I'm pretty sure a supersonic CM with less range is in the books, something like Onyx or Brahmos-1 with less range, even if it will be obsolete in maybe 10 year, this would give experience to open way to something like Brahmos-2,
The issue is and you can see Iran has one Achilles heel: scramjet, turbojet, turbofan engines. Notice nearly all of Iran’s weapon platforms rely either on prop, turboprop, or mini jet (tolou family) Why is that? Because Iran struggles in engine department. There is no Solemani, Fakhrizadeh, or Tehrani Moghdam for engines in Iranian military today. There are plenty of retired Lockheed/Northrup Grumman Iranians living in Iran, but government doesn’t utilize them.
New Tanks…engine issue
New Helicopter….engine issue
New Fighter jet….engine issue
New Supersonic drone…engine issue
New Supersonic cruise missile….engine issue
See the Pattern?
Iran staying full blue kh-55/35/
Kh-55 is prime example of my point above. iran could not even replicate the Soviet engine performance of KH-55. That is why Soumar did not get produced in mass and Abu Mahdi did.
I ask you this: Soumar was developed in 2015, yet how many Soumar have you seen? Yet you hear about Abu Mahdi being deployed on naval warships even today.
Iran couldn’t match engine performance of KH-55. The engine iran did design was inferior and more costly so it moved back to what it knew with Abu Mahdi missile.
This isn’t my analysis, Patrames agrees.
@Hack-Hook will also likely agree. Iran is struggling in engine category. It’s not just about making an engine, it’s making an engine that performs reliably (low fail rate, high fuel efficiency to thrust) and is COST EFFECTIVE. That last point is key. If engineers come up with a design but it cost $5M a missile (example) that is dead on arrival. No one in Iran will buy that no matter how much you scream it will perform better. China could afford many times that amount and so can Russia, but not Iranian military. They will kick the project and say it’s not worth the cost and rather produce 10 C-802’s for same cost based on swarm theory.
So Iranian engineers are tasked with a daunting task which is to make engines wether drone based, cruise missile based, or aircraft based at a cost effective point while largely matching Russian or Chinese performance.
That is very hard to do without ToT or breakthroughs. And engineering breakthroughs take time unless like the Chinese you have a massive IP/trade secret espionage military division that steals R&D from around the world relentlessly.
Just this month, Chinese nationals were caught selling TSLA’s trade secrets in battery tech to foreign suitors. If they are already selling to foreign buyers it means china government is way ahead already.
C-8xx based CMs makes no sense for the future of the coastal defense
Well there is only so much money to go around. When you don’t trade much with the west or the east, you build a weak economy that cannot afford a massive defense budget.
Iran relies on its BM force + foreign legions to deter American and Israel aggression of its territorial integrity. Much like Russia relies on its vast nuclear arsenal to deter the massive parity that NATO has on Russian forces on paper in terms of fancy weapons vs fancy weapons. Again not my analysis, Putin himself said it on live TV.
If you want an Iran that spends 75-100B/yr on its military. Then using a calculation for an aggressive military build up 3-4% of GDP….would
mean a GDP of at least 2.5T
Now I don’t believe Iran’s GDP is 1-1.5T nor do I believe it’s 300-400B. If I had to peg the Iranian economy I would say 700B ball park. Just my opinion. But if I’m right, that means Iranian economy would need to grow up to 4x its current size to afford a 75B a year military budget assuming a 3% of GDP spend rate. That would match the Russian military. Now do the numbers for 100B or 150B a year military…..simply daunting without being an economic powerhouse or relying on a security alliance that shares defense cost (ie NATO).
Most countries spend ~2% of their GDP on defense….unless in war time or undergoing a military build up like China is right now as it aims to match US military ‘mono e mono’.
Who knows maybe they already reversed Onyx and are working for an upgrade of it
Iran’s defense industry is massive and I mean massive. It will only continue to grow as foreign buyers fill in the funding voids that domestic military cannot do.
There are soooooo many projects that do not see the light of day. For every 1 project waiting for someone in Iranian military to give them a contract there are 100 that don’t get disclosed. Look at the MRAP category, we had 5+ designs released by different companies and I think only 2 maybe 3 got some small contracts.
The issue is Iranian military only wants tried and true designs. Thus if your quasi private and government backed defense company in Iran you are gonna spend time on concepts that will likely get approval. That means moving away from high ticket items or completely untested ideas.
It’s not that Iran cannot produce fancier unique weapons systems, it’s just that there is a risk spending all that time on R&D prototype and no one gives you a contract.
Remember Zubin?
This was an very modern design based on a South African system but with Iranian ingenuity. Yet what happened to it? It lost to Majid, Azarkash, and Dey Missile systems. Why? Because that spinny thing on top is a high end radar that cost a significant amount of money per hour to operate. But it provides the system 360 defense coverage and zero blind spots.
This type of problem happens way more than you think and doesn’t get discussed on here at all.
Another example is how many years has it been that Iranian company unveiled Mobin stealth cruise missile?
It has an RCS of just .1m2 and while it’s subsonic it’s a lot harder to detect than Iran’s KH-55 or C-802 family. Yet not a single word on that project.
A big red flag is Whenever Iran advertises a new weapon system at international weapons expo and yet NONE exist in Iranian inventory —> that’s a tell tale sign of funding problem/rejected design.
Then they should be integrated into coastal defense and future ships with VLS with a mix of them and subsonic blue CM in swarm attacks
Swarm attacks will work for maybe next 10-15 years. But as laser based defense systems get more and more common then you cannot rely on swarm attacks that rely on war of $$$$ attrition or ammo attrition. The cost of a laser air defense “per shot” is cents on the dollar and unlimited. That is why Ukraine is losing the war right now, it’s consuming too much expensive ammo on defense.
Thus 2040 and beyond will be the war of hypersonic and VLO objects to bypass laser based defense systems. Once more and more fusion reactors come online in 2040s and 2050’s then you will truly limitless energy potential and more Star Wars based weapon systems which will make swarm attacks not very viable.
This is natural evolution of war as old archaic designs get replaced by newer designs that can defeat the latest defense systems. It’s a cat and mouse game that has gone on for thousands of years. We went from spears to catapults to cannons to autocannons to liquid missiles to solid missiles and now to lasers (energy based weaponry).
But you will always need soldiers (human or humanoid) as stand off weapons cannot defeat an enemy, only deter or degrade them.