Another crash kills more Iranian Republican guards

AP/Washington Post:

Iranian state television reported that a plane crashed in the capital early Monday, killing members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, including high-ranking officers, in the third military air plane crash in the last year.

The plane crashed shortly after taking off from a Tehran airport for Shiraz, about 600 miles to the south, state television said.

"Some 30 members of the elite Revolutionary guards and six crew members were killed in the crash while they were heading for a military site," state-run television said, reading a statement from the Guards.

...

In January, a military Falcon, a small passenger jet, crashed in northwestern Iran, killing the commander of the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards. In December, a U.S.-made C-130 military transport crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport, killing 115 people.

...

Iran has a history of aircraft accidents involving a heavy loss of life. The government has blamed a U.S. trade embargo, which makes it impossible for Iran to buy parts for its old U.S.-built aircraft. But critics have also said planes are poorly maintained.
This history does not bode well for Iran in any military contest with the US. Its aged fleet of combat aircraft would have a very short life even if properly maintained. Its other mechanized units may have similar problems including its ships. The recent Hezballah war has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of its missiles. As a military power Iran has been vastly over rated.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more