Iran Building A Mock Lifesize U.S. Aircraft Carrier

 

The New York Times is reporting that Iran is building a full scale mock-up of the USS Nimitz in its shipyards.

Apparently they're also taking no trouble to hide it.

The model, which is described as more like a large barge and has no engine components has the Nimitz’s number 68 neatly painted in white near the bow, with fake aircraft on the flight deck.

“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?” [...]

But unlike Iran’s efforts 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.

The article speculates that the Iranians are planning to tow this barge out to sea and blow it up as a 'propaganda coup'. As if the Iranians can't use CGI tosimulte the Nimitz getting blown up on film, the way they simulated an Iranian attack of Israel and the U.S awhile back!

I just love experts.

Two words: t-a-r-g-e-t t-r-a-i-n-i-n-g.

Iran's naval defense is made up of antiquated frigates, ship mounted and land based anti-ship missiles,3 refitted Russian SSK Kilo attack submarines, a handful of Ghadir and Nahang class mini submarines and a flotilla of small power launches armed with machine guns and torpedoes, and a few small missile boats like this one:



Now let's see...why would Iran want a large scale mock-up of a U.S. aircraft carrier except to train crews manning their anti-ship missiles, practice suicide attacks by the launches and train their submarine crews?

The Iranians are doing what's called contingency planning. I have a feeling we aren't,  at least with Barack Obama as commander-in-chief, because he has no intention of stopping the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons.