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Analysis: This could be the airfield in Azerbaijan used by the Israeli Air Force to attack Iran March 30, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Iran.
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Even if it is not easy to identify the Azeri airbases the Israeli Air Force would use in case of attack on Iran I thought that it might be interesting to select the one that I would pick if I had to plan a complex strike operation.

I consider quite unlikely the possibility that the IAF will use one of the available airfields in Azerbaijan to launch the first strike for the political/diplomatic consequences as well as the risk that any weird activity spotted there would be a clear sign of an imminent strike. Furthermore, the first strike will involve the largest packages and the creation of a sort-of forward operating base from where first attack sorties could be launched would require a prior air bridge, much support personnel, weapons: something difficult, still not impossible, to hide.

Hence, I will select an airport that could be an used as an intermediate stopover on the return leg from the raid and to launch another strike thereafter; let’s consider it as divert field the Israeli fighters could use for refueling or to get technical assistance. In this case, they would not need much things over there: fuel, support personnel and some technical equipment needed to perform maintenance activities on the planes experiencing (minor) failures.

The same airport could be used to host KC-130s for aerial refueling, as well as Combat SAR assets, even though I would base the latter elsewhere, not far from the border and on an improvised airfield (no need for runway, aprons, taxiways, and so on).

I’ve checked all airports in Azerbaijan using Google Earth. Provided the Israeli were given the clearance to use the Azeri airspace and airports, any runway long enough, could be suitable in case of failure with the airbases equipped with arresting cables and safelands obviously preferred.

Some of the Azeri airports considered in the analysis (all screen dumps taken with Google Earth)

Baku Kala

Many reports have pointed to Baku Kala, near the capital, on the Caspian Sea, 330 miles from Tehran. The base hosts Azeri combat choppers and transport aircraft. Bringing cargo planes over there in anticipation of an air strike would disclose the imminent attack. Unlikely.

Baku Kala airbase

Lankaran

Lankaran, in the South, 34 km from the Iranian border, would be the “most obvious” airbase and for this reason any activity on the small runway would be immediately noticed. Unlikely.

Khankendi

Khankendi in the southwest part looks like abandoned. It is located far from any large town under the control of the de facto control of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, has a few aprons and a taxiway (seemingly in very bad conditions) and a runway about 2,000 mt in length. It was due to be opened to commercial traffic but the opening date of the airport was postponed. Provided the security of the air operations could be ensured in the disputed area (de jure recongnized as part of Azerbaijan) this is one of the airfields I’d consider for a special operations/CSAR force also because of the limited implications for Baku.

Another similar airport (with grass runway) is Tanrykulular in the north part of the country (a bit too far from Iran).

Khankendi

Dollyar

Dollyar airbase is among those I consider suitable, the farthest from Tehran (465 miles). However it is a functional airbase, with empty shelters (some of which destroyed…), taxiways, aprons. A lonely Mig-25 can be spotted using Google Earth. Although a bit distant from Iran, it is also quite isolated. The presence of a Mig makes it an active airbase where movements of planes would not be too suspicious. I think this is one of the likely “places”.

Dollyar

Aghstafa

Aghstafa has just a runway (in poor conditions), it’s far from Iran and relatively next to a village (and to the border with Georgia): I think this airport can be removed from the “list” of suitable airfields.

Gyanzdah

Gyanzdah seems to have the proper infrastructures but it is reported to be also a civilian airport opened to the general air traffic. Indeed the main apron has a mini-terminal: the arrival of foreign military cargos would not be unnoticed. I think it’s quite unlikely it would be considered as a suitable airfield.

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Azerbaijan to host Israeli Air Force planes in case of attack on Iran? March 30, 2012

Posted by Richard Clements in Iran.
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Several news agencies have been running a news story, that appeared first on the Foreign Policy website, according to which Israel has secured the use of at least one of four former Soviet era airbases in Azerbaijan. Something that was often speculated in the last weeks.

At what first appears an unlikely alliance is anything but. Even Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev described his country’s relationship with Israel as an iceberg: “Nine-tenths of it below the surface” in a leaked memo by Wikileaks during 2009.

Azerbaijan and Israel signed a $1.6 billion arms deal for drones and missile defense systems as recently as February. Israel is also Azerbaijan’s largest oil customer so once all of this is pieced together the bigger picture starts to become apparent, even if no one really knows the full extent of the military links between the new allies.

Foreign Policy mentions that one former CIA analyst doubted that Israel will actually launch strikes from Azerbaijan describing it as “too chancy” politically and Azeri officials have already denied the possibility that IAF was granted access to local airbases.

Image credit: U.S. Air Force

Indeed, the likely scenario is that the strike jets will not launch from the Caucasus but that they could  recover to the airbases in Azerbaijan after the strikes on the nuclear facilities in Iran and could either return home or launch follow up strikes thereafter.

