Near East and Middle East: missiles in the night

Iran launched a massive strike against Israel on the night of April 13 to 14, 2024. A look back at the genesis, the progress and the consequences of a sequence as unprecedented as it is rich in lessons for the European armies, which also have to face problems of air saturation, which remain engaged outside the continent and which also participated in the anti-missile operations in April 2024.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was born in 1979. It is often referred to as Sepâh (“corps”), while its members are known as the pasdarans (“guardians”). He played an increasingly important role throughout the war against Iraq, and was entrusted with control of the “organization for the mobilization of the oppressed”, a paramilitary militia, the Basiji (“mobilization” ), since 1980. This parallel army responds directly to the Supreme Guide of the Revolution. From 1985, Sepah was equipped with naval and air forces, then raised the Al-Quds (“Jerusalem”) force in 1990, responsible for external operations. The Sepâh air force was renamed the aerospace force in 2009. This in turn gave birth to several distinct commands, namely that of air defense, the air command, which operates a small fleet of combat and transport aircraft , that of drones, a command of cyber-electronic operations and finally, the command of Al-Ghadir missiles.

The Hadid Unit

As early as 1984, the Corps began searching for ballistic missiles. The Hafez el-Assad regime agreed to train 13 technicians in the use of R-17 Scud missiles, but refused to provide any, and it was ultimately Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who approved the delivery of eight missiles of the same type shortly after. and two Erector Carriers – Launchers (TEL), soon followed by 18 and four others respectively, giving birth to the Hadid unit, which fired its first Scud on March 12, 1985 with the help of Libyan specialists.

However, a quarrel with the whimsical Colonel Gaddafi quickly led to the withdrawal of the team of Libyan technicians and an attempt by the latter to sabotage the remaining R-17s. The Guardians, under the leadership of Hassan Tehrani – Moghadam, the first commander of the Hadid unit, had to continue their training alone before managing to fire their first Scud on January 11, 1987, their leader earning in the adventure the nickname of “ father of Iranian missiles. The same year, the Corps received from Pyongyang around a hundred Hwasong-5 (Mars-5), the North Korean version of the R-17E, as well as several TELs based on MAZ-543 and Nissan chassis. By the end of the war, in August 1988, the Guardians had fired 117 Scuds against Iraq (1).

Birth of an industry

As soon as the conflict ended, Iran embarked on the development of an endogenous industry. Already in 1988, an agreement providing for transfers of technology and tools was concluded with Beijing, which delivered a batch of 200 short-range M-7s the following year. Cooperation with Pyongyang also intensified, with more limited technology transfers also being established with Russia. These exchanges made it possible to achieve rapid results, relating to short (up to 1,000 km) and medium range (up to 2,000 km) vehicles. Indeed, Tehran indicated in 2015 to limit its ambitions in this area to this last value, even though the development of space launchers carried out in parallel makes it possible to develop longer-range vehicles without transgressing this commitment.

In terms of short range, progress was dazzling with the entry into production in the 1990s of the Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 (“meteors”), derived from the Hwasong-5 and Hwasong-6, with a range 300 and 500 km respectively. In 2002, a first type powered by solid fuel was tested in the form of the Fateh-110 (“conqueror”), with a range of 300 km. On the other hand, it took more than a decade before the first medium-range missile, the Shahab-3, identical to the North Korean Hwasong-7, entered service. With a length of 15.86 m and a diameter of 1.25 m, it is propelled with liquid fuel, and is capable of traveling 1,150 km in its A variant, carrying an offensive load of 1 t, and 2,000 km in its B variant, with a load of 700 kg.

Since then, Iran has continued to produce new missile models in successive iterations, seeking in doing so to give them increased terminal precision and ergonomics of deployment and launch and to increase their penetration capacity against anti-ballistic defenses. with increasing sophistication.

We thus saw the appearance of maneuvering heads during the terminal phase of the flight as well as caps covering several warheads and decoys. In this regard, the Khaybar Shekan (“the breaker of Khaybar”), revealed in February 2022, seems to represent the state of the art reached by Iranian missileers. Its range is only 1,450 km, but it is powered by solid fuel. Its weight and size are reduced by a third compared to the previous generation while the
launch sequence would be significantly reduced, and it would carry a maneuvering warhead during the terminal phase of flight. In June 2023, the development of a hypersonic weapon, the Fattah (“the one that opens the doors to victory”) was also announced. The Corps acquired cruise missiles with the launch of serial production of the Soumar in 2015, the latter being based on the design of the Soviet Kh-55, six of which had been clandestinely acquired in Ukraine in 2001 (2) .