Iran to test indigenous, high-power missiles, torpedoes in naval drill’

A senior Iranian commander says indigenous missiles and torpedoes with great precision and high destructive power will be tested during the ongoing Velayat 91 naval drills.

“Domestic missiles and torpedoes with greater range, precision and destructive power compared to materiel used in last year’s drill wills be tested during the Velayat 91 naval exercises,” Rear Admiral Amir Rastegari, spokesman for the drills, said on Friday.

Iran’s Navy launched the six-day naval maneuvers on Friday in order to display the country’s capabilities to defend its maritime borders and maintain durable peace in the region.

The exercises cover a vast area including the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman, north of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

The commander described using overhauled super-heavy Tareq 901 submarine as the turning point of the exercises.

Rastegari added that domestically produced drones with longer ranges would be tested during the drill, saying, “Drones which will be flown in the exercises are equipped with strengthened sensor systems.”

“Two Ghadir-class submarines which joined the Army’s submarine fleet on November 27, will also be employed during the drill,” the Iranian commander noted.

Over the past few years, Iran has held several military drills to enhance the defensive capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and equipment.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly assured other nations, especially neighbors, that its military might poses no threat to other countries, insisting that its defense doctrine is based on deterrence.

Iranian Warships Dock in Sudan, Again

wo Iranian warships docked in Port Sudan on Saturday, a witness told AFP. This marks the second port call by the Iranian navy in Sudan in five weeks.

The Iranian navy said the 1,400 ton frigate Jamaran and the 4,700 ton support ship Bushehr "docked in Port Sudan, after successfully carrying out their assignments in the Red Sea, and were greeted by high-ranking Sudanese naval commanders." It did not say how long the warships would stay in port.

Khartoum said it was a "normal" port call but Israeli officials have expressed concern about arms smuggling through Sudan.

They have long accused the African country of serving as a base of support for the terrorists of Hamas, which rules Gaza.

Sudanese army spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad told reporters on Friday night that the visit is "part of diplomatic and military exchanges between the two countries," and will last for three days.

A pair of Iranian navy vessels, the supply ship Kharg and corvette Admiral Naghdi, spent about two days at Port Sudan in late October.This took place immediately after an October 23 strike against the Yarmouk military factory in the capital, which led to speculation that Iranian weapons were stored or manufactured there. Sudan blamed Israel for the blast, while Israel refused all comment on the accusation.

But a top Israeli defense official, Amos Gilad, said Sudan "serves as a route for the transfer, via Egyptian territory, of Iranian weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists." Eight days of fighting between Israel and Hamas ended on November 21 with an Egyptian-mediated truce after 174 Palestinian Authority Arabs and six Israelis were killed. The Jewish state has accused Iran of supplying Hamas with the Iranian-made Fajr 5 missile, which was used to target Tel Aviv during the conflict. 

Khartoum said Israel was spreading "fabricated information" about links between the Yarmouk military factory, Hamas and Iran

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Sudan's foreign ministry denied Iran had any involvement in the plant.

On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Ali Karti said Sudan welcomes the navies of any country, "except Israel."

A Pakistani frigate visited Port Sudan in late November

Navy has so far escorted 1600 Iranian vessels in Gulf of Aden: admiral

The commander of the Iranian Navy said on Tuesday that Iranian naval forces have so far escorted 1600 Iranian vessels in the Gulf of Aden. 

“So far, we have escorted 1600 vessels, and if we do not escort and protect these vessels, imports and exports will decrease and we will experience an economic crisis,” Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari stated. 

“Today, we take pride in the fact that we have built a destroyer and take our destroyer to other countries and (tell) them that we have this technology,” he said, referring to the Jamaran destroyer.  

Iran’s first domestically manufactured destroyer, the Jamaran, was launched in February 2010. 

The warship can carry helicopters and is equipped with torpedoes and electronic radar. It is 94 meters long and weighs over 1,500 tons.

