Iran Unveils Squadrons of Flying Boats
“Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the few countries which managed to design, build and use flying boats in a short time,” said Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, who oversaw the delivering of the aircraft at the Bandar Abbas naval facility on the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz.
Aren’t these the same people who solved the problem of Iraqi minefields by driving herds of surplus citizens through them during the Iran-Iraq war?
They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
"Freedom Outlaw. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation."
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I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
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"If every Jewish and anti-Nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic."
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"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." The sophistry of villains - Bah!
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- George Potter
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- D. H. Lawrence
Aristippus passed Diogenes as he was washing lentils.
He said, “If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils.”
Diogenes said, “And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king.”
Sandy Hook was a Gun Free Zone. So was the Westroads Mall. And the Aurora Theater. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Should I go on? They were all Gun Free Zones.
– Reality
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
If ever a man should ask you
For your business or your name
Tell him to go and fuck himself
Tell his friends to do the same.
For a man who'd trade his liberty
For a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them
And neither shall he keep.
- Frank Turner
Don't be afraid to try something big, just because you're an amateur. The Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals.
- Anon
"Nothing scares a police officer more than the threat of being treated the way that they treat people every day."
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- F.A. "Baldy" Harper
"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude."
- William James
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
- Viktor Frankl
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
- Milton Friedman
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
- William Faulkner
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
- Ernest Hemingway
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
John Moses Browning - The most badass Mormon who ever lived.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
- James A. Baldwin
"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war."
- Anon
“I tried to live in such a way that, when dying, I would rather feel happy than scared.”
– Witold Pilecki
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
- Sallust
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark."
- Lazarus Long
Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
– Christopher Morley
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
-Frederick Douglass
ESSE QUAM VIDERI –
To be, rather than to seem
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Do what thy manhood bid thee do; from none but self expect applause.
He noblest lives and noblest dies, who makes and keeps his self made laws
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– Winston Churchill
“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.”
― Father Alfred d’Souza
These Wing in Ground vehicles are very fast, maneuverable and can carry enough explosives to do major damage to most ships.
I believe that these are to be used in a “kamikaze” swarm style.
Probably no shortage of volunteers to pilot these craft either.
That thought did occur to me, Jon. Supposedly the planes are armed with a single machine gun, which would be pretty much useless for warfare in the Gulf. I can see somebody thinking it would be a good idea to pack them with explosives and just fly them into warships. But that didn’t even work well for the Japanese in WWII, and the U.S. Navy has given the matter some thought since then. Their ships are equipped to defend themselves against cruise missiles, which go a helluva lot faster than these single-prop pushers possibly could. Granted that they’re pilot-guided and maybe maneuverable as hell, they’re not going to outmaneuver those insane bullet hoses (I forget what they’re called) ships use to protect themselves from missiles, to say nothing of the AIM-9s that would be raining down on them from all those vastly superior Navy jets. No. This is as stupid as the PT boats and minisubmarines Iran touted a few years ago. Only…stupider than that.
That looks like a clone of a VW beetle engine up top. even assuming it’s something bigger, it looks like a direct drive to the prop (reduction gears don’t work well with less than 9 cylinders, as the load reversals with fewer cylinders and either no or at best a light flywheel, hammer the gears to pieces)
so to keep the prop tips sub sonic (supersonic is very noisy (think of a harvard) and very inefficient due to drastically increased air resistance) max revs will be about 3,000 RPM
That means it isn’t going to be more than about 100 to 150 HP at the very best.
It doesn’t look a very light weight structure either
That means it will have a very limited payload, and absolutely crap climb performance (think of an asthmatic Cessna 150 on a hot day) I’d also guess that with the open cockpits the max speed is going to be little over 100 MPH.
also contrast it to the 47′ wingspan and 500+ rated horsepower of a Fairy Swordfish wwii torpedo plane
The swordfish was very slow too, but being a biplane (inherently they’re easier to build very strong than monoplanes), and capable of safely withstanding far more G than the crew ever could.
If it came under fighter attack, the pilots put them into a vertical dive and pulled out just above the water – a maneuver that fighter pilots were loathe to follow.
Those Iranian things are – at the most dangerous, trainers and observation platforms, at best, they’re fun planes.
Those things are ground effect vehicles incapable of flying more than a few meters above the water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_vehicle These Iranian contraptions might be fun to play with at the beach but serious weapons they are not. Now the Soviets had a different approach. See link above.
The Soviets abandoned Ekranoplanes.
Ground effect is limited to within about 3 wing spans distance from the ground or water surface, above that you need full size wings and full flying speed. I think one of those little things was actually well above 3 wing spans altitude, suggesting that it is an actual aeroplane.
The problem with ekranoplanes was when they got into turbulence, it was easy to either;
find yourself at or just above the upper limit of ground effect at which point the thing went nose down and you only had 3 wing spans of altitude in which to get the nose up again, or you hit the water in a dive,
or,
you ended up nose down closer to the water, and the result was the same.
There’s nothing quite like having a couple of thousand feet or more altitude to give you time and space to recover from the bumps and lumps that the air is surprisingly full of.
I had to watch the vid a couple of times to spot the small ailerons on the turned up wing tips, for a while I suspected that the controls were two axis; rudder and elevator only, which would certainly simplify flying the things.