Iran's weapon systems

As it seems inevitable that Iran will be the next target, what are the capabilities of Iran? do they still have a decent army?

How will the US fare against them?

Just curious please, don't make this another flame thread

Check out these links

www.globalsecurity.org...

www.globalsecurity.org...

Iran will be no pushover IMHO. And it will be a HUGE mistake for the US to invade as there is a grass-roots movement in that country for change. If they attack now they will marginalize this movement. 50% of the Country are young people who can now actually listen to Music what a concept. Khomeni isn't all bad. Amoung zealots he looks very liberal. I really hope the moderate revolution doesn't get derailed because of "Gunboat" Diplomacy... works good in Hollywood, in the real world well you be the judge.....

Iran has some modified T-72's that are supposed to be more advanced than Iraq's were, as well as some tank which is a copy of old T-72's and M-60's. They still don't seem to have half the tanks Iraq did.

Artillery wise Iran CLAIMS to have developed something which can fire 5 rounds a minute, and moves at 70 km per hour.

In the air, it's not really much. They're believed to still have some 50 Tomcats, and maybe another 60 copies. They may have another 50 Mig-29's, as well as a dozen or so SU-25's. Not much difference here than any other third world airforce America has seen.

Air defenses, as far as I can tell, seem to be pretty light. They don't have anything as advanced as Iraq or Kosovo.

I personally don't think Iran has even half of what they claim. They've been known to overstate their accomplishments. I doubt they've been able to produce their own planes, and I doubt their artillery is anywhere near as good as they claim.

Originally posted by Disturbed Deliverer
Air defenses, as far as I can tell, seem to be pretty light. They don't have anything as advanced as Iraq or Kosovo.

Actually tey arent that bad in air defence. They have several diffrent types of Hawks, they make Rapiers, improved S-200 with a range of 315 km. They also make Sayyad 1 which is a copy of HQ 2B, Shahab sagheb which is a copy of FM 90 and they make Misagh 1 and Misagh 2 which are copies of QW1 and QW2. And I think they have bought the S-300.

[edit on 26-1-2005 by Sep]

Actually tey arent that bad in air defence. They have several diffrent types of Hawks, they make Rapiers, improved S-200 with a range of 315 km. They also make Sayyad 1 which is a copy of HQ 2B, Shahab sagheb which is a copy of FM 90 and they make Misagh 1 and Misagh 2 which are copies of QW1 and QW2. And I think they have bought the S-300.

Everyone has supposedly bought S-300's. Iraq was supposed to have them. The Serbs were supposed to have them...

Until I see one in use, I'm not going to put much weight into it.

I didn't know about the Rapier, though. Maybe the B-2 will get to show how ineffective it really is. Those claims it can track the B-2 are annoying. I doubt that the Iranian's have the most advanced electronics for it, though. It probably isn't half as affective as whatever the British still use.

I just watched a show that states Russia has supplies Iran with their advanced radar, sam missiles (think they are called sam miisiles) used against aircraft and hand fired stinger missiles uses against tomahawk missiles and air craft.

If Israel or the US decides to take out Irans nuclear facilities it might prove to be a tough job.

A little old article

Iran to Buy Russian Weapons

Referring to U.S. concern over Russian arms sales to Iran, Russian President Putin noted that profits from such military deals was measured by their "foreign policy consequences."

Defense analysts note that Iran is likely to be the third-largest importer of Russian weapons, behind China and India. In 2001 Iran acquired a limited number of Russian SA-10C Grumble surface-to-air missiles. The missiles are reportedly stationed outside Tehran. Iranian armed forces personnel have traveled to Moscow to receive training on the SA-10 system.

Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhjani noted during a recent visit to Moscow that future large purchases of Russian weapons are in the works.

www.newsmax.com...

Originally posted by Disturbed Deliverer

I didn't know about the Rapier, though. Maybe the B-2 will get to show how ineffective it really is. Those claims it can track the B-2 are annoying. I doubt that the Iranian's have the most advanced electronics for it, though. It probably isn't half as affective as whatever the British still use.

Rapier did track the B-2, but it was with infra-red not radar and the range was very close (tracking the B-2 whilst it flew around at slow speed low-level around Farnborough airfield where the Rapier was on show) the situation would probably be different in an operational situation there would be no warning of the B-2 arriving (they knew it was coming what its flightpath was etc) it would be flying a lot faster and proably be flying a lot higher thus would be at a much greater range, thus should be a lot harder for the infra-red to find acquire and engage.

