz's number 68 neatly painted in white near the bow. Mock aircraft can be seen on the flight deck.

The Iranian mock-up, which American officials described as more like a barge than a warship, has no nuclear propulsion system and is only about two-thirds the length of a typical 1,100-foot-long Navy carrier. Intelligence officials do not believe that Iran is capable of building an actual aircraft carrier.

"Based on our observations, this is not a functioning aircraft carrier; it's a large barge built to look like an aircraft carrier," said Cmdr. Jason Salata, a spokesman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, across the Persian Gulf from Iran. "We're not sure what Iran hopes to gain by building this. If it is a big propaganda piece, to what end?"

Whatever the purpose, American officials acknowledged on Thursday that they wanted to reveal the existence of the vessel to get out ahead of the Iranians.

Navy and other American intelligence analysts surmise that the vessel, which Fifth Fleet wags have nicknamed the Target Barge, is something that Iran could tow to sea, anchor and blow up — while filming the whole thing to make a propaganda point, if, say, the talks with the Western powers over Iran's nuclear program go south.

Iran has previously used barges as targets for missile firings during training exercises, filmed the episodes and then televised them on the state-run news media, Navy officials said.

"It is not surprising that Iranian military forces might use a variety of tactics — including military deception tactics — to strategically communicate and possibly demonstrate their resolve in the region," said an American official who has closely followed the construction of the mock-up.

But while Iran has tried to conceal its underground nuclear-related sites, the Iranian Navy has taken no steps to cloak from prying Western satellites what it is building pierside at the busy shipyard. "The system is often too opaque to understand who hatched this idea, and whether it was endorsed at the highest levels," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Iran has sought to exploit captured or pirated American military technology in the past. Last year, Iran's political and military elite boasted that their forces had shot down an American intelligence-gathering drone, a remotely piloted Navy vehicle called ScanEagle that they quickly put on display for the Iranian news media.

Navy officials responded that no drones had been shot down by enemy fire, although the Pentagon acknowledged at the time that it had lost a small number of ScanEagles, likely to engine malfunction.

Iranian Navy officials could not be immediately reached for comment as the country prepared to celebrate its New Year festivities on Friday. American intelligence officials cited a photograph taken on Feb. 22 in Bandar Abbas and a brief description in Persian of the vessel on a website for Iran's Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade.

For now, Navy analysts and American intelligence officials say they are not unduly concerned about the mock ship. But the fact that the Iranians are building it, presumably for some mysteriously bellicose purposes, contrasts with the fact that the Iranians stepped back from their typically heavy anti-American posture during a recent naval exercise in the gulf.

Until recently, Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed American warships, and the government in Tehran has deployed remotely piloted aircraft that carry surveillance pods and that may someday carry rockets.

With Iran's multiple political bases of power, the government's purposes can be hard to decipher. After the temporary nuclear agreement was reached in November between the world powers and the moderate government of Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, it was unclear to American officials whether Iran's hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps might try to provoke a conflict with the United States Navy to undercut the accord.

The navy of the Revolutionary Guards consists of fast-attack speedboats with high-powered machine guns and torpedoes, and crews that in the past employed guerrilla tactics, including swarming perilously close to American warships.

When the mock-up will take its maiden voyage — if it ever does — is anyone's guess, analysts said. The vessel is nearing completion, they said, and will presumably be shipped by rail on tracks that run through the shipyard, to its destiny in the Persian Gulf just a few hundred yards away.

[mongers]

<insert vacuous comment>
.....

It's the world's biggest drone, superbly camouflaged as a theme-park attraction?

[dps]

Doesn't look that much like a Nimitz class carrier to me.

And the idea that the Iranians couldn't build a real carrier if they wanted to is silly.  I'm not sure they could build a nuclear-powered carrier, but a conventionally powered one isn't that hard to build.  If you have the shipbuilding capacity to build large ships--and Iran clearly does--the main obstacle to just building a carrier is the cost.

Being able to master flight operations, though, is a different story.

[MadBurgerMaker]

This seems stupid.

[Josquius]

I really don't get the fuss about this. This news is being reported all over the interwebs.
The us is country most likely to attack Iran, US carriers are key to this, it is absolutely prudent of the Iranian military to want to train for such a possibility. Or for Iranian film makers to make a story about it.
I guess it's kind of funny they're going to such efforts in the look of the thing, but that's not the way it is generally being reported.

[Admiral Yi]

Sometimes you say the darndest things Squeeze. 

It would make as much sense to "practice" attacking a floating log as it would this barge.

And why in the world would it be prudent to film this "practice?"

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The US must counter by building a mock-up of Tehran.

Close the mock-up gap!

[Razgovory]

I wonder if it's going to be a prop for a commercial film.  That at least makes some sense.  I don't think anyone is "making a fuss" over this, nobody is really concerned.  Just bemused.

[Ed Anger]

They are going to pour model glue all over it and set it on fire in their backyard.

[Josquius]

Sometimes you say the darndest things Squeeze. 

It would make as much sense to "practice" attacking a floating log as it would this barge.

And why in the world would it be prudent to film this "practice?"

Western militaries train on mockups of middle eastern villages all the time.

It being a film is a different possibility. such a film would have a broad appeal in Iran I guess.

[grumbler]

Western militaries train on mockups of middle eastern villages all the time.

It being a film is a different possibility. such a film would have a broad appeal in Iran I guess.

How are the Iranians going to "train on" this mockup of a carrier?  What training are they going to get in doing so?  Western militaries train in mockups of middle eastern villages because they are going to be in middle eastern villages and want their troops to have something like that experience before hand.  Do the Iranians (or you) really believe they will be boarding Nimitz class carriers?

It being filmed is silly; you can do the same thing in CGI for a whole lot less, and it will be just as realistic.

[Josquius]

You think they're going to be boarding carriers? That's... Well... Ok then.... If you think so.....
What is more likely in such a war however is they would want to attack it with fast attack boats.

If you've a better theory then let's hear it. Movie set or military training are the only logical ones that come to mind for me.

[grumbler]

You think they're going to be boarding carriers? That's... Well... Ok then.... If you think so.....

I knew you'd back off your silly "middle eastern villages" analogy as soon as its silliness was challenged! 

What is more likely in such a war however is they would want to attack it with fast attack boats.

If you've a better theory then let's hear it. Movie set or military training are the only logical ones that come to mind for me.

The Iranians know perfectly well that they are not going to be attacking carriers with fast attack boats.  Those won't survive minutes within visual range of a US task force or its aircraft.  They will be attacking the carriers with land-launched Silkworm or follow-on missiles.

I think that it isn't a mock-up for military training at all.  I think it is being built for some PR purpose that has no military applications at all.  Given the dozens of chefs that stir the Iranian military pot, it isn't surprising that some of them manage to get silly ideas executed.

[Monoriu]

Are they 100% certain that this is a mockup?  Is there any chance this is a real, functioning aircraft carrier?  The Iranians can't be this stupid, I would assume 

[grumbler]

Are they 100% certain that this is a mockup?  Is there any chance this is a real, functioning aircraft carrier?  The Iranians can't be this stupid, I would assume 

No, it couldn't be a real, functioning carrier because such a thing would be too heavy to move out of the slip they are building it in using the facilities they have.

And don't underestimate the stupidity of organizations; look up the story of the b-58 Hustler some time; it was the most expensive US military aircraft purchase of all time (total cost per aircraft, in constant dollars) and served for less than ten years.