Iran Nukes

[chills1994]

I'm not sure your link supports your argument. Providing more examples of publicly available images seems to suggest that there's no reason to hide a nonexistent landing gear on a fabricated UAV fake.

double negatives make my head spin at this hour.

let's say that some of the drones pictured at the link I provided were the Gen 1.0 drones as evidenced by their flimsier looking landing gear.

Those photos get out into the public first. Engineering students at UT build their mock up with the flimsy landing gear.

Lo and behold, only the Gen 2.0 drones with the beefier gear make into A-stan.

They don't want to show a Gen 1.0 drone when there are only Gen 2.0 drones in country.

followwhatI'msayin'?

OR! it is my trig argument again.

OR!
they want to make it appear that the drone's belly has already been stripped of its fancy electronic gadgetry, cameras, sensors, and what not and all that high tech stuff is on its way to Beijing to get reverse engineered.

as far as the Prez asking for a nonexistent drone to be returned....I can't answer that here and now without my answer being perceived as political.

EDIT: basically a whole re-write, so it is easier to follow/read.

[chills1994]

I know little of the technical side of these sorts of things but thought I'd remind everyone of this story from a few months ago:

Exclusive: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet

That's good, I completely forgot about that story.

things are getting interesting...the Finns find U.S. Patriot missiles on a ship bound for China:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16292244

Less prominently featured in the story was that the ship was scheduled for a stop in South Korea first. My guess is that's where the missiles were headed; quietly and discretely... well, not anymore.

well, crap!

does that mean, that South Korea or the U.S. is expecting the North to strike military...for Jonger Junior to flex his military muscle?

crap!

[Doctorr Fabulous]

How much damage would Little Boy do in down town New York?

My off-the-cuff estimate is that it would result in the glassification of a 50mi radius around the center of Tehran.

Which is why it wont happen.

You're right. Mutually self assured destruction will protect us. I don't know why our gov't even bothered with NBC gear and fallout shelters during the Cold War.

What does martyrdom mean again?

What does this have to do with a drone?

Also, can we go ahead and agree that this wink'n'nod "My answer is political so I can't SAY it, if ya know what I mean" or "I have nothing non political to say" is political commentary? But, if you're right, and you think we're going to ask for something back that isn't there...



Knock yourself out. Although, saying "Oh noes, they have our drone...Can you give it back? Oh wait, you DON'T have it?" is also an effective technique. Part of this fun world of espionage and politics is being smarter than your average bear.

Also, the patriot missiles appear to have nothing to do with the drone either...

[chills1994]

but could theoretically shoot down any missiles fired from Iran which could be carrying nuclear material or a nuclear warhead....

almost like Desert Storm 2.0 when Sadam was launching Scuds against Israel, and we shot them down with our Patriot missiles...well, most of them anyway.

[Doctorr Fabulous]

but could theoretically shoot down any missiles fired from Iran which could be carrying nuclear material or a nuclear warhead....

almost like Desert Storm 2.0 when Sadam was launching Scuds against Israel, and we shot them down with our Patriot missiles...well, most of them anyway.

I've been informed that it was more like 10% of them. Patriots suck at Missile VS Missile.

[phil_in_cs]

things are getting interesting...the Finns find U.S. Patriot missiles on a ship bound for China:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16292244

Less prominently featured in the story was that the ship was scheduled for a stop in South Korea first. My guess is that's where the missiles were headed; quietly and discretely... well, not anymore.

Except they are our buddies, and we ship them Patriots publicly all the time. Maybe w/ the turmoil in NK right now they wanted these lower profile.

Wikipedia says SK bought some used ones from Germany in 2005, this could be more of the same and simply a massive failure of filling out a shipping manifest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot

edit: people forget the Patriot was an anti aircraft missile pressed into an anti missile role. The SCUDs they did hit (1980's missiles hitting 1960's missiles) still fell down and blew shit up on the ground. One of our higher casualty events was a "shot down" SCUD striking a barracks. They've been improved since 1991 of course, but the modern missiles they target are much better. They are an improvement over doing nothing, and psychologically people need to be able to strike back at an attacker.

[DarkAxel]

Wikipedia says SK bought some used ones from Germany in 2005, this could be more of the same and simply a massive failure of filling out a shipping manifest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot

According to this Article those Patriots were part of that deal. Paperwork SNAFU, and unrelated to the Iran issue.

[ei8htx]

How much damage would Little Boy do in down town New York?

My off-the-cuff estimate is that it would result in the glassification of a 50mi radius around the center of Tehran.

Which is why it wont happen.

You're right. Mutually self assured destruction will protect us. I don't know why our gov't even bothered with NBC gear and fallout shelters during the Cold War.

