The Iranian missile program

Whom are you referring to?

You might want to check this very good article by SOC.
http://geimint.blogspot.com/2008/02/iranian-missile-silos.html

Yes, this may be right… Look at what South Africa achieved, under sanction, with their military development program… Some of the stuff SA developed was actually quite advanced. Iran can probably do the same.

L

South Africa was secretly assisted by the UK & US’s agencies who had no wish to see Africa fall to the communists and they engaged in quite some sanction busting and facilitated third party deals as well. So South Africa did have access to technology from various sources.

Not only that, in another example of sanction busting, South Africa ran a clandestine joint R&D setup with Israel, and Israel has long had access to the best of the United States technological setup.

South Africa also had a reasonable economic profile to match its arguably limited aims.

IMHO, Iran does not have any of these advantages. It does not have a sugar uncle in the form of China either, as China will demand cold hard cash for a lot of its cutting edge technology, which in any cases may be not equal to what its regional rivals already field, let alone will field.

Hence, Iran’s position seems tougher in some respects than what South Africa faced.

I think Iran is more advanced than most of you guys care to admit. All you have is estimates because no one really knows what their true capability is.

Take their airforce for example…..until recently it was “common knowledge” that their aircraft were falling apart and that they were cannibalizing their aircraft for spare parts. It turns out that their airforce has in fact been completely overhauled in recent years almost entirely relying on domestic resources…..pretty big achievement for a country under sanctions.

Yes, this may be right… Look at what South Africa achieved, under sanction, with their military development program… Some of the stuff SA developed was actually quite advanced. Iran can probably do the same.

L

If i were Iran and had one nuke, i would send it on missile nr 197 in a retaliatory strike against Israel, it would have a really good chance of getting through, and i believe Israel would be deterred.

I think Iran is more advanced than most of you guys care to admit. All you have is estimates because no one really knows what their true capability is.

Take their airforce for example…..until recently it was “common knowledge” that their aircraft were falling apart and that they were cannibalizing their aircraft for spare parts. It turns out that their airforce has in fact been completely overhauled in recent years almost entirely relying on domestic resources…..pretty big achievement for a country under sanctions.

Israel on the other hand has to get the US to fund it’s projects, has access to the latest technology on top of the regular billions worth of aid it gets annually……without all this aid they would get overwhelmed very quickly.

It’s rather primitive, still mostly based around liquid fuel engines with all their drawbacks from a military perspective. .

…with storable, safe to handle and transport proppelants.

Is useful as a deterrence tool? How advanced is comparing with i.e. India and Pakistan?

Coments, please.

Quite frankly, to answer your question, Iran is on the way to getting a proper missile capability, but its not there yet.
Such capability requires constant investment both in the basic subsystems as well as manufacturing facilities & the manpower plus infrastructure to maintain progress.

I’d say another decade, decade and a half before they have a capability sufficient to make Israel “deterred”, but only if they crack nukes along with them. Otherwise Israel will keep Arrow & future variants chugging along to take out limited amounts of conventional missiles.

The other option for Iran is to stockpile massive numbers of ballistic missiles, which have to overload Israels ATBM & counterforce capability, and they’d have to be accurate as well (otherwise they’ll just be a limited terror weapon). I sincerely doubt that they will be able to mass manufacture such accurate missiles in substantial numbers.

Given the overall scenario, I think while Iran has a dedicated core of capable scientists, they wont have the resources or political push to invest the kind of resources North Korea has done for e.g. viz its military programs.

All the political issues apart, Iran does have a national consensus which seems to be thinking of both guns and butter and not just guns.

So the missile program serves as a useful political negotiating tool apart from the long term aim to field a ballistic missile capability etc.

JMT.

It is of course an opinion, but I like to think it is based on factual information. Fairly easy to come to the same conclusion from information freely available via google – anything specific that you have an issue with?

Oh most definitely, even if he/she cant admit it, the part where you said India was in a different league. Just got somebody very upset.

You’ll see a lot of that attitude prop up in the IAF thread as well, as the mask of being neutral slips off & the flaming will begin. :rolleyes:

His statement is compatible with publicly available information. India is decades ahead – they have ICBM technology, even though they don’t build ICBMs. Pakistan’s missiles, whether indigenous or not, are more capable.

Public available information regarding Iran, is next to nothing from Iranian sources. All what we have is either Israeli shrill, which has its political roots or dismissive experts, “they can’t do it” everything is borrowed for mullah pleasures:diablo:.

Thanks,
I thought, as you come across confident of assertion about each country, you had some inside info or atleast point out why it is in each case:)

I would not call google information, about a country(Iran) which does not share information factual. Most of those self satisfying reports are worthless, if you ask me.

But then again its only your opinion.

His statement is compatible with publicly available information. India is decades ahead – they have ICBM technology, even though they don’t build ICBMs. Pakistan’s missiles, whether indigenous or not, are more capable.

Is useful as a deterrence tool? How advanced is comparing with i.e. India and Pakistan?

Coments, please.

No deterrence until nuclear capable. What is the opposite of deterrence? Encouragement? The West tends to look at Persia as irrational and its leadership possibly suicidal in a martyrial (does that word exist?) way. But I’m affraid the chances that Israel launches a non-conventional first strike against Iran is higher than the other way round. Between these two players deterrence might not work, *especially* as long as Iran’s numbers are low and Israel hopes that its ABM complex works. Dangerous.

It is of course an opinion, but I like to think it is based on factual information. Fairly easy to come to the same conclusion from information freely available via google – anything specific that you have an issue with?

Thanks,
I thought, as you come across confident of assertion about each country, you had some inside info or atleast point out why it is in each case:)

I would not call google information, about a country(Iran) which does not share information factual. Most of those self satisfying reports are worthless, if you ask me.

But then again its only your opinion.

IS it your personal opinion, or based on some solid facts to be backed??

It is of course an opinion, but I like to think it is based on factual information. Fairly easy to come to the same conclusion from information freely available via google – anything specific that you have an issue with?

It’s rather primitive, still mostly based around liquid fuel engines with all their drawbacks from a military perspective. Pakistan is hard to place in this context, most of their more advanced missile systems are based heavily on Chinese or NK input, if they are not outright licensed copies. India is in altogether a different league as far as actual indigenous capabilities are concerned.

IS it your personal opinion, or based on some solid facts to be backed??

Something here:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/missile.htm

I tend to agree with you; but the test yesterday supossedely involved a solid-fuel based missile.

Yes, hence “mostly”. Still some ways to go before it becomes a deployable weapon though. Iran is more interesting than Pakistan at least in that its progress does not seem to have stalled.

I tend to agree with you; but the test yesterday supossedely involved a solid-fuel based missile. Lack of nuclear warheads can be, in part, compensated placing sub-munitions with biological agents as payload. Anyway, I don’t know how advanced is Iran in sucha field.

It’s rather primitive, still mostly based around liquid fuel engines with all their drawbacks from a military perspective. Pakistan is hard to place in this context, most of their more advanced missile systems are based heavily on Chinese or NK input, if they are not outright licensed copies. India is in altogether a different league as far as actual indigenous capabilities are concerned.

The real deterrence value of Iran’s missiles is currently pretty low, they lack accuracy and/or nuclear warheads. Survivability should be pretty decent however, what with their silo-basing tests and the mobility of older Scud-type systems they have clearly put a lot of thought into this aspect.