Recently in Iran Category

Aware that North Korea is much further advanced than Iran with its nuclear weapons programme (North Korea has fission-class nuclear weapons, Iran does not yet have them) and appreciating that North Korea is now verbally threatening the continental USA with nuclear war, US Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel, has decided to suspend construction of a ballistic missile defence over Europe to defend against Iran's perceived ballistic missile threat, in favour of one countering North Korea's nascent internconintental ballistic missile (ICBMs) capability. 

In an announcement Chuck Hagel disclosed that this change will include the addition of 14 more interceptor missiles of the Ground-based Midcourse Defence (GMD) system to the 26 already located in silos at Fort Greely, Alaska.  A further four interceptor missiles are located at Vandenberg, Califormia.  The new interceptor missiles will be placed at Fort Greely by September 2017 and will cost an extra $1 billion presumably from funds redirected from the suspended Europe-based system.

Ground-based Midcourse Defence (GMD) system interceptor missile being emplaced in a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska. Courtesy: SMDC

For a short while there was hope in US diplomatic circles that the announcement would help relations with Russia which had long been opposed to US plans to deploy anti-ballistic missiles in Europe to protect the continent against Iranian ballistic missiles. Nevertheless, the announcement has been met with a cool reception from both Russian and China who realise that the new Alaska-based missiles will be able to intercept more of their own ballistic missiles in time of war.  Meantime, Iran's own ballistic missile and satellite launch vehicle programme is not going well.  The Iranian space programme is reported to have had a launch failure in February.

Russia was originally concerned that if interceptors had been located in Poland, they could have been used against their own medium-range and long-range ballistic missile systems.  Later, to try to appease Russia, and to lower the overall cost of deployment, these missiles were changed to the smaller less-capable (in terms of range) Standard Missile SM-3* design. 

*Standard Missile SM-3 missiles are already deployed against North Korea on Aegis-system-equipped cruisers and destroyers of the US and Japanese Navies. 

 

While Iran has yet to confirm the reports that it has had another orbital launch fallure on 17-18 February 2013, the evidence is growing. The flight is thought to have been a launch of the Iran's Safir launch vehicle carrying a small remote sensing/observation satellite called Fajr 3. The Times of Israel and Israel's Channel 2 television station note that "western intelligence sources" have confirmed all contact with both the rocket and the satellite were lost after launch.  The launch is thought to have taken place from the Semnan launch site in Iran. 

The flight follows on from three orbital launch attempts last year made by Iran's smaller Safir launch vehicle.  Of these the first launch by a Safir 2 (1B) Block 2 launch vehicle was successful in February carrying the Navid (Navid-E-Elm-o Sanat) weather/remote sensing satellite into orbit. This was followed by two Safir 2 (1B) launch failures in April and September carrying Fajr 1 and Fajr 2 remote sensing satellies respectively

Further evidence that a launch attempt took place was that Iran issued a NOTAMS warning to aircraft to avoid the area and yet no announcement was made for the launch on 17 -18 February 2013. 

A0425/13 - OID51 ACTIVATED, REF AIP PAGE ENR 5.1.3-5. DRG ACT AWY B411 BTN DHN VOR/DME AND GIBAB CLSD. GND - UNL, FEB 17 AND 18 / 0630-0830 AND 1130-1330, 17 FEB 06:30 2013 UNTIL 18 FEB 13:30 2013. CREATED: 16 FEB 13:28 2013

 

The Flightglobal SpaceTrak database will be noting this flight as a failure.

 

Meantime, Israel has had another success in its anti-ballistic missile programme with a successful targetless test flight was performed by its latest incarnation of hte Arrow missile system, the Arrow 3, on 25 February 2013.

Following the successful suborbital launch by Iran of a Rhesus monkey (albeit that there was some confusion of its identity) Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that he wants to become an astronaut on a flight of Iran's Kavoshgar suborbital launch vehicle. While some of his opponents and critics have (somewhat unfairly) compared President Ahmadinejad to a monkey himself, given Iran's somewhat dodgy launch reliabililty record (the previous flight of the Kavoshgar launch vehicle is thought to have failed killng its monkey payload) it is a good bet that the US State Department will shortly putting up the funding for his flight.

While Iran announced, to great fanfare, that it had launched its first monkey into suborbital space and recovered him safely, it then made a great public relations mistake in releasing "before" and "after" pictures of the said Rhesus monkey.  The problem was, that not only did the monkey look thorougly miserable in his padding before the trip, after the trip he had appeared to have changed colour and facial markings.  Media types cried foul and assumed that there had been a switich suggesting that this was either due to a dead monkey or because the flight had never even taken place. It is more simple than that said official Iranian sources: the pictures were mixed up.  Hyperbola gives the Iranian space programme the benefit of the doubt...this time. 

Iran's English language television service Press TV has released footage of the successful launch of a small monkey aboard a Kavoshgar launch vehicle.  The Pishgam (Pioneer) capsule was recovered intact with the monkey still alive after its suborbital flight into space.  Such flights will allow Iran to perfect life support systems for manned systems.  Iran has a declared aim of launching a human into space by 2019.  That statement of intent did not specify whether this would be a fully orbital flght or a suborbital one.  Iran has already launched small satellites into orbit and is believed to be working on much larger launch vehicles to carry larger spacecraft.   One of these might one day be manned.