What does martyrdom mean again?

What does this have to do with a drone?

Who said anything about a drone? The thread title is "Iran Nukes".

What's with all the Ad hominem?

things are getting interesting...the Finns find U.S. Patriot missiles on a ship bound for China:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16292244

Less prominently featured in the story was that the ship was scheduled for a stop in South Korea first. My guess is that's where the missiles were headed; quietly and discretely... well, not anymore.

Except they are our buddies, and we ship them Patriots publicly all the time. Maybe w/ the turmoil in NK right now they wanted these lower profile.

That's what I was thinking too. It's probably a lot easier to spy on stuff being loaded on military ships where a thousand eyes are watching than to discretely load it on a cargo ship in a crate labeled "fireworks". Makes em harder to count what's going in and out the country anyway. I was gonna mention it but then someone has already posted a picture of a guy with a tinfoil hat.

[TC]

Iran threatens to stop Gulf oil if sanctions widened

(Reuters) - Iran threatened on Tuesday to stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz if foreign sanctions were imposed on its crude exports over its nuclear ambitions, a move that could trigger military conflict with economies dependent on Gulf oil.

Western tensions with Iran have increased since a November 8 report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog saying Tehran appears to have worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be pursuing research to that end. Iran strongly denies this and says it is developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Iran has defiantly expanded nuclear activity despite four rounds of U.N. sanctions meted out since 2006 over its refusal to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment and open up to U.N. nuclear inspectors and investigators.

Many diplomats and analysts believe only sanctions targeting Iran's lifeblood oil sector might be painful enough to make it change course, but Russia and China - big trade partners of Tehran - have blocked such a move at the United Nations.

Iran's warning on Tuesday came three weeks after EU foreign ministers decided to tighten sanctions over the U.N. watchdog report and laid out plans for a possible embargo of oil from the world's No. 5 crude exporter.

"If they (the West) impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz," the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi as saying.

The U.S. State Department said it saw "an element of bluster" in the threat but underscored that the United States would support the free flow of oil.

"It's another attempt to distract attention away from the real issue, which is their continued non-compliance with their international nuclear obligations," spokesman Mark Toner said.

Rahimi's remarks coincided with a 10-day Iranian naval exercise in the Strait and nearby waters, a show of military force that began on Saturday.

"Our enemies will give up on their plots against Iran only if we give them a firm and strong lesson," Rahimi said...(continued at link)

[Cpt_Jack]

Hmmm.... interesting... but one vital point missed about nukes... not sure it has been said but

Anyone got any idea how to make them?

In a nutshell, it is bloody hard and impossible to do without making an awful lot of noise in one way or another. For one thing, you have to test one of the little beauties first and the rather ominous mushroom cloud kinda gives the game away. And that is not taking into account stuff like all the other facilities that come with a weapons program, all of which are inspected since Iran is a signatory of the NPT. Again, very noisy and impossible to get away with.

And once you make the damn thing you have to make it small enough to be deliverable. We have all seen the photos of Little Boy etc, good luck sticking that on the end of a missile! It took the US and the USSR many years, decades even, of work to come up with a decent missile capable of carrying a warhead.

All I'm trying to say is that if Iran were making nukes, we would know and Israel would be right on in there beating the crap out of whatever took its fancy and Iran really isn't that stupid. Frankly it is saber rattling by both sides. And personally I'm far more concerned about Israel's confirmed nukes than Iran's shadows in the dark.

Jack

[phil_in_cs]

We do know they are doing this, as does everyone else in the world. Someone (unknown) has been assassinating Iranian physicists for several years, the Stuxnet thing happened, and there have been many unexplained explosions at Iranian missile sites. The fight to stop them is ongoing, but whomever is doing it is clever enough to present plausible deniability.

Making a nuke is 1940's tech - that was 70 years ago if you hadn't noticed. Getting it small enough to fit on an long range missile is 1960's tech. It does take smart people to do it, and hence the ongoing assassination campaign. All these things are documented in previous pages of this thread, and you can go search the BBC or Al Jazeera if you want to look it up yourself.

[DarkAxel]

Hmmm.... interesting... but one vital point missed about nukes... not sure it has been said but

Anyone got any idea how to make them?

In a nutshell, it is bloody hard and impossible to do without making an awful lot of noise in one way or another. For one thing, you have to test one of the little beauties first and the rather ominous mushroom cloud kinda gives the game away. And that is not taking into account stuff like all the other facilities that come with a weapons program, all of which are inspected since Iran is a signatory of the NPT. Again, very noisy and impossible to get away with.

