The Sunday report by independent Haft-e Sobh daily quotes Adm. Ali Fadavi, navy chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guards as saying Iranian forces should “target the carrier in the trainings, after it is completed.”
Earlier reports were that the "carrier" (built on a barge platform) was to be used for a movie may be wrong. I guess the explanations are not mutually exclusive.
The notion that the target vessel will help Iran's military learn our carriers' strengths and weaknesses is absurd. It's a barge that simply superficially looks like a scale model of one of our aircraft carriers. All Iran's military can really learn is how to sink a barge.
At best, I guess the platform could be used to see if missiles can target the silhouette of a carrier. If the Iranians have any missiles designed to pop up and then dive at the flight deck, that would be useful. But this is an awful lot of effort for a pseudo-SINKEX, isn't it?
Although I assume that they will film the flaming wreckage to play to their people should there be a war between America and Iran in order to prove that Iran is defeating the Great Satan at sea.
Rather than sinking the vessel, the Iranians would be better off towing it out to sea and using it for aircraft crew visual recognition training so they can distinguish a carrier from a tanker or container ship at a distance.
