Iran Drone Stalks U.S. Carrier?
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.
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.
Posted by: Armed Spectator at November 21, 2006 12:58 PM