And once you make the damn thing you have to make it small enough to be deliverable. We have all seen the photos of Little Boy etc, good luck sticking that on the end of a missile! It took the US and the USSR many years, decades even, of work to come up with a decent missile capable of carrying a warhead.

All I'm trying to say is that if Iran were making nukes, we would know and Israel would be right on in there beating the crap out of whatever took its fancy and Iran really isn't that stupid. Frankly it is saber rattling by both sides. And personally I'm far more concerned about Israel's confirmed nukes than Iran's shadows in the dark.

Jack

If you have all of the material, making a nuke isn't hard. It's pure physics, and the physics involved have been in open-source publications for years. Putting together a single-stage fission bomb isn't hard, nor hard to conceal.

Hiding tritium production, though, is a different story.

[Cpt_Jack]

Put simply I beg to differ. Iran may be mad but they are not stupid. They know the minute that anyone has any decent solid evidence that they are onto a nuke, then their lights go out. Yearp you'll get stories all over the media but they are just that, stories.

I may not like Iran one bit, but I really really don't think they are mad enough to try for a nuke. As I said, what are they going to do with the thing once they get it? It'll be either:

- Mr Dinerjacket on TV, standing next to his shiny new bomb (that is if he somehow manages to make it without testing it first)

- Some cargo ship going boom in a harbor somewhere (again, assuming this untested weapon actually goes boom)

If it is the former then it is goodnight Iran, if it is the latter then we really need to fire our intelligence services...

I just really really really cannot see either a) how or b) why Iran would get or even want a nuke.

That for me is it, what practically does Iran get from having a nuke of any sort?

It wouldn't stop an invasion, Israel and probably many local neighbors would invade to get rid of it. Nor would it be of any tactical use for the simple reason that they will have a few extremely cranky and very very large bombs.

Again, I just don't see it.

Jack

[Doctorr Fabulous]

Put simply I beg to differ. Iran may be mad but they are not stupid. They know the minute that anyone has any decent solid evidence that they are onto a nuke, then their lights go out. Yearp you'll get stories all over the media but they are just that, stories.

I may not like Iran one bit, but I really really don't think they are mad enough to try for a nuke. As I said, what are they going to do with the thing once they get it? It'll be either:

- Mr Dinerjacket on TV, standing next to his shiny new bomb (that is if he somehow manages to make it without testing it first)

- Some cargo ship going boom in a harbor somewhere (again, assuming this untested weapon actually goes boom)

If it is the former then it is goodnight Iran, if it is the latter then we really need to fire our intelligence services...

I just really really really cannot see either a) how or b) why Iran would get or even want a nuke.

That for me is it, what practically does Iran get from having a nuke of any sort?

It wouldn't stop an invasion, Israel and probably many local neighbors would invade to get rid of it. Nor would it be of any tactical use for the simple reason that they will have a few extremely cranky and very very large bombs.

Again, I just don't see it.

Jack

Why do they want them? Nukes are a really big, shagnasty, fuckoff threat. Also, because they would like to be one of the few boys on the block with the ability to glass an offending capitol city. Or Israel.

[DarkAxel]

Put simply I beg to differ. Iran may be mad but they are not stupid. They know the minute that anyone has any decent solid evidence that they are onto a nuke, then their lights go out. Yearp you'll get stories all over the media but they are just that, stories.

I may not like Iran one bit, but I really really don't think they are mad enough to try for a nuke. As I said, what are they going to do with the thing once they get it? It'll be either:

- Mr Dinerjacket on TV, standing next to his shiny new bomb (that is if he somehow manages to make it without testing it first)

- Some cargo ship going boom in a harbor somewhere (again, assuming this untested weapon actually goes boom)

If it is the former then it is goodnight Iran, if it is the latter then we really need to fire our intelligence services...

I just really really really cannot see either a) how or b) why Iran would get or even want a nuke.

That for me is it, what practically does Iran get from having a nuke of any sort?

It wouldn't stop an invasion, Israel and probably many local neighbors would invade to get rid of it. Nor would it be of any tactical use for the simple reason that they will have a few extremely cranky and very very large bombs.

Again, I just don't see it.

Jack

Why does Iran want nukes? Because Israel has them. Same reason the Soviets wanted nukes after the US developed them.

And once again, one doesn't need to test a nuke to build one. Computer simulation is sufficient to test a bomb based on Ulam and Teller's designs. Little Boy was an untested design when it was dropped (gun-type assembly) and is simple enough that any backwater country could build one given the right amount of Uranium. The US tested it's first implosion-type bomb to see if it would actually work. All further tests were to explore the secondary effects of nukes and for engineering purposes (to make nukes smaller and more efficient).

