New Achievements in This Year’s Drills

This year, the IRGC’s military drills so-called Payambar-e A’zam (The Great Prophet) had different atmosphere than before. The IRGC’s missile and naval military maneuvers so called “Payambar-e A’zam (S) 14” were held in the Persian Gulf and the Hormuz Strait and according to the schedule of the drills, some exercises like anti-ship ballistic and cruise missile, offensive and defensive against a mock aircraft carrier and firing missiles from air, sea and the coast were conducted. One of the most important characteristics of this year’s drills was employing a mock U.S. aircraft carrier and conducting offensive and defensive maneuvers around this dummy U.S. carrier and this move caused the American to cry foul both because of their fear and protests against the IRGC’s drills.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

One of the most valuable innovation of the IRGC in this maneuver was to herald this strategy that the policy of developing military industry in the armed forces either in the Army or in the IRGC is to review enemies’ weak and strong points and to manufacture weapons to rectify the weak points and to enhance the strong points.

Of the other astonishing achievements of the IRGC was an unknown achievement which had been designed domestically and its production was displayed to the world. Missiles without having any launch-pad were fired from the depths of the Earth in a completely camouflaged way to hit the pre-defined targets. It means the buried missiles suddenly break the ground open, without using common launch pads and facilities, and hit their targets with accuracy and enemies will be in fact unable to trace its location of firing.

One of the other goals of the maneuver was to test surface-to-surface Hormuz missiles. The missile can trace enemies’ radars and hit the radar centers and destroy them. In this maneuver, the IRGC set the assimilated American anti-ballistic missile defense system THAAD as the target on its agenda. In the previous maneuvers, IRGC had successful operations on destroying assimilated American surface-to-air missile system Patriot with firing missiles with the range 250-kilometers but this year it was totally a different story. THAAD system is one the U.S.’s most powerful systems which has defensive application. The IRGC had assimilated THAAD for its maneuver. Production and operation units of Aerospace Force of the IRGC in this year’s maneuver targeted the assimilated THAAD system with its ballistic missiles successfully.

It is interesting to know that THAAD is one of the most powerful anti-ballistic missile defense systems which has been deployed in recent years by the U.S. in some of its regional bases like Al-Dhafra in the UAE. According to the U.S. allegations, these defensive systems have been deployed to defend American bases against the probable Iran’s missile attacks.

The design of THAAD system began in 1992 by Lockheed Martin Company upon the order of the U.S. Army and ultimately in 2008, this system joined the U.S. Army to be tested. Between 2008 and 2015, in other words in five years, the system underwent several tests and finally got the nod to enter the U.S. Air Force. THAAD system is in fact a long-range anti-ballistic missile defense system designed to shoot down targets at ranges of 200km and altitudes of up to 150km.

The THAAD system is comprised of five parts of launcher, radar, firing control system, related systems and units of the missile which practically support the system of THAAD defense system. THAAD is equipped with an active radar so-called AN/TPY-2 which is a missile defense radar that can detect, track and discriminate ballistic missiles from a distance of thousands of kilometers. This radar is considered as the biggest and important radars in the world. Beside what was mentioned, THAAD is also equipped with a backup unit so-called BM/C31 which enables the system to share its intelligence with other forces or defense systems. This backup unit is comprised of three components of tactical operation base, launching operation base and the whole backup of the system. These three units with different arrays have different performances.

There are nine truck-mounted launchers in a typical THAAD battery as each truck carrying eight missiles, power generator and electronic system which can be prepared for operation in less than 30 minutes and it can be reloaded twice in the same period. Each battalion of THAAD firing system is usually comprised of six vehicles for the launch. Its missile is the one with a single stage solid fuel rocket motor with thrust vectoring which can increase its speed to 8.2 Mach. The missile is 6.17m in length, 37 centimeters in diameter and 900 kilograms in weight and it is equipped with a warhead with kinetic energy.

Regarding all these peculiarities of the system, one should take into consideration the significance of the IRGC’s performance in assimilating the system and destroying it in the drills. Perhaps these statistics and information on the THAAD might be source of pride regarding our men in the IRGC for the common people who are unaware of the value of these equipment and defensive tools, but world armies and all strategic military think tanks are fully aware that with arrival of such equipment into the military and army structure of a country, capability for drawing up a war plan for attacking the country will be totally impossible.

Of course, the Supreme Leader as well as Foreign Ministry and some other Iranian bodies have repeatedly reiterated that the country does not intend to launch any attack or to conquest against any country and what is today termed as the military achievements in Iran is just for defensive purpose for the country and the countries aligned with the resistance, and neighboring countries of Iran should fully rely on these tools of security and count on Iran for protecting their securities.

 By: Hamid Reza Naghashian