What makes this scenario favoured is also that the main airbases in Azerbaijan are supposed to be closely monitored by Iranian observers and, unless the Israeli plans to use improvised airfields, any deployment of Israeli planes before the attack would be a clear sign of an imminent kick-off of the strike.

On the other hand, having an airbase close to Iran would also the IDF the opportunity to deploy and eventually launch ELINT or SIGINT sorties prior to the strike as well as Combat Search And Rescue (CSAR) missions should the need arise.

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Video: Iranian F-14 Tomcats on combat patrol. Unarmed. March 26, 2012

Posted by Richard Clements in Iran.
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Update Mar. 27 09.40 GMT

This short but interesting video (which looks like the result of several footages mixed together) shows one of the most intruguing planes operating with the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force: the F-14 Tomcat.

Along with scenes seemingly excerpted from Top Gun movie, the video (most probably coming from from the Iranian TV series Shoghe Parvaz) shows some AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles, with several live examples being shown, even if the majority of the F-14s is filmed flying unarmed.

In case of war the IRIAF F-14s could play a (marginal) role perfoming some sortie aimed at disturbing the strike packages and make them waste some fuel.

Noteworthy, as could be noticed on a previously published video, the IRIAF F-14s fly without the IFR (In-Flight Refueling) probe cover because, as explained by Dario Leone, a reader of this blog and an F-14 expert, when they were produced and delivered to Iran they were supposed to be refueled by the U.S. KC-135s whose basket is different (and the cover could get jammed with it) from the ones used by the U.S. Navy S-3s or KA-6s.

For the same reason, during Desert Storm, the U.S. F-14s, that had to be refueled also by Air Force tankers flew without the cover.

There are also images dating back to the early 2000s of U.S. Navy F-14s flying without the cover. According to other sources since the “hatch” blocked quite frequently, especially during low temperature operations, it was removed to prevent it from making air-to-air refueling impossible.

Written with The Aviationist’s Editor David Cenciotti

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New videos show Syrian made-in-Iran drone taking off from Hamah airbase, Syria March 25, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones, Syria.
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Uploaded on Mar. 24, 2012, these videos show the made-in-Iran drone, known as “Pahpad”, taking off and operating from Hamah airbase in the city of Hama, in the west part of Syria, north of Damascus.

Hamah seems to be one of the most active regime’s airbases: a Syrian Air Il-76 offloading some “goods” and several Mig-21 and helos were recently filmed there.

Here’s the video of the departure

The drone flying at low level

Here below some screen dumps which confirm that the drone used by the Syrian regime over Hama, is the same spotted in Homs.

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New Iranian drone capable of carrying out military and border patrol missions announced. Soon in the Syrian airspace? March 19, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones, Iran.
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On Mar. 17, a FARS News Agency article announced the production of the Shaparak (Butterfly), a new drone that can perform a wide variety of missions, including surveillance and border patrol.

The new robot has an endurance of about 3.5 hours, a maximum operational range of 50 kilometers (31 miles), and a ceiling of 15,000 feet (4,572 meters). Powered with a two-cylinder engine, the remotely piloted aircraft is equipped with three digital color cameras to transmit hi-rez footage to the ground control station, and can carry an 8-Kg payload.

The Shaparak is only the last one of a long series of made-in-Iran drones making the news lately.

UAVs believed to be either based on Iranian types or sold by the Tehran regime spying on the rebels activities have characterized the Syrian uprising in the last few weeks. This highlights that, although some were actually much similar to remote controlled scale models than real unmanned aircraft, in spite of foreign sanctions, Iran is continuing building new drones, some of those are successfully exported to local allies.

Noteworthy, the same FARS article traces the recent history of the Iranian industry in the production of UCAVs (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles).

In Feb. 2011, Iran inaugurated the production line of two home-made Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), named  ‘Ra’d’ (Thunder) and ‘Nazir’ (Harbinger), with bombing and reconnaissance capabilities while in Sept. 2011, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled the Karrar, country’s first home-made UCAV during a special ceremony in Tehran during the national “Day of Defense Industry”.

Karrar UCAV (Image credit: Internet)

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How IRIAF F-14 Tomcats could be (effectively) used in combat against Israeli or U.S. planes or drones March 16, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Iran.
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A previous article about the theoretical Israeli strike on Iran with the rendering of an F-15I dropping bombs on Tehran got a lot of attention and sparked debate. Someone criticized it for not being enough realistic, even if I had explained that the image had to be taken as such even if contained one (or more) wrong details. It was not supposed to be accurate that’s why I didn’t ask Al Clark, who designed it, to correct some elements of artist freedom.

In this article, a new Al’s artwork below gives me the opportunity to write something about one of the most famous aircraft in IRIAF inventory: the F-14 Tomcat.