The destroyer is capable of engaging in surface, air, and undersea warfare. 

In September 2011, Sayyari announced that the second domestically manufactured destroyer would join the country’s naval fleet in the near future. 

Rear Admiral Sayyari said at the time that the Jamaran II (Velayat) was highly advanced and differed greatly from the Jamaran. 

In an interview with the Persian service of the Fars News Agency published on June 19, the deputy commander of the Iranian Navy, Rear Admiral Abbas Zamini, said that about 70 percent of the project to build the Velayat destroyer had been completed and expressed hope that the destroyer would be launched by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, March 20, 2013.   

Zamini also announced at the time that Iran planned to build 10 new domestically designed destroyers in addition to the Jamaran and Velayat destroyers.

Iranian Threat To Navy Grows

Tehran expands arsenal in Gulf; U.S. might suffer losses in a conflict's first hours

Iran is rapidly gaining new capabilities to strike at U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, amassing an arsenal of sophisticated anti-ship missiles while expanding its fleet of fast-attack boats and submarines, U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts say.

The new systems, many of them developed with foreign assistance, are giving Iran’s commanders new confidence that they could quickly damage or destroy U.S. ships if hostilities erupt, the officials say.
Although U.S. Navy officials are convinced that they would prevail in a fight, Iran’s advances have fueled concerns about U.S. vulnerabilities during the opening hours of a conflict in the gulf.

Increasingly accurate short-range missiles — combined with Iran’s use of “swarm” tactics involving hundreds of heavily armed patrol boats — could strain the defensive capabilities of even the most modern U.S. ships, current and former military analysts say.


In recent weeks, as nuclear talks with world powers have faltered and tensions have risen, Iran has repeated threats to shut down shipping in the oil-rich gulf region. Its leaders also have warned of massive retaliation for any attacks on its nuclear facilities, which the United States believes are civilian covers for an Iranian drive to acquire a nuclear-weapons capability.

Last week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry declared that the presence of U.S. warships in the gulf constituted a “real threat” to the region’s security.

Pentagon officials have responded by sending more ships, urged on by Congress as well as U.S. allies in the region. This month, the Navy announced that it would deploy the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to the Middle East four months ahead of schedule. The shift will keep two carriers in the gulf region.

The United States also has announced new military exercises in the region, including a mine-sweeping drill in the gulf, and has moved to add new radar stations and land-based missile-defense batteries in Qatar.

Assessing the risks

The likelihood that Iran would risk an all-out attack on a vastly superior U.S. fleet is judged to be small. But Iranian leaders could decide to launch a limited strike if Israel or the United States bombed the country’s nuclear facilities. Analysts also cautioned that a conflict could be sparked by an Iranian attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow passage through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes from the Persian Gulf into open seas — in retaliation for international economic sanctions.

In either scenario, Iran’s ability to inflict significant damage is substantially greater than it was a decade ago. A Pentagon study in April warned that Iran had made gains in the “lethality and effectiveness” of its arsenal. The Pentagon declined to comment for this article.

Iran’s increased power to retaliate has led some military experts to question the wisdom of deploying aircraft carriers and other expensive warships to the gulf if a conflict appears imminent.

A 2009 study prepared for the Naval War College warns of Iran’s increasing ability to “execute a massive naval ambush” in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway dotted with small islands and inlets and perfectly suited for the kind of asymmetric warfare preferred by Iran’s commanders.

“If the U.S. chooses to station warships in the Strait of Hormuz during the buildup to conflict, it cedes the decision of when to fight and allows the fight to begin in the most advantageous place for Iran,” wrote the study’s author, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Colin Boynton. “This could lead to a devastating first salvo on U.S. Navy warships, which would most likely be operating under restrictive rules of engagement.”

Since 2009, analysts say, Iran has added defensive and offensive capabilities. Some of them have been on display in recent months in a succession of military drills, including a missile exercise in early July dubbed Great Prophet 7. The exercise included a demonstration of Iran’s newly deployed Khalid Farzh anti-ship missile, which has an internal guidance system, a powerful 1,400-pound warhead and a range of 180 miles.

