Ukraine War, 19 September 2022: Intro to Iranian UAV/UCAVs, Part 1
The last few days I’ve got lots of questions about Iranian UAVs and UCAVs now in service with Russian armed forces: what do I think about them, how effective are they, how effective can they get and what is their impact going to be…?
I’m not into predicting future, and, hand on heart: right now, I do not have a clear answer. But, I’ll try to offer some in the course of explaining what do I know about Iranian UAVs and UCAVs, their backgrounds and operational history. Hope, this might help assess their impact upon developments in Ukraine, too.
As so often, I’ll start doing that in a way that’s certain to appear ‘unusual’ to many. The reason is that I find it funny to read reactions to one of my recent video-interviews in style of, ‘he’s an aerial warfare analyst and historian specialised in Middle Eastern, African, and Asian air forces’ — and, therefore, ‘what can he know about Putin, Russia, and the war in Ukraine….?’
Well, let me remind everybody that aerial warfare is a four-dimensional affair: trying to study it from a single-dimensional point of view is not going to work. Moreover, my experience is that one needs not knowing anything at all — as long as one knows where to find the information in question, and is curious to search for it.
For example: one can do what many enthusiast modelers assembling kits of aircraft in scales 1:72, 1:48 or 1:32 are doing, and say, ‘no, I just want to focus on camouflage colours and markings’. Sounds perfectly fine, doesn’t it?
But, how do you want to find out authentic colours applied on some, say, Egyptian MiG-21 of October 1973 — if you are refusing to find out the way the Egyptian military economy was functioning at the time in question…? ….and thus are refusing to find out the way the Soviet military economy was working at the time….? ….so to find out the Soviets simply adapted the British Standard 381C (BS381C) as a key reference for specifying a particular paint colour in use by their armed forces….? ….and Egyptians were not only using the BS381C since earlier times (because of ‘British influence’ in the country from earlier times), but then went on buying Soviets colours and thus painting their MiG-21s in colours specified by the BS381C chart….?
If you think this is ‘valid for enthusiasts only’ — that’s dead wrong. Few years ago a pair of academic historians from Israel won a lots of praise and all the possible accolades for publishing a book telling fairy tales about the Soviets deploying their super-secret MiG-25RBs in Egypt of May 1967, and then flying super-secret reconnaissance sorties over Israel — and its nuclear reactor-complex in Dimona — all on basis of one or two ill-informed (and thus: misinforming) posts on the website of the Keystone Cops in Moscow (the Russian MOD).
But, did they try to find out if there were any flyable MiG-25Rs available anywhere on this planet as of May-June 1967 — so to find out no MiG-25Rs were flying before 1969–1970? Nope. Did they try to find out how would anybody operate — and just what kind of logistic effort would it take to operate — an aircraft the size, weight, and power of the MiG-25R from the confines of small Egyptian forward operating sites in the middle of Sinai of May-June 1967? Nope. Did they try to research with help of veteran pilots of the Egyptian Air Force? Nope. Did they at least try to get themselves a flight manual of such a type like MiG-25R? Negative ….what a surprise then, the academics in question never found out that there were simply no operational MiG-25Rs even in the USSR at that time, and the flights in question were actually undertaken by Egyptian MiG-21F-13s — which, yes, could fly as high as 20,000–21,000 metres (that’s 60,000–63,000ft, or so-called ‘dynamic altitudes’) as extensively discussed in contemporary tactical manual for this type, even if ‘under very specific circumstances, only’…
Sorry, single-dimensional thinking is not the way I work. I represent the standpoint that because aerial warfare is a 4-dimensional affair, researching about it has to be run in 4 dimensions, too. Here we’re going to see how that works on the example of the Iranian UAVs and UCAVs which are in the process of entering service in Russia, the last few months, and meanwhile making their appearance felt on the battlefields of Ukraine.
SYSTEM IRI
For understanding the modern-day Islamic Republic of Iran and its armed forces, one needs to understand the ‘system of rule’ in that country. Arguably, this is ‘hard’: some 15 years ago, a dear colleague of mine observed that, ‘one could earn a small fortune if becoming able to explain that system’. I was and remain in agreement with him and, to make sure: I do not claim I can; but, I do think I can summarise it in a useful fashion.
Nominally, Iran is an Islamic Republic (Islamic Republic of Iran = IRI): a country with a very nice constitution, ruled by a popularly-elected government and a parliament. Actually, Iran’s constitution assigns exclusive sovereignty and right to legislate to, literally, ‘God’ — and, therefore, dictates that all the democratic procedures and rights are subordinated to the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader (of the ‘Islamic Revoluition’). The latter is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the supervisor of the government….and the director of the country’s media.