FIGHTER / ATTACK

F-4D/E / RF-4E PHANTOM: 65
F-5E/F TIGER II: 60
F-14 TOMCAT: 50
F-6 (China J-6): N/A
F-7 (China J-7): 25
MiG-29A/UB: 40
Su-22 FITTER: N/A
Su-25K:10
Su-24MK:30
Mirage F-1: 25
MiG-23 FLOGGER:15

BOMBERS

H-6: N/A
Tu-22M Backfire: N/A

AEW

IL-76: 1

RECON
RF-4E: 5
RF-5: N/A


TANKER / TRANSPORT
Boeing 707: 5
Boeing 747 :1

CARGO / TRANSPORT :80

C-130E/H :20
Boeing 707F :5
Boeing 727 :5
Commander 690 :5
F-27 :10
Falcon 20 :5
Jetstar :5
PC-6B: 10
Y-7 : 5
Y-12 II :10
IL-76 : N/A



TRAINING :180

Beech F-33A/C : 20
EMB-312 :20
PC-7 :40
T-33 :10
Mig-29UB: 15
FT-7 :15
F-5B : 20
TB-21 :10
TB-200 :5
MFI-17 Mushshaq :25

MISSILES

ASM
AGM-65A +
AS-10 +
AS-11 +
AS-14 +
AAM
AIM-7 +
AIM-9 +
AIM-54 +
AA-8 +
AA-10 +
AA-11 +
PL-2A +
PL-7 +

SAM

I HAWK:150
Rapier :30
Tigercat :15
HQ-2J :45
SA-5 :10
SA-7 N/A
FM-80 N/A
Stinger N/A

Thank you for the response!

I truly hope Iran will be spared of war...Iraq is already a desolate wasteland of Depleted Uranium and who knows what else...

www.newsmax.com...

It's Newsmax. They're not a reliable source.

The same claims were made in the past about Iraq.

I just watched a show that states Russia has supplies Iran with their advanced radar, sam missiles (think they are called sam miisiles) used against aircraft and hand fired stinger missiles uses against tomahawk missiles and air craft.

Russia has always been providing America's enemies with their top of the line equipment. Our enemies have been failing with that Russian equipment marvelously for the same amount of time.

US Faces Limited Military Options In Iran



Washington (AFP) Jan 22, 2005
With the bulk of its ground forces tied down in Iraq, the United States has compelling reasons to avoid military action against neighboring Iran even while stepping up pressure to halt its nuclear program, analysts said here.
"There are no good military options," James Carafano, a military expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Friday.

The United States could launch pinpoint strikes on targets in Iran from US warships or from the air. But short of an imminent threat from nuclear armed Iranian missiles, any gain would likely be outweighed by the trouble Iran could cause US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Anthony Cordesman, an expert on Iran at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Iran "would see any pre-emptive attack as encirclement."

"It would probably react hard to whatever happened, and that would make it more destabilizing than stabilizing," he said in an interview.

"But there would be many people who argue just the opposite," he cautioned.

Indeed, the perception that the United States is embarking on a course of confrontation with Iran has grown here since The New Yorker magazine reported this week that US commandos have been operating inside Iran since mid 2004, secretly scouting targets for possible air strikes.

The Pentagon attacked the story by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh as "riddled with errors of fundamental fact" but did not expressly deny conducting covert reconnaissance missions.

Vice President Dick Cheney, declaring on a radio talk show this week that Iran was "right at the top of the list" of global problems, warned that Israel might launch a pre-emptive strike on its own to shut down Iran's nuclear program.

"Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards," he said.

But Cheney played down the likelihood of US military action.

"In the case of the Iranian situation, I think everybody would be best suited by or best treated and dealt with if we could deal with it diplomatically," he said.

One reason is that the US military already has its hands full in Iraq, where 150,000 US troops are struggling to contain a predominantly Sunni insurgency.

A ground war with Iran would be unsustainable, Carafano said in an interview.

"We couldn't do another large scale ground operation without a major mobilization that would require mobilizing basically all of the national guard," he said.

"Even if we wanted to do that, it would be pretty obvious because it would take us months if not years to get the national guard up and ready to go."

