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I confess I'm somewhat terrified of this. It can be made of rusty tin foil, leak like hell, have no defense at all, but if it can carry a mid-sized aircraft, I

I confess I'm somewhat terrified of this. It can be made of rusty tin foil, leak like hell, have no defense at all, but if it can carry a mid-sized aircraft, Iran can use this to menace, piss off and irritate anyone on the planet. Possibly soon with nuclear weapons. > The whole thing is going to be an expensive target for whoever they pick on. Yeah, a target you'd be pretty stupid to fire at. This may be the cheapest shittiest knock off, but it still represents what aircraft carriers do, which is a bit of sovereign floating territory. Iran's gonna slow boat this thing to all kinds of obnoxious menacing hostile places, fire off some rounds, and triple dog dare anyone to do a single thing about it. A giant bristling floating target symbol, that sucks & keeps ending up obnoxiously close to adversaries shores, that maybe has nuclear weapons on it. This is a shitty future and one I wish there were protocols for sinking.

talldayo 2y ago
It'll be interesting to watch unfold. I don't lose sleep over nuclear-equipped aircraft carriers like I do nuclear submarines. If you triple-dog dare someone to launch an anti-shipping attack on your glorified cargo freighter, there are multiple countries that will accept the challenge. If you make it a nuclear threat, you just gave your enemies an RSVP and casus belli. I don't like discounting Iran's capabilities, and I don't support the brinkmanship that is implied by blowing up an aircraft carrier. From a pragmatic perspective though, I just don't understand how this survives in a contested environment without importing Kalibr missiles and Russian point defense. Tomcats and subsonic drones are barely enough to harass a modernized military, and poorly suited to defense against retaliation.