Iran And the Paper Submarine
Iran has announced that is has begun production of a new class of submarines that can fire both torpedoes and missiles. Iran has, as far as anyone can tell, no submarine building capability. Over the last few years, Iran has announced several new submarine construction projects. But no one can find any evidence that any of these subs exist. But all this is nothing new for the Iranians.
For the last month, Iran has made about one new weapons announcement a week. All these breakthroughs in military technology involve new systems that, on close examination amount to, well, nothing. First there was the announcement of a new robotic submarine. No details were given, but it was soon discovered that such devices are available on the commercial market, mainly for scientific research. Some nations buy them for military purposes. Apparently Iranian submarine designers know how to use Google, but their counterparts in the publicity department did not.
Then came the announcement of having combat aircraft that can fly 3,000 kilometers without refueling. Amazing? No, as Iran has had such aircraft (the U.S. F-4 fighter) for over thirty years. What were the Iranians thinking when they issued this press release?
Then a ballistic missile launch, which the Iranians touted as a successful test of a satellite launcher. Up until now, Iran has been buying satellite launching services from Russia (as does the United States and many other countries). The reality, as monitored by the radars of U.S. warships off the Iranian coast, was a launch failure. When the missile reached an altitude of about 16 kilometers, it broke up as the second stage fired. Information later leaked out of Iran that the missile was carrying a low tech communications satellite. Apparently even the Iranians were not willing to entrust this new version of their Safir ballistic missile with an expensive satellite. Finally, there was the recent announcement of the new submarine entering production, as well as two other Iranian built (over the last three years) su