Report from the Washington Post,
October 16, 2022 at 2:30 a.m. EDT
... according toU.S. and allied security officials, secretly agreeing to send not only attack drones but also what some officials described as the first Iranian-made surface-to-surface missiles intended for use against Ukrainian cities and troop positions.
So they denied shooting down the Ukranian air liner (they eventually came clean) and now they deny supplying drones for use against Ukraine.
While Iranian weapons designers have struggled with reliability problems, the newest versions of the Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar are considered by experts to be both potent and reasonably accurate at relatively short distances, Nadimi said. Some models come with electrooptic guidance systems that allow missile operators to guide them in their final approach to the target. Iran previously provided the same missiles to proxy militia groups in the Middle East, most notably Houthi fighters in Yemen...{who} used them in attacks against oil refineries and other civilian targets in neighboring Gulf countries.
Field testing at its finest.
Independent news outlets in recent days published photos of the remains of what appear to be Iranian-made drones used in strikes against Ukrainian targets, calling into question Iran’s repeated denials that it has supplied such weapons to its ally Russia. Pentagon officials also publicly confirmed the use of Iranian drones in Russian airstrikes, as well as Ukraine’s success in shooting some of the drones down.
Iran and Iraq traded hundreds of Theater Ballistic Missiles against each other back in the 1980's. Iran seems to have made home grown ones. They know what they are doing, so I wonder what Ukraine did to piss them off? Make them look bad about that air liner shoot down?
...Tehran dispatched officials to Russia on Sept. 18 to finalize terms for additional weapons shipments, including two types of Iranian surface-to-surface missiles, according to officials from a U.S.-allied country that closely monitors Iran’s weapons activity.
I wonder who that could be?
Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar missiles ... capable of striking targets at distances of 300 and 700 kilometers...it would be the first delivery of such missiles to Russia since the start of the war.
So what is Russia paying to Iran, or providing to them, in return for this non-trivial shipment of modern weapons?
I am not sure what the TBMD posture of Ukraine is, but I doubt that it is very robust.
Some decades ago, the USAF was going a bit nuts about '
boost phase intercept' (large airliner sized aircraft zapping missiles with lasers as they took off) as the approach to defending against North Korean ballistic missiles of a similar class to the ones being provided by Iran. (I was very skeptical of that program, at the time). Have heard little to nothing about it since.
I wonder if it's been kept under wraps, or,
if my skepticism was well founded.
That would be a very handy capability to employ at a time like this, if it works.
It may be like nuclear fusion as an energy source: "we are about 15 years away from solving this" as a decades long state of play.
The reports of a serious new front opening up from Belarus is disturbing: some months ago I asked "what if we are already in WW III and just don't know it yet?" The 'evacuate the embassy, all citizens leave Ukraine" signals from various countries doesn't make me feel any better.