Even a limited US attack on Iran, which shares a 1,450-kilometer (900-mile) open border with Iraq, would invite Tehran to use its influence among Iraq's Shiites to sabotage the separate peace US forces have enjoyed in southern Iraq. The same is true in Afghanistan, which has a 900-kilometer (560-mile) border with Iran.

"When you're trying to stabilize Iraq and you've got this long border between Iran and Iraq, and you're trying to keep the Iranians from interfering in Iraq so you can get the Iraq government up and running, you shouldn't be picking a war with the Iranians," said Carafano.

"It just doesn't make any sense from a geopolitical standpoint," he said.

Iran is believed to protect its most sensitive facilities by dispersing, burying and hardening them, learning from the 1981 Israeli air strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor.

So the payoff from surgical strikes on suspected nuclear facilities would be uncertain and temporary, Carafano said.

"On the other hand," said Cordesman, "one can argue that a successful strike has a powerful intimidating and deterrent impact."

"So there will always be those people who argue that the short-term political cost will be offset by the longer term impact on Iran's political behavior and military capabilities," he said.

Moreover, he said, it's unknown to outsiders how close Iran is to gaining a nuclear weapon, or what the US military has learned about its efforts, further obscuring the course of action the United States may take.

"When you deal with any power that proliferates that is hostile, you are going to constantly update and improve your contingency plans, and you are going to carry out intelligence reconnaissance," he said.

"One problem is, you are going to carry out virtually exactly the same intelligence effort if you are contemplating military options or if you are trying to make arms control work, or put pressure on the UN and Europe to be more effective in their negotiating effort," he said.

"The difficulty here is there is essentially one man who can make this decision. And that's the president of the United States," he said.

Not one mention of the Sunburns on loan from Russia. They may be nuclear tipped, but in truth they don't even have to be. One or two would probably vaporize Israel, with all the rest fired in the general direction of the carrier group(s) offering support to U.S. Air Power, I don't see there being any other real threat from Iran, other than attrition.

If the Iranians got the drop, they could disallow the American Air contingent convenient landing, while denying ground troops carrier support, but they would still suffer under the long range bombers. In this instance the bombers wouldn't have as much support, and might prove more vulnerable to AAMs.

I wouldn't attack Iran, if I was the commander in chief, but I have a feeling W. just might. It will be a rude awakening when a carrier group vanishes off the radar screens, in a ball of heat and light that would make the sun jealous.

That's the worst case scenario. That scenario assumes Russian wants to protect its middle eastern oil interests. I don't think that there is a best case scenario where Russia just abandons its investments. If others disagree, I'd love to hear why. I just can't help but thinking that if Russia didn't want to keep Iran, they wouldn't have loaned them the second best missles in the Russian arsenal.

I think the influential movers and shakers of Israel, at this point, are probably biting their nails to the quick and eyeing other countries. They are between a rock and a hard place, and running out of oil. Israel is small enough, in landmass, that it could be almost entirely destroyed by 1 or 2 sizeable nuclear explosions. They don't have nearly the immunity the Atlantic provides the US. To compound the problem, Israel is seen as the largest ally of the US in the Middle East, and in many circles is considered the master of American foreign policy.

Lucreitus, there was an entire topic on that same story posted. Go address that.

And I'm so tired of hearing about Sunburn missiles. They aren't going to destroy all of America's navy, just like Russia wouldn't have been able to. The claims are just idiotic. S-300's aren't some magical solution to stop America's billion dollar B-2's. Just like no other Russian SAM or missile has EVER made the difference for these weak nations like Iran. They can buy all of the tanks and air defenses and planes they want. They'll end up sharing Iraq's fate.

Originally posted by Disturbed Deliverer
S-300's aren't some magical solution to stop America's billion dollar B-2's.

Just like no other Russian SAM or missile has EVER made the difference for these weak nations like Iran.

maybe S-300 arent, but S-400 and S-500 are the solutions

"In April 2001, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the future exportation of the S-500 to Europe and elsewhere in order to counter U.S. efforts to build a NATO-wide missile defense network."


even USA wanted to get its hands on S-500

"In May 2004, two years after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty, the Congressman traveled to Moscow and reiterated his offer: “You designed . . . the S-500 system but lack money. We can build it together.” At present, however, there is no evidence that Russia plans to collaborate with the U.S. on the S-500."