 Courtesy: PressTV

The launch of Iran's Fajr technology testing and remote sensing satellite flying on a Safir 2 (B1) rocket out of the Semnan launch site  is believed to have ended in a major failure on or just later than 23 May 2012.  A launch is suspected to have taken place by Western space analysts (note that it has not been formally confirmed) after reports of a launch being detected by US satellite assets and scorch marks being imaged post launch on the pad.  There was no announcement of success if a launch did take place, and no independent tracking of a new orbiting object.  This has led analysts to suspect a failure.

At the time, the launch was reported to have been delayed from May and June due to problems with the insulation on a microengine on the satellite. These reports may have been a disinformaton ruse to cover up a failure.

The main mission of Fajr (meaning: Dawn) was to prove the orbital manoeuvering using a cold gas propulsion system. As a secondary mission the satellite is equipped with an camera capable of producing images with a best resolution of 500 metres.

Courtesy: BAE Systems

 

The UK Government has just reversed a decision on which type of F-35 fighter aircraft it wants for its new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers which are currently under construction.  Fearful of any costly development hitches over new technology electromagnetic catapults/traps, the government has decided to go back to the STOVL  "jump jet" F-35B version rather than having the longer range US Navy-style F-35C tail-hook/arrestor hook landing type.  

 

The decision has its dangers, not least because the costly-to-develop vertically landing F-35B might still be cancelled as it so nearly was in 2011.  In that event, the Royal Navy would be in the unhappy position of having aircraft carriers with no aircraft to fly off them, especially given that the UK's Ministry of Defence has already sold its remaining Harrier GR7 and GR9 strike bombers to the Americans.  

 

Is bringing the Sea Harrier out of retirement feasible in an emergency? 

 

Of course, the Royal Navy could try and dig its prematurely retired Sea Harriers out of their museums and engineering training establishments (the final FA-2 version of the Sea Harrier fighter was highly rated for its Blue Vixen radar/AMRAAM missile fit).  However, Ascend's analysis is that only about 10 to 12 of these could be restored to flying condition and that any such recovery could take several months.  Even this discounts all the ground and aircrew training that would be needed for such an emergency squadron resuscitation.

 

Whether the F-35B proves to be the right choice of carrier jet fighter or not, some critics are wondering if the United Kingdom needs aircraft carriers at all.  In recent newspaper and television interviews, Sir John Nott, who was the UK Defence Secretary at the time of the Falklands War in 1982, said he still did not think that the Royal Navy needed aircraft carriers.  His conclusion remains erroneous and even a little ungrateful, especially given that it was the same Sea Harrier-toting aircraft carriers that he had previously tried to scrap or sell off, which allowed the Falklands War to be won.

 

Carriers are very useful but they are vulnerable

 

While Sir John Nott and his fellow carrier critics are probably wrong about their utility, it has to be accepted that due to their size and military value, aircraft carriers do make very vulnerable and attractive targets.  Just as the one-time king of the seven seas, the battleship, was soon rendered impotent by the advent of carrier-borne dive-bombers and the threat of torpedos launched from aircraft and submarines, so the inheritor of the battleship's crown, the aircraft carrier, may soon find its own reign usurped by the arrival of a new weapon class:  diving anti-ship missiles.

 

After Exocet's lethality was demonstrated in the Falklands War, a lot of effort was put into developing missile and gun defences against Exocet-class sea-skimming anti-ship missiles and, most recently, against their satellite-targeted  supersonic successors (e.g. india's Brahmos missile).  However, now a very different kind of anti-ship missile is threating naval ships.  These are ballistic missiles which have been especially designed to make high velocity diving attacks "from the Gods".  

 

China and Iran are developing diving anti-ship missiles

 

An example of this new missile type is China's DF-21D which has been specifically designed to target US Navy aircraft carriers and deny them an operational position in close proximity to China's territory (or a disputed territory like Taiwan).  These missiles are thought to be remotely targeted,  using data-relayed target observations from China's Yaogan/Jianbing  radar and optical reconnaissance satellites, and from airborne reconnaissance aircraft, before  finally employing a sophisticated optical seeker for the terminal guidance of their final diving strikes. 

 

It is not just China that has worked on this type of anti-ship missile technology with aim of making an "area denial" to carriers.   Iran has boasted about its own shorter range ballistic diving missile system called Khalije Fars and has even had its official FARS news agency post images and footage of one of its successful missile tests - albeit that it hits an admittedly stationary target ship.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc7eUO1aw9M&feature=fvwrel

 

Nevertheless, while the technology is still relatively young, these ballistic diving missiles, once perfected, could mark the retirement of the carrier as a serious offensice weapons platform.   The US and Royal Navies have one hope for their carrier operations:  that is that  anti-ballistic missile systems carried by their carriers' escort vessels, such as the US Navy's Standard Missile SM-3 and Royal Navy's Aster 30 (Sea Viper), will be able to intercept such hostile missiles during their hypersonic approaches and supersonic terminal dives.  But they will have to do so without failure if their carriers are to survive.   

 

The answer:  Spread the risk and put F-35B jets on lots of ships

 

As the Battle of Midway showed during World War II, just a single strike on an aircraft carrier can be enough to change the odds in a sea battle, and with it the tide of a war. 

 

This factor plays to the STOVL advantages of the F-35B which can also be operated from smaller helicopter-class carriers and might even be flown off vessels that are not designed to be carriers at all.  For the more ships you have acting as "aircraft carriers", the less is the chance that you will "lose all your eggs in one basket" -  if you think that your "basket" might be hit by a missile that is.