Ohnoes! Iran has a stealth fighter!

Ahmajinedad is laughing about how fooled those Imperialist Yankees will be of this obviously fiberglass model airplane.

No wai. You see the cord running out the back in the first shot? It must be a plug in hybrid. Those things are always small to save on the gas mileage.

You know, I really don't get why authoritarian regimes pull these stunts. Iran has to know that nobody is going to take them seriously. Is it purely for domestic consumption? Do the Iranian people really buy that they've built a stealth fighter?

Related: I often wonder about the prevalence of knockoff stuff I saw when I was at a mall in Zhuhai. Do the folks that shop there know that the "Nike" sneakers they're purchasing are cheap knockoffs? Do they just not care?

Do you think there's a slot where you can insert a penny to make it wobble back and forth?

I love how the "engine" looks like a drain plug.

Good god, you're right, that plane is plugged into a wall outlet.

Oh nevermind, I see the "remove before flight" tag on it now. Although on the back it probably says "NEVER REMOVE THIS, THERE IS NO ACTUAL ENGINE HERE. MODEL WILL COLLAPSE INTO PIECES"

In defense of the Iranian Air Force, I'm going to guess that the cable/plug is for the rotating platform + lighting. That plane-like object looks like the real deal to me, I mean, there's a video of it flying and everything. You just can't fake that.

It looks like an inflatable in the larger pic. And it isn't just plugged into a wall outlet, it's plugged into the fucking Ayatollah. Take that Great Satan.

Yes, this merits careful debate and discussion. This is obviously the most advanced Ayatollah-powered Ace Combat 4 full-immersion cockpit ever created. What geopolitical effects will this development imply?

I dunno, but if you combine the effects of their fake stealth fighter reveal with the effects of their fake space launch and recovery of a monkey from earlier this week? Damn, that is one scary fake series of events. Lil' Ill in NK better step up his game, Iran is making him look a bit shabby.

40% of Americans believe Obama was born in a foreign country. And that is in a society where different viewpoints are allowed and distributed, and people have a myriad of available sources.

No they don't.

http://surveys.ap.org/data/GfK/AP_Racial_Attitudes_Topline_09182012.pdf
page 28

The even scarier thing on page 28 is that (as far as I can tell) when they ask about Hawaii by anchoring the idea that Hawaii may not be part of the united states, 88 percent of people don't even think it's a state.

:(

But will the plane fly if it is put on a conveyor belt?

Other surveys put the metric closer to 25% or so, but it remains at about 40% among Republicans.

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/Ne...m Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/223/Default.aspx

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/08/04/rel10k1a.pdf

Of course not.

Because it's not a plane.

Told you. That survey says 39%.

More concerning to me is that 88% of the people don't think Hawaii is part of the United States.

I call upon AaronSofaer to disect this jumble of statistics if he's so inclined. My anecdotal evidence is that I live in a very, very very anti-Obama part of the US, and not one person I know has ever given the birther stuff one moment of serious thought, at least in conversations with me.

GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER

I was typing while you posted this, that leaped off the page at me too!

Well, at a closer look only 40% (rounded! :p) of the people who didn't fill in a text box think that he was born in a foreign country. So probably less overall.
Fine then, let me rephrase my point:

18% of Americans believe Obama is Muslim. And that is in a society where different viewpoints are allowed and distributed, and people have a myriad of available sources.

My mother is a birther, and I didn't exactly live with her in an area I would describe as anti-Obama.

She's put a lot of thought into it though, and believes that he was born in Hawaii, but not when Hawaii was a state, because his certificate was forged to make him younger than he actually is, and that's why his SSN is out of sequence with other births that allegedly happened around the same time at that hospital. Or something.

Iran has been making military aircraft for... What? Five years? And we are to believe that they have successfully engineered a stealth fighter? Sure, okay. Right.

I know the point you are trying to make, but statistics aren't really helping you. A general *Americans fall for a lot of stuff their government and media tells them too!* would be more useful. Exhibit A, the Iraq War. They sure got us on that one!

They clearly just finished building the Great Library and took Stealth as their free tech.

Have you not SEEN IT??? I just wonder if they can inflate it with foot pumps, or does it require a compressed air machine. It's really vexing, not knowing where the air holes are and what sizes they are. That data would be invaluable.

The mental gymnastics people do.I guess I can see that, 8/21/1959 isn't THAT big of a stretch. People really dig deep and think hard to create these fictions, it's amazing to me. And I've never so much as touched a toe down the rabbit hole, your mothers theory further convinces me to stay clear!

Lots of people believe wacky shit for political reasons. On the other hand, that plane looks like - at least to me - a really shitty mockup. I mean granted I'm not on Iranian, but on the other hand I'm far from an expert. I mean like I built my fair share of model airplanes when I was a kid, but that's about it. So I ask in all seriousness: do the Iranian people take that shit at all seriously? Or is it just a bizarre propaganda exercise in the part of the regime that like nobody is buying?

You didn't read the comments from the linked article in the OP. I can tell. Check them out and come back.

Thank you so much for mentioning that. Those are amazing, and I wouldn't have looked otherwise.

I does seem unlikely, especially given that their previous domestic military stuff have been derivatives of the F-5 (a 1960s design) produced in relatively tiny numbers. The Iranian air force is still mostly made up of F-4s and F-5s with a few more relatively modern aircraft mixed in. Given what their neighbors or likely enemies have, its not much of a threat.

I know thinking so makes me a terrible person, but that reads like a 4chan thread.

"I carries the message of peace, friendship, and brotherhood..."

OF COURSE IT DOES. Nothing says "Let's be friends" like a surprise bombing.

If it weren't for assured mutual destruction, I'm sure my marriage would already be doomed.

LOL, Will they hook it to a merry go round and let children ride on it? The scale is way wrong.