Source

I think we could easily devastate them with our standoff weapons such as the tomahawk but once it gets on the ground we would have a hard time. If we wanted to do a strike agianst their nucleur capabilities it would be hard. They learned from Osirak in 1981. I think we might do a two front war. We would cross in from Iraq and then from Afghanistan. I dont think the iranians are stupid. They probably have a plan to launch a few small scale attacks in the United States. This would mean we would have to engage in a decisive military action. Something we might not be able to do. Really i think we would win in the end. We have a lot more experience. The iranians fought in the eighties but that was against Iraq. OUr pilots rock. ONe of the bigger threats is the kilo subarine. Its really slow but its the B-2 of subs. If it had a good skipper it could take out a couple of destroyer and if you had a couple, maybe even a aircraft carrier. Getting back to war, if the iranians fled into the hills then we would have a tough time. A war with Iran if we won would essentialy mean an uninterrupted strip of land under US control. But it would really stretch the capabilities of the military. I think Bush will do a heavy bombardment but thats it.

It's funny. Your article uses FAS as a source. After the reading the article, it said something a little different:

It is reported that Russia has not undertaken actual development of the S-500, due to a lack of funding, and have consequently proposed joint development of the system with the United States

Source - www.fas.org...

It's hardly like America was blown away by the technology and had to have it. I'm not sure where you got your little quote there, but it wasn't in the article you linked to.

What exactly about the S-400 or S-500 make them so special? What allows them to suddenly be able to detect stealth?

Nothing, really, except for big talk from the Russian's. They have no way of actually testing this equipment. They have no stealth plane that comes even close to a F-117 yet, let alone a B-2. Even their fifth generation fighter designs would probably just have stealth up to the level of a JSF.

When have Russian SAM's, or any Russian weapon since WW2, proven to be effective when used against Western equipment? When have Russian troops shown themselves to be all that effective in combat? Why after this stuff has failed time and time again do people chose to believe its equal to American equipment? If SAM's couldn't shoot down conventional planes in past wars, why would they suddenly be able to shoot down stealth today? Russian electronics haven't advanced much. Russian radars haven't advanced much.

I want to see some actual proof that these weapons work. That means a historical example. Hell, even an exercise. Something besides ambiguous claims made by Russians, or super amazing projects which would blow America away if only Russia wasn't dirt poor...

Originally posted by WyrdeOne

That's the worst case scenario. That scenario assumes Russian wants to protect its middle eastern oil interests. I don't think that there is a best case scenario where Russia just abandons its investments. If others disagree, I'd love to hear why. I just can't help but thinking that if Russia didn't want to keep Iran, they wouldn't have loaned them the second best missles in the Russian arsenal.

I think the influential movers and shakers of Israel, at this point, are probably biting their nails to the quick and eyeing other countries. They are between a rock and a hard place, and running out of oil. Israel is small enough, in landmass, that it could be almost entirely destroyed by 1 or 2 sizeable nuclear explosions. They don't have nearly the immunity the Atlantic provides the US. To compound the problem, Israel is seen as the largest ally of the US in the Middle East, and in many circles is considered the master of American foreign policy.

Dont forget Chinese support to Iran, they have great interests in Iran oil $200 billion worth oil trade agreement alone is very big long time investment from China. I think for Russia Iran stand as geopolitical interest and of course oil, but dont see Russia so depend of it as they have great oil reserves on their own.

If US goes war in Iran hell break loose for sure, Saudi-Arabia, Iran, Iraq thats hell a lot of oil and US would orchestrate it all. Its no suprise if Russia or China arms Iran with their modern weaponry to keep such scenario not happening as it would surely turn already high oil prices even higher and generally world economy growth would slowdown.

And doesnt Israel buy same oil than US from Saudi-Arabia, Iraq etc.

Just to share this with you guys...

I feel kinda happy America wont start a ground war against Iran...yet, but I also feel kinda sad for some odd reason, I guess it's a twisted feeling of sensationalism or something...

But when thinking logically, it's better if Iran and US soldiers will not do battle, since loss of life is never good...

AND...I'd love to see the Shafaq...

The Shafaq isn't in production. It may not even have a prototype. I'm certainly skepitical its half of what Iran says it is. The only thing you'd hear about it is maybe that a bunch were shot down.

America is capable of launching a ground war into Iran, as well. We could gather a force of 200,000 to get the job done. I can cout just 130,000 troops in Germany, South Korea, and Japan. None of those troops are exactly needed in those locations. If Iran was a serious threat, don't doubt for a second that America wouldn't start pulling in those troops.