According to “IRIAF 2010“, the book published by Harpia Publishing and written by Tom Cooper, Babak Taghvace and Liam F. Devlin, that I consider one of the most detailed sources about Iran’s Air Force, due to the lack of some spare parts, the fleet of more than 40 Tomcats is roughly divided into “airworthy” and “fully mission capable aircraft”.

The first fly without primary weapon systems and/or no AWG-9 radar; the second can perform QRA (Quick Reaction Alert) and air defense missions.

These aircraft are based at TFB.8 (Tactical Fighter Base 8) Baba’i near Eshahan, in central Iran.

Hence, although IRIAF officials have described the current fleet of F-14s as “completely overhauled” and “improved”, and referred to it a a “new generation of bombers” in the recent past, only a small amount of Tomcats can be used for air defense purposes in spite of the large amount of spare parts that Iran was able to clandestinely collect after the type was retired by the U.S. Navy and the efforts of various domestic companies to produce some specific parts and subsystems.

What is the role the Tomcat could play in a hypothetical war against Israel?

As already explained in the blog post about the possible long range strike on Iran’s nuclear program, IRIAF interceptors, should play “hide and seek” with the enemy forces: they could hide from the incoming packages and try to achieve some kills during the egress phase. They could be effective by simply disturbing the strike packages to let them “feel” the threat and waste some gas.

The Tomcats could somehow be effective against isolated targets, like drones, mainly before or after the first waves of air strikes: even a UAV kill could play a role in the psychological war against Israel.

For sure, radar activation would be reduced to a minimum: during the most intense part of the air campaign their AWG-9 radar would be either jammed (although it was domestically modified or locally upgraded to make it more jamming-resistant) or detected as soon as switched on, with the latter hypothesis implying the risk of interception by enemy fighters.

Obviously, just in case: before the whole thing starts the planes should be dispersed on one of the several Iranian airbases to prevent them from being destroyed on the ground at TFB.8.

Image by Al Clark for The Aviationist

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Syrian drones spying on rebels: made in Iran UAVs or amateur radio controlled models? March 13, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones, Syria.
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One of the most interesting things of the Syrian uprising, from the military analyst perspective, is the use of drones by the Syrian regime.

Syria had its drone fleet when the uprising started. According to some sources they are manufactured domestically, at the Syria’s Scientific Research Center, even if, according to the images surfaced so far, all of them are a copy of those produced by Iran.

Among the types believed to be operated by Bashar al-Assad forces: the Mohajer 4, the Ababil, (most probably) the Mirsad-1 that Hezbollah terror group has used to violate the Israeli airspace in the past, and, the only one filmed over Homs that could be clearly identified as the “Pahpad”  (that is not the actual name of the robot but the short form in Persian for “remotely piloted aircraft”).

There’s another interesting drone that was spotted recently and still has to be identified. It is particularly interesting because it does not look like any of the above mentioned drones (even if a correct identification is impossible because of the extremely low quality of the footage). At first glance, its shape, color etc, recalls those of Israeli or U.S. drones. However, it is quite unlikely that it was not Syrian considered the amount of air defense and anti-aircraft systems believed to be active in Syria: U.S Joint Chief Dempsey recently said that Syrian air defense is 5 times more sophisticated than Libya, 10 times more than in former Jugoslavia (1999) and covers one fifth of the terrain.

Actually there’s also a video of seemingly solid flying object orbiting into a smoke cloud of a burning oil pipe, that someone still considers a drone.

What are these drones doing over Homs?

Depending on the payload they are carrying they can could be eavesdropping into “enemy” communications or helping ground forces to pinpoint rebels by locating the oppositors’ firing positions and directing the shelling accordingly. Noteworthy, such furing support flights do not take place at night suggesting that the loyalist robots can only carry a color/monochrome daylight TV camera.

Rebels have affirmed that they were able to shot down and recover some of these Syria’s made-in-Iran drones. However, even if the shape of the recovered drone recall that of the “Pahpad” or “Mohajer 4″, based on the below video, the downed robot seem to be much smaller that the typical UAVs (whose wingspan exceeds 5 mt).

Here below you can find a screen dump, published by Ynet of another drone recovered by rebels.

Image credit: Ynet

 

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Image: Israeli F-15 strike on Tehran on Day 1 of the war on Iran’s nuclear program March 8, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Iran.
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Update Mar. 8 19.00 GMT

The following drawing, exclusively prepared by Al Clark for The Aviationist, shows how an attack by a formation of F-15Is on a nuclear facility located in downtown Tehran might look like.

Obviously, it is only a fictional scene, however it is quite realistic for an eventual strike on the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, that is located not far from the Milad Tower, clearly visible on the background.