Iran’s arsenal already included a variety of anti-ship missiles such as the Chinese-made Silkworm. More recently, Iran has boasted of progress in developing high-speed torpedoes based on Russian designs. Such claims are often exaggerated, but the April Pentagon assessment noted that Iran’s arsenal now includes ballistic missiles with “seekers” that enable them to maneuver toward ships during flight.

Modern U.S. warships are equipped with multiple defense systems, such as the ship-based Aegis missile shield. But Iran has sought to neutralize the U.S. technological advantage by honing an ability to strike from multiple directions at once. The emerging strategy relies not only on mobile missile launchers but also on new mini-submarines, helicopters and hundreds of heavily armed small boats known as fast-attack craft.

These highly maneuverable small boats, some barely as long as a subway car, have become a cornerstone of Iran’s strategy for defending the gulf against a much larger adversary. The vessels can rapidly deploy Iran’s estimated 2,000 anti-ship mines or mass in groups to strike large warships from multiple sides at once, like a cloud of wasps attacking much larger prey.

A Middle Eastern intelligence official who helps coordinate strategy for the gulf with U.S. counterparts said some Navy ships could find themselves in a “360-degree threat environment,” simultaneously in the cross hairs of adversaries on land, in the air, at sea and even underwater.

“This is the scenario that is giving people nightmares,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing strategy for defending against a possible Iranian attack.

The Navy has ordered new systems for defending against small-boat “swarms,” including ship-launched unmanned aerial vehicles and special missiles and artillery rounds for use against fast-attack craft. But many of the new defenses will not be deployed for several months, said Michael Eisenstadt, a former military adviser to the Pentagon and the State Department.

“We’re behind and we’re catching up,” Eisenstadt said. “But if there’s a conflict in the near term, we may not be completely ready.”

U.S. forces would probably recover quickly from any early losses, but Iranian leaders could claim a psychological victory if the world’s media carried images of burning U.S. warships in the gulf, Eisenstadt said. Al-Qaeda landed a similar blow in 2000 when suicide bombers on a small boat heavily damaged the destroyer USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, an attack that killed 17 sailors and wounded nearly 40 others.

“A lot of Iranian ships would be at the bottom of the gulf, but [Iran] would be able to point to a victory,” Eisenstadt said. “The outcome would never be in doubt when you’re dealing with the most powerful military in the world. But in their minds they would have shown the world that if you mess with us, you’ll pay a heavy price.”

A push for credibility

The Iranian naval buildup is described by U.S. officials as part of an effort by the Islamic Republic to bolster its military credibility in the region.

The Pentagon’s April assessment said Iran was making steady progress in developing ballistic missiles capable of striking targets in Israel and beyond. It also said Tehran was enhancing its well-established capacity to launch terrorist attacks using surrogates such as Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia movement that operates a network of cells around the world.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have linked Iran and Hezbollah to a string of assassination attempts and terrorist attacks on three continents in the past six months — from the foiled plot to kill a Saudi diplomat in Washington last fall to the deadly bombing of a tour bus filled with Israelis last week in Bulgaria. Current and former U.S. officials say more attacks are likely if Israel launches a preemptive strike on Iran’s uranium-enrichment plants.

“Iran has the capacity to attack, from Argentina to Venezuela, in Asia, in Europe and throughout the Middle East,” Danielle Pletka, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said Wednesday in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It seems naïve to believe it does not have the capacity to launch attacks in the United States.”

The arms buildup in the gulf comes as Israeli officials continue to weigh an airstrike that many experts believe would ignite a larger conflict. A stream of Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, have visited Israel in recent weeks to lobby against a unilateral attack. Middle East experts say that Israel has not decided to attack but that the risk of an Israeli strike is rising as hopes of a diplomatic settlement to the nuclear crisis evaporate.

