Is it a "Drone"? or is it file footage?.....Iran Sneaks up on US carrier in Gulf..

[Postman]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061111/wl_mideast_afp/iranusmilitaryspy

If we take worst case scenario and assume that this is legitimate, this is BIG.

I was in the navy, on an aircraft carrier.

Carriers make alot of noise, electronically (unless they're operating under radio silence, which is hard to do while conducting flight operations)

So making alot of "noise" makes them relatively easy to find. Which is one reason why area defense CAP stations along with E2's station themselves soo far out from the Battle-Group (to intercept any incoming threats)

If Iran is able to fly drones in this close to the battle group, I'm wondering if their drones have the capability to launch air-to-surface missiles (like ours do)... If so, bye-bye aircraft carrier...

Bush better be careful with who he is f**king with, Iran seems NOT to be -Iraq.

[acmejack]

1. It's BS.

No fucking way, Look up CAP.

[Postman]

2. look up CAP?

CAP stands for Combat Air Patrol, which in my day, were F-14 Tomcats.

[acmejack]

5. Don't you think we maintain air superiority around our assets?

I do. Even if the Air assets were inadequate, which the F/A-18's should have been capable, we have AEGIS. In my day 2 standard missiles in salvo had a 99.9% kill probability. That drone wouldn't have got there , they still use missile picket ships and all those "old" tactics don't you figure?

[Postman]

12. You may be right, you may be wrong...

shit happens.

We had AEGIS back in 1988 when the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner....6 miles from the ship...

like I said, shit happens.

It's entirely possible this "drone", if it is one, got inside.

[NOLADEM]

4. Why is this hard to believe?

There are hobby kits you can buy at any Hobby toy store in the US for about $300 that have 1/2 hp motors and decent range, and you can buy $40 battery operated digital cameras to put on them.


I went to an airshow of these remote control airplanes once about 25 years ago, and even then they had jet engines and auto pilot on some. Some dropped little fake bombs and some had cameras, etc.


Is it so hard to believe that a country could not scale that up a bit? Seems like a pretty easy technology to me.

[lapfog_1]

11. Bingo,

while our defense dept has been investing in expensive, large, but fast UAVs, lots of other countries in the world have been building cheap ones (step above the Hobbyist RC planes)... and equipping them with low cost electronic surveillance equip. This may not even be remote telemetry but flying a preprogrammed route and simply recording (no radio signature). Australia has been heavy into these "poor mans" predator systems since I worked at NASA over 6 years ago. I assume others around the world have picked up on this.

[lonestarnot]

7. Big BS

[maine_raptor]

3. Not surprising

Drones are small, hard to see, and don't give off much of a radar return. In addition, most CAP flies higher than a drone, making it a "look-down" situation.

As for hanging missiles off one and then using them to sink a carrier; any missile hanging off one would increase the drone's radar signature (making it easier to detect) and would of necessity (weight) have to have a small warhead, which makes it unlikely to be able to sink a CV.

That said; a drone is a very nice platform for providing guidance information to any incoming shore-launched (and thus bigger) missiles (ala Iran's Chinese-made Silkworms).

[Postman]

9. Apparently the E2C's can't "see" the drone either....

too small of a surface for radar to pick up.

Drone's, as you say, may be being used for targeting information so as to program the Silkworm for when to turn its active radar on to seek the target.

Persian Gulf is full of shipping, it would be difficult, I think, in that situation for the missile to distinguish a tanker from a carrier without specific targeting information.

Any attack on Iran based from carriers would come from the Indian Ocean, I believe.

IMO it would be stupid, if not extremely difficult, to conduct flight ops in the Persian Gulf itself (narrow operating area, busy shipping lanes, oil platforms all over the place) and if you look at the Gulf itself geographically - bottleneck at the Straits of Hormuz then expanding like a balloon, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel for any capable missile threat.

[Blackhatjack]

6. How easy is it to identify and destroy a drone? If you cannot stop a drone...

How can you stop numerous incoming missiles converging on one or more different targets.

[acmejack]

8. You put your money on Iran then, I'll take the Battle Group.

You guys are ready to believe anyone can run down to the corner hobby store and put together something that can best a 7 billion dollar piece of hardware and all It's supporting battlegroup components. Like the military or not, A carrier battle group with all it's AEGIS ships controls the area around it pretty damned tightly.