Someone might argue that the first and most of strikes would be launched at night. That is true, but it is quite likely that subsequent missions would be flown during daylight conditions too. Even the surroundings of the Nuclear Research Center are probably a bit different from those depicted, the payload could be different, tanks would be dropped, altitude should be higher and so on, but please take it just as an interesting artwork.

Please note that I’ve used the word “image” on the title because it is not a drawing, nor a rendering or a photo. It is a Computer Generated Imagery (CGI).

Image by Al Clark for The Aviationist

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Another unidentified drone filmed over Homs, Syria. Syrian, American or Israeli? March 7, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones, Syria.
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The one barely visible in the following video is a drone flying over Homs, Syria.

Although, at first glance, its color, shape, etc. reminded me those of the U.S. Global Hawk, believed to be operating over Syria, its sound is the one of a propeller-driven engine. Unless some Israeli Herons, or U.S. Predators or Reapers are already operating well inside the Syrian airspace, this could be another (unidentified) drone belonging to the Assad forces.

Footage in this case is extremely low on quality and, unlike the “Pahpad” spying on the clashes, identification in this case is almost  impossible. It could be another “Pahpad” or a “Mohajer 4″ even if it seems to be white/light grey in color, sensibly bigger and it is flying higher (although this could be a distortion of the camera) than the ‘bots spotted so far.

Even if what was flying in the smoke in a previous video still remains a mystery (I suggest you reading all the comments to the post to find some interesting theories) someone has explained that smoke is intentionally created to prevent UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) from targeting activities on the ground.

Thanks to Bjørn Holst Jespersen for the heads-up.

A draconian long range strike: Israel’s attempt to smash the Iranian nuclear program. March 3, 2012

Posted by David Cenciotti in Iran, Military Aviation.
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There is much debate these days about the ability of Israel to hit Iran’s nuclear program. Some analysts believe that it would be a draconian challenge to launch such a long range attack on the facilities used for the atomic program while others are much more optimistic. To such an extent there’s someone who firmly believes that 25 F-15Is, each carrying a single GBU-28, and about a dozen F-16Is with lighter weapons could be enough to achieve the goal.

I’m among those who think that it is not going to be an walk in the park. The problem is not only to penetrate Tehran’s airspace but execute concurrent air strikes on several ground targets.

There are about 30 nuclear facilities in Iran, six of those are believed to be primary targets for anyone willing to halt the Iranian nuke ambitions.

Unless something really unbelievable happens (as, for instance, a southern circumnavigation or a northern trip with a stopover in Azerbaijan to enter Iran from the Caspian Sea or any other unexpected direction) there are only 3 possible routes to Iran: Northern (via Turkey), Central (via Jordan and Iraq) and Southern (via Saudi Arabia). Both require (more or less) a violation of sovereign airspaces as well as several supporting aircraft. AEW, EW, SEAD and many refueling planes.

The Israeli can almost do everything. But this is not a pre-emptive surprise strike. Unless the IAF is going to perform only a symbolic strike (that would be almost a suicide mission, considered the reaction it would spark) the one in Iran will be an extremely long range mission in which many fortified underground targets will have to be smashed along with other surrounding targets. Not static unprotected targets, but SAM sites, radars, and everything belonging to the Integrated Air Defense System that will try to repel the attacking force.

Unlike previous attacks on Iraq and Syria, that came almost unexpected, Iran is probably on heightnet alert status: with several geographically dispersed targets, the surprise factor would be quickly mitigated and IAF planes would have to deal with anti-aircraft threats and IRIAF fighter planes flying sort-of isolated air defense missions.

Furthermore, few analysts have taken Iran’s military capability into account. Even if the current Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force is mainly flying on vintage American and Russian “hardware” hardly maintained because of the international sanctions, it can still count on about 200 combat planes flown by proud pilots.

The Iranian fighters would not need to destroy many bombers. Disturb them in point-defense missions, let them spend some more fuel and make their long strike missions longer and more risky, would be enough.

Hence, a proper escort must be taken into account.

Drones will mainly provide pre and post-strike ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance).

Obviously, the scenario changes when/if air superiority is established and subsequent missions can be launched to look after individual targets in a battlefield freed of anti-aircraft threats. But this is something not going to be achieved very fast.

Summing up, if we consider that in 2007 air strike in Syria (isolated target caught by surprise) the Israelis employed ten planes to attack surface targets, I think that in Iran each target will require some 12-15 planes (spares comprised). This means that 60 planes would be called into action to strike 6 priority targets. If some secondary sites should be attacked as well, the armada would be made of several packages for more than 100 planes.

Hence, it would not be an air strike, but a small scale much dangerous air campaign.

That’s the reason why a conventional attack is unlikely.

Actually, as pointed out at the end of 2011, the war on Iran nuke ambition has already begun. A covert war made of less visible weapons: computer viruses, assassinations and mysterious bomb blasts…