[PackLemming]

Do not forget the U.S has taken liberty to grant Russian weapon inspectors access to the UK's total purchased nuclear weapon stand off arsenal, this was IIRC within the last 12 months. Russia being a main supplier of toys for the Iranian mad scientists I would expect that the Pentagon has full knowledge of the proxies potential, comparing the UK and Iran maybe like comparing apples and oranges but they both trade from the same stall.


Russia gives Iran more leash room. (July 2010)
US and Russia re-draft nuclear human sacrifice treaties (START) Feb 2011)
US speculate the sharing of UK nuclear arsenal details with Russia (Feb 2011)
Russia suspends sanction treaties regarding Iran's nuclear convictions. (Nov 2011)

[max v]

I heard on CNN this morning that the USS John C. Stennis slipped into the straits of Hormuz, where Iran is currently conducting naval exercises.

[J.C.]

If you have all of the material, making a nuke isn't hard. It's pure physics, and the physics involved have been in open-source publications for years. Putting together a single-stage fission bomb isn't hard, nor hard to conceal.

This is profoundly untrue. There is very significant engineering work that has to be done to develop a new fission design as it relies on very precisely shaped explosive charges timed even more precisely. Of course it is much easier to do today than it was for the Manhattan project thanks to CAD and embedded chips but it is still extremely difficult, time consuming and expensive. Knowing "the physics" does not make it easy. This is like saying flying to the moon is easy because we know how gravity works.

[PackLemming]

Peg legged carriers, sabre rattling Admirals and threats to close the straits...

Distractions to make Charlie feel all eyes are off his works, there may well be a camo-coup fought amongst the big hat Commissars of North Korea if this business keeps up.

[phil_in_cs]

Please stop political discussion. It makes no difference if this is real or not, it does matter than the major nations act as if it is real. We are preppers and need to deal with various outcomes that could result from military strikes in the area or all out war.

$200 oil would crush our economy.

[chills1994]

all the more reason to bring that oil pipeline out of Canada's oil sands fields.

[TC]

"I'm warning you, don't warn me! Don't even think about warning me not to warn you about warning me either."

Iran warns U.S. over Strait of Hormuz

(Reuters) - A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Thursday the United States was not in a position to tell Tehran "what to do in the Strait of Hormuz," state television reported, after the U.S. said it would preserve oil shipments in the Gulf.

Tehran's threat to block traffic through the crucial passage for Middle Eastern crude suppliers followed the European Union's decision to tighten sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, as well as accompanying moves by the United States to tighten unilateral sanctions.

Iran's English-language Press TV quoted Hossein Salami as saying: "Any threat will be responded by threat ... We will not relinquish our strategic moves if Iran's vital interests are undermined by any means."

Separately, Salami was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency: "Americans are not in a position whether to allow Iran to close off the Strait of Hormuz."

The U.S. Fifth Fleet said on Wednesday it would not allow any disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a strip of water separating Oman and Iran.

At loggerheads with the West over its nuclear programme, Iran said earlier it would stop the flow of oil through the strait if sanctions were imposed on its crude exports.

The Iranian threat pushed up international oil prices on Tuesday although they slipped back on Wednesday in thin trade.

Analysts say that Iran could potentially cause havoc in the Strait of Hormuz which connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. At its narrowest point, it is 21 miles (34 km) across.

But its navy would be no match for the firepower of the Fifth Fleet which consists of 20-plus ships supported by combat aircraft, with 15,000 people afloat and another 1,000 ashore.

This is not the first time the Iranians have threatened to disrupt the oil flow in the Gulf, including in 2008 and 2010 when Iran talked about shutting the Strait as retaliation for any military strike on the country's nuclear sites.

Neither the United States nor Israel have ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve a long-running dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, has described Iran's nuclear programme as a threat to its existence. Iran refuses to recognise Israel.

Tehran says it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity. Iran has been hit by foreign sanctions, including four rounds of U.N. sanctions, over its refusal to halt its sensitive nuclear work.

To show off its military capabilities, Iran launched a 10-day large-scale naval wargames in the Gulf on Saturday.

Iran's state television reported on Thursday the country's surveillance plane filmed a U.S. aircraft carrier during the drill.

"We have filmed and photographed a U.S. aircraft carrier as it was entering the Gulf of Oman," said Iran's Navy Chief Habibollah Sayyari. "The area is under our full control."

[chills1994]

anybody else remember the cheesey `1980's flick called The Soldier? It starred Ken Wahl, who later went on to the TV show The Wiseguy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084704/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UuWv_4RrRU

[phil_in_cs]

all the more reason to bring that oil pipeline out of Canada's oil sands fields.

Please check your PMs