It is not that easy. First they need to measure coordinates of the barge then to transmit them to battery. And possibly they would need to update coordinates and to re-target missile in flight, because barge may drift with the current. Overall, if they manage to do all that. it will show pretty good capabilities. Maybe not good enough for real thing, but still very worrying.
Not only "not good enough for the real thing." but nowhere near good enough for the real thing. Not even close.
The thing they have built is a big barge. It would probably be anchored in place and move very little if at all. They will already know exactly where it is.
Now, we already know that the Iranians have a fairly advanced short-to medium range ballitsic missile program. I am not sure what their CEP for their guided missiles is, but with a carrier that is 1,000 ft long, and over 250 ft wide, I have to believe thet they have something that is more accurate than 150 meters CEP in one direction, or 40 meters CEP in the other.
So, what they will prove with a shot at a stationary carrier in the Persian Gulf is that they can hit a stationary target with at least a 40 meter CEP. That's all.
If they do that, they will have done more and showed the world more with respect to an actual live fire of an ASD ballistic missile weapon than the Chinese have done with their DF-21...although it can be argued, that by hitting the outline in the desert the Chinese accomplished pretty much exactly the same thing.
But, as Popeye said, the OIranians will already know where it is, and it will not be moving. That's exactly what the Chinese showed.
Hitting a manuevering carrier, hundreds of miles away, and doing so in a heavy EW environment, and in a serious anti-missile defense envoironment, is many orders of magnitude harder. No one in the world has demosntrated such a capbility with any intermediate range ballistic missiles to date.
It would be a LOT more impressive if they were towing this thing with remote vessels of some type, even at 10 knots, and hit it, than having it sitting there, basically at acnhor.
If that is what they do...it will be all the more reason to know it is a huge propoganda ploy, because it will not actually show anything more than what we already know they can do.
But it would make for some really neat photos and videos. Add a little CGI, and mix in some of the existing film of huge explosions and fires aboard US Navy super carriers from the accidents during the Vietnam War, and they could make a really good and compelling propoganda piece for local consumption.
