Iran Test Fires New Missle, Hits Own Ship
Iranian state media reported that a new anti-ship missile being tested by the frigate Jamaran hit the light support ship Konarak on Sunday in the Gulf of Oman.
The accident happened during a training exercise near the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s armed forces regularly hold exercises in the strategic waterway.
The “Konarak vessel was struck with a missile yesterday [Sunday] afternoon during a military exercise in the waters of Bandar-e Jask” off Iran’s south coast, state TV said on its website.
“The vessel was hit after moving a practice target to its destination and not creating enough distance between itself and the target,” it added.
The incident happened near the port of Jask, some 1,270km (790 miles) south-east of Tehran, in the Gulf of Oman, state TV said.
The Jamaran and Konarak are said to belong to naval forces of the Iranian military.
Aside from the loss of life, it is yet another incident of the Iranian military’s scary streak of incompetence. Back in January Iran spent several days obviously lying and trying to cover up their shooting down of a Ukrainian Airliner. With the Strait of Hormuz being one of the most strategic, and patrolled, waterways in the world, the propensity of something not good happening, intentional or otherwise, remains very high.
When a large percentage of your ‘enemies’ are actually imaginary, it’s hard to do missile targeting correctly.Report
No no. The missile was clever enough to sense that the tow ship was actually the more dangerous target then the practice target. So it overrode it’s programming to defeat the true danger. Massive success. It leaps generations of missile design.Report
I would not be surprised if there was at least a bit of this involved. Particularly if the missile was acting in some autonomous mode. Working on the computer vision part of my cat-chasing system has opened my eyes to a whole additional world of ways that software can go bad :^)Report
Yeah, I understand that they did an awful job programming their nuclear centrifuges too.Report
I 1) completely forgot about this and 2) still thought you were wrong about this happening earlier this year until looking it up myself.Report
And we’re so worried about Iran because…..?Report
The missile hit and burned a ship pretty much to the waterline. The Iranians are generally credited with building cruise missiles that navigated a roundabout route to Abqaiq, SA and then hit targets with high consistency. I’m sure they’ll manage to hit the right ship (eventually).
For that matter, I am confident that the right group of readers from this blog could — given time, a budget, and some pre-assembled cruise missiles — put together a hardware and software package that would hit the right ship.Report
Assuming they could agree on the definition of EVERY SINGLE WORD you just wrote.Report
When you say *every* word…Report