I just feel this flies in the face of what I know of the capabilities of such a Battle Group. Possible yes, Likely-not very.

[LWolf]

10. Having a little experience with US drones,

(ex is a mechanic and pilot of said drones,) I can tell you that there is just a little more to it than a run to the local hobby store, lol.

While they don't get the press, drones from multiple sides have been very active in the middle east for some time; since the 90s, anyway.

[maine_raptor]

16. Remember the USS Franklin (CV 13)?

On March 19, 1945, while operating off the Japanese coast the Franklin was severally damaged by a lone Betty bomber that nailed the ship with 2 AP bombs on the flight deck. Casualties totaled 724 killed and 265 wounded, but the ship was able recover power and make it's way back to Pearl Harbor.

The Franklin had been stationed in the MIDDLE of Task Force and this was in an era of ship-borne radar (primitive yes, but at frequencies that are a lot more capable of picking up small objects) and lots of eyes-on-the-sky.


As for the corner hobby store, well for an ordinary Joe like myself, No. But don't forget the Iranians have a sightly larger "corner hobby store" to in which to shop. Plus they do have the money to hire some smart guys that could put together something that could be hard to detect, fly low, pop up and give targeting info to a SWARM of Silkworms; that was the USSRs planned tactic against a US CVBG in case the balloon went up.

[leftchick]

13. Here is an image grab....

An image grab taken from Iran's Al-Alam television station shows what the TV claims is a US aircraft carrier cruising in Gulf waters. 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.(AFP/AL-ALAM TV)

[Postman]

14. This picture shows a carrier with an "alert package" on deck...

2 F-18's on the waist cats w/ 2 more lined up behind it. An E2C on the bow cat ready for long range detection...

Like I said, it could be a stock picture/footage or it could be the real deal...

[GliderGuider]

15. It's the Eisenhower

You can tell from the deck shape.

[Postman]

18. It's a Nimitz Class, I don't know about it being the Ike, though...

kind of hard to see the hull number on the flight deck, can't tell specificity...

[bananas]

17. A drone overflight was reported back in May

I remember this being reported, it was in the news and commented at DU, probably on Olbermann too.
Here's a news story I just googled from May:

http://en.rian.ru/onlinenews/20060530/48833304.html

Iranian drone plane buzzes U.S. aircraft carrier in Persian Gulf
19:06 | 30/ 05/ 2006

TEHRAN, May 30 (RIA Novosti) - A pilotless Iranian reconnaissance plane circled for 25 minutes over a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf before returning safely to its base, a senior Iranian official said Tuesday.

"Our pilotless reconnaissance plane flew over the USS Ronald Reagan in the Persian Gulf unnoticed to the Americans for 25 minutes," the official said, according to Iran's Fars agency.

He did not say when the flight took place, but added that U.S. radars picked up the unmanned aerial vehicle after 25 minutes, and that four USAF fighters and two helicopters were scrambled to intercept it. However, the Iranian plane had already crossed the border back into Iran and landed at its base.

"This points to holes in the U.S. military reconnaissance systems deployed in the Persian Gulf," the Iranian official said.

[Tesha]

19. I'm always amazed when DUers don't think creatively.

Here's a nice hypothetical:

Someone builds some drones. They make them the nominal size
and shape of a seagull. (They *DO* have seagulls over there,
right?)

The drones are based on model aircraft technology, openly
commonly, and cheaply available worldwide.

To enable remote operation, a powerful amplifier is used with
the remote control transmitter.

Inside each drone is mounted an ordinary cell phone equipped
with GPS locator facilities. ("Who's hasslin' my dots?")
This lets the operator identify the location of the drown
without emitting any unusual (notable) radio frequencies.

Also inside each drone is one of two payloads:

o A digital camera, triggered by the remote control, or

o A small container of something really virulent

Given this sort of a scenario and a competent remote
operator, do you really think we'd intercept all of
these drones? Do you really think we'd intercept *ANY*
of the drones, at least until after one of them had
accomplished the second, more deadly mission?

Tesha