4 stolen military weapons that could have been used to more precision

Several action movies have hi-tech or destructive military weapons ending up in the hands of the bad guys or the terrorists, here I list the most questionable use of such weapons.

4. A Dassault Mirage 2000



As seen in: Les Chevaliers Du Ciel

The back plot to the theft of three French Dassault Mirage 2000's in the French movie Les Chevaliers Du Ciel was a lot more credible in the movie than I actual thought, all the jets were armed since the pilots were on a cannon ball run across the Horn of Africa in competition for a sale to an Asian company against an American F-16.

The terrorists shot the tanker crew and have an armed force where the Mirages almost out of fuel are forced to land, now if my geography serves me correct the Horn of Africa (or east Africa, hostile territory as its referred to in the movie) consists of Somalia and Ethiopia near the Gulf of Aden.

And they are flying fully armed Mirages (testing their arms endurance), surely at least they have on Exocet between the lot of them, why not use them to attack French shipping instead of a tanker at Bastille Day in Paris?

Of course our pilots escape when one is forced to test fly for one of the terrorists (to show him how the radar works), he performs a low altitude sonic boom of course and uses an air to ground missile to destroy the other Mirage escaping with one leaving the terrorists with one.

Which they smuggle all the way back to the France under the cover of a UN plane.



If you have connections that can bring you a stolen fighter jet back from Africa to the country it was stolen from surely you could smuggle in a single shoulder ground to air missile that would easily take out that low flying tanker!

3. A big ass nuclear submarine



As seen in: The World Is Enough

The plot of the 1999 James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough is Bond sent to protect a wealthy oil typhoon Electra King who has ties with a terrorist who plans to increase petroleum prices by triggering a nuclear meltdown in the waters of Istanbul making the world depend more on her oil company.

Awh, her diabolic plans are so cute!

If you're going to cause a nuclear meltdown in oil rich waters why not just cause it in the Strait of Hormuz, if you could get the submarine there, hell she could call the same guys who smuggled that Mirage into Paris during the Bastille Day to do the job to getting it to the Persian Gulf, I'm sure a nuclear meltdown there would be more significant, enough to bring down a good 40% of the world economy within hours.

2. a nuclear warhead



As seen in: The Sum of All Fears

In the movie The Sum of All Fears based on the much better Tom Clancy book of the same name it is revealed that Israel lost a nuclear warhead attached to an A-4 Skyhawk in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War.

This ends up in the hands of a neo Nazi who wants to pit Russia and the United States in a war against each other, so detonates it in Baltimore during a baseball game, it was intended to kill the president of course so the chain of command would be confused and unorganized, then they'd obviously blame the Russians.

It's a stretch considered it wasn't a missile payload and the fact it was on the east coast of the US, (maybe a nuclear destruction of Anchorage and an immediate loss of communication at Elmendorf AFB would appear more realistic).

But there is no way that the Russians could be blamed, unlike the book (which was more realistic but was still a bit of a push) this was set in the 21st century at the start of the War on Terror (just post 9/11), surely the US are trigger happy but the bad guys these days are the guys hiding caves organizing mass terrorist attacks, that may even involve nuclear weapons.

1. the USS Missouri



As seen in: Under Siege

The plot of Under Siege focuses on Steven Seagal foiling a group of mercenaries who've hijacked the battleship Missouri

to get its nuclear armed Tomahawk missiles, their plan is to smuggle the cargo back to North Korea after firing some at Honolulu to cover their tracks.

Then what give the nuclear Tomahawk missiles at North Korea who recently threatened to nuke Hawaii.

Why not just do the Koreans job for them, use all the Tomahawk missiles to wipe out Honolulu and other US military bases on the island, scuttle the ship and escape in the submarine to wherever?

It would cripple the US Pacific Fleet and kill a shit load of Americans in their home state.

Of course a group of mercenaries led by an ex psychopathic CIA agent helped by a psychotically unstable Executive Officer obviously don't know as much about what they're trying to do as I do!

can fighter pilots listen to their iPods on the job?

I remember watching the French movie Les Chevaliers Du Ciel and seeing the one scene where the character Ipod (guess where he got his call sign from) cracks out an iPod while in flight and starts up a tune while on a mission off the Libyan coast!



I know its just a movie but is it possible for real fighter pilots to do that?

In the documentary Soundtrack to War for instance the drivers of an M1A1 Abrams tank described how they could hook their CD player up to part of the tanks internal communication system (the Charlie box), now simply listening to an iPod would be a lot less complicated.

I sincerely doubt it would be possible in real life after looking at this shot of a pilot taking off in a Eurofighter Typhoon.



Good luck fitting a pair of ear phones in there, but still think about that, it would be a pretty cool thing to do!

What the IRIAF consists of today

It seems that Bush has not attacked Iran, tensions have been rising since 2006 when it was even suggested that nukes be in such an attack since it was too big to invade!

What I always wanted to know was whether or not the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) would have posed a credible threat to USAF aircraft?

Back in the 1970's in the Shah's Iran the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF) was spending millions on high technology from the United States, by 1979 the air force had over 450 modern aircraft even a match at the time for the Soviet Union, these aircraft included 120 F-4 Phantom II jets, 79 Grumman F-14 Tomcats (out of a scheduled 80) and even F-5's.

These were later transferred into the successor of that the IRIAF after the 1979 revolution, for the next year alot of these were grounded due to maintenance problems with several Tomcats, but on September 1980 after the Iraqi Air Force launched its invasion by using the IrAF to strike IRIAF aircraft on the ground they failed the main objective since most IRIAF were sheltered in concrete bunkers.

Iran launched the largest air operation in the whole Iran Iraq War and in the countries history, less than 24 hours later Operation Kaman 99 was launched, 60 F-14 Tomcats were launched to protect Iran some armed with the AIM-54 missile system, 30 F-4's then hit back at Iraqi air bases taking out 55% of it there and then.

For the rest of the war Iranian F-14's were used for protecting the Khark Island installation, over 300 air-to-air engagements against IrAF fighters, fighter-bombers, and bombers, were fought in these areas alone between 1980 and 1988.

The IrAF had acquired some French Dassault Mirage F-1's which downed a total of three Tomcats.



In Operation Desert Storm in 1991 several Iraqi planes fled to Iran to avoid being destroyed by coalition craft, these included several Mirage F1s, MiG-25 Foxbats, MiG-21 Fishbeds, MiG-27s, Su-24MK Fencer-Ds, MiG-29 Fulcrums, Su-20s, Su-22M Fitters, Su-25 Frogfoots, MiG-23s and a number of Il-76s.



Also in 1993 Russia sold Iran a number of MiG-29 Fulcrums, Iran only bought a handful of them and have not yet decommissioned the older US built F-4's and F-14's.