David Makovsky, a Middle East expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said after discussions with top Israeli officials that he assessed the chances of a strike at “50-50 . . . before the U.S. elections” in November. “There’s this feeling that Israel’s window is closing.”

U.S. ships, meanwhile, continue steaming toward the gulf as the Obama administration seeks to reassure allies in the region and discourage Iran from moving to block the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. and Middle Eastern officials acknowledge that deployments carry inherent risk, but they say there are no good alternatives.

“It is a dilemma,” the Middle East intelligence official said. “When the Navy ships are in the strait, they are vulnerable to attack. But if you were to take them away, the gulf countries would feel more vulnerable. And already they feel very, very vulnerable.” Asian Defence News

Iran Announces Another Miracle

Iran makes frequent announcements about the growth and modernization of its submarine force. The latest press release reveals that Iran is beginning to develop a nuclear powered submarine. On a more substantial level, last December they announced they had put another three of their Ghadir class submarines into service. While the nuclear powered sub project is a mirage, the Ghadir is real, as there are 19 of them in service.
What Iran does not issue press releases about is the stuff that doesn't work. Take, for example, the 400 ton Nahang class sub. This was to be the successor to the 120 ton Ghadirs. Alas, one Nahang entered service six years ago and none followed. The Nahang seemed to spend most of its time in port, full of technicians, or in dry dock, partially disassembled. A successor to the Nahang, the 1,000 ton Qaaem has yet to be finished after five years of effort. Moreover, the Qaaem, unlike the other Iranian built subs is not a mini-sub that can operate anywhere in the generally shallow Persian Gulf. For example, the three Russian built Kilo class subs Iran has are so big (2,300 tons) that they can only operate in about a third of the Persian Gulf. That makes them easier to find and destroy in the Gulf. That explains why Iran is increasingly sending its Kilos outside the Gulf.
Meanwhile, the successful Ghadir is another example of Iranian resourcefulness in the face of embargoes. Since 1996, when Russia agreed to stop selling them submarines, Iran has been working on their own designs. After ten years of trial and error they produced the 120 ton Ghadir (Qadir) class vessels in 2005. Iran claims to have a fleet of 19 of these small diesel electric subs and no less than four have been shown together and photographed. The Iranians are not releasing specification sheets to anyone, but Ghadirs look very similar to the Italian Cosmos SX-506B submarines that Columbia has operated since the 1980s. The 100-ton SX-506Bs are only large enough to carry commandos and mines. However, released news footage shows what looks like to be two torpedo tubes on the Iranian Ghadirs. The Iranians claim that the Ghadirs carry torpedoes.
It should be remembered that Cosmos exported a number of larger vessels to Pakistan in the 1990s. Dubbed the SX-756 they may have been the design basis for the Ghadir. It should also be acknowledged that the North Korean Sang-O class submarine closely approximates the Ghadir type. In 2007, North Korea gave Iran, outright, four of its Yugo-type midget submarines. These Yugos were well worn 90-ton 21 meter (65 foot) craft but Iran accepted them all the same. Taking them apart taught the Iranians much about how to design and build mini-subs.
Iran took the big leap in the early 1990s, when they acquired three Kilo 877/636 type diesel electric submarines from Russia. The 2,300 ton Kilos are long range subs capable of operating throughout the Indian Ocean (from South Africa to Australia). The Kilos have six 533mm (21 inch) torpedo tubes and 18 torpedoes (including one or more Shkval rocket torpedo) or 24 mines. Very similar to the world-standard diesel submarine, the 1800-ton German Type 209, the Kilo is a formidable foe and can stay at sea for up to 45 days, which makes it capable of long range patrols.
All this Iranian submarine activity has spurred the U.S. to develop new tools and techniques for detecting small subs in shallow waters. The Americans have not released results of tests against NATO mini-subs. But that is to be expected. You save that kind of surprise for the first few days of a war.