Along its Constitution, the IRI, the Islamic Revolution, and the Supreme Leader are all protected by the ‘Guardians of the Islamic Revolution’ — the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The IRGC was established in 1979–1981 as an armed force staunchly loyal to the (quasi-)clerical regime that rose to power in Iran of early 1979, with the aim of protecting that government from such threats like a possible coup instigated by regular armed forces, but also coups organised from the outside.
As such, the IRGC served as a prototype for, for example, the Rosgvardia, the Maduro Militia of Venezuela and few other, similar ‘para-military’ organisations the principal purpose of which is ‘protecting their government’ — from ‘inside-‘ and ‘outside’ threats (….indeed, some say the same is valid for the National Guard of Ukraine, too)
Based on this, one might quickly conclude the IRGC is something like a mere para-military organisation’ — and little else.
Far from this.
Already in the 1980s, the IRGC had its own ministry and became neck-deep involved in ‘business and economy’ — and endemically corrupt, just like the entire IRI. That ministry was disbanded in the 1990s, but don’t worry: nowadays, the IRGC is the dominant force in the Iranian economy.
That said, the IRGC is no ‘monolithic bloc’, where everybody would be pulling on the same string, pushing in the same direction and think the same. Quite on the contrary, it’s actually a ‘group of cliques’: one clique controls the Iranian banks and insurances sector; another the transportation sector; another clique is controlling telecommunications; another the media; yet another the oil industry; another the construction sector; one controls the agrar sector, another the defence sector, and yet another the Ministry of Defence in Tehran, and thus all the ‘regular’ armed forces.
…and each of these cliques consists of sub-cliques (usually, these are ‘geographically organised’), and they are frequently in disagreement, if not at odds with each other: it can be said that they’re in a state of permanent struggle for power, influence and money. Time and again, one or another of cliques, or sub-cliques, can be more or less dominant. Usually, for very limited period of time: any ‘win’ is of temporary nature (as can be seen by, for example, the former IRI President Ahmadinejad and his clique — who used to control parts of the banks/insurances sector — ending being charged for corruption, few years ago).
Most importantly: the IRGC is above all the laws. It’s ‘protected by the Constitution’ and laws to a degree where it can do as it likes, and nothing can happen to it — because it is ‘acting in the name of God’, and thus ‘responsible to the God, only’.
….exactly like Putin and his ‘cliques’ in Russia.
EARLY IRANIAN UAVs
Iranians might be no ‘pioneers’ in operating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for military purposes — whether in the Middle East (ironically, Iraqis were the pioneers in the Middle East, followed by the Israelis), or outside of it — but: they were quick in becoming their enthusiastic users. One of reasons was that they’ve learned about effectiveness the UAVs, ‘first hand’ — from the Israelis. As one can read in, for example, this book, much of the original IRGC-cadre was trained by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon of the late 1970s, and then the IRGC de-facto created the Hezbollah. Thus, the Iranians saw the Israelis making use of the UAVS there.
Unsurprisingly, it was already by 1985 that Iranians have reverse engineered some of Israeli designs — especially the Scout/Searcher-family — and began deploying these in war against Iraq. Indeed, as one can read here, by 1986, they were operating the first UCAV (unmanned combat aerial vehicle) in the Middle East — in form of one of early variants of their Mohajeer series, armed with a pair of RPG-7s.
For the next 20+ years, the IRI defence sector rolled out a large number of very different UAVs: most of these served for tactical reconnaissance purposes (effective range 20–50km), few as target drones, very few could be armed — and most were made in limited series, only. Principal reason was the above-described ‘mess’ in regards of governance and permanent power struggles between different cliques dominating the IRGC.
Then came the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the Iranians realised that they might be ‘the next’ (to get invaded). Therefore, the IRGC scrambled to reform itself, the defences of Iran and the defence sector. One of bi-products was a massive expansion in proliferation of indigenous UAVs. Over the following years, additional — ever more powerful — types were developed and pressed into service.
Now, principal issue with all of these was the high-tech necessary to power and operate them: due to that mess and endemic corruption in the governance, and never-ending infights between IRGC’s cliques, alone establishing series production of one or another of UAV-types proved a major obstacle. The cliques not in control of it would promptly complain about favourism/nepotism and corruption. Thus, in most of cases Iran failed to launch domestic production of engines and electronics, although having necessary industrial management skills and facilities. Instead, most of equipment was smuggled in — usually from the UAE.
Another issue was that the IRGC can be described as both ‘nerds’ and ‘jealous’: it’s ready to go so far that if, say, the regular armed forces develop some new weapons system that’s better than comparable systems in service with the IRGC, it is going to sabotage or usurp the project in question. Between others, it would intercept and hijack shipments of UAV-related engines and electronics smuggled in by the regular armed forces…
Amid this chaos, the overall development of UAVs in Iran still continued at a slow pace. Foremost: they earned themselves a rather poor reputation — at home and abroad.
(to be continued….)
