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| How Effective Is Iran's New Drone? |
| 2010-08-25 |
| "Iranians Roll Out Unmanned Bomber," the Wall Street Journal warned darkly on its front page the day after Ahmadinejad's announcement. Global television has repeatedly shown two chador-clad women pulling up the cloak to reveal the Karrar - Farsi for Striker - but which Ahmadinejad affectionately dubbed the "ambassador of death." Yet the gap between rhetoric and rockets looms large, experts suggest. "More like the 'ambassador of minor damage to unintended target,'" says Richard Aboulafia, a veteran analyst with the Teal Group, an aerospace-consulting firm just outside Washington, D.C. Iran lacks the ability to guide its drone over long distances, nor does it have the sensors - both on the aircraft and at the ground stations controlling it - to make it any kind of a threat. Adds Kenneth Katzman, an Iranian-military expert with the Congressional Research Service: "It is likely to have virtually no actual military value." But Iran isn't concerned about reality, just making the right impression, especially among its home audience. "Iran has no defense against an Israeli or U.S. first strike," John McCreary, a veteran U.S. intelligence analyst, said in his NightWatch blog Tuesday. "The leaders want to camouflage that fact by showing off weapons, without admitting that they have little value in protecting Iranians." Tehran also knows that the idea of an unmanned aircraft packs an insidious kind of punch. With no pilot at risk, the visceral reaction is that they can go anywhere to spy or destroy. But that's due to the success the Pentagon has had in recent years with those Predators and Reapers over Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. That success is not guaranteed simply because a country possesses drones. State Department spokesman Crowley suggested Monday that the drone rollout is part of a push by Iran to counter a growing alliance of its neighbors and the U.S. concerned about its nuclear ambitions. "There's no particular logic to the path that Iran is on," he said. "Its nuclear ambitions, we believe, will actually in the long run make Iran less secure." Especially if the guys who designed the drone also are working on Iran's A-bomb. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #1 Building a drone is easy. Making one that is a useful military tool instead of one for population control is hard. That drone is not stealthy, is slow and can be blown out of the sky very easily (as the Iranians found out after they killed some of their own drones by accident... see strategypage.com for details) and most likely can be jammed with little effort. I would agree that this is mostly for show and bluster. And maybe Kurd killing. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2010-08-25 11:43 |