“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force is the strategic missile, air, and space force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran. It was renamed from the IRGC Air Force into the IRGC Aerospace Force in 2009.”
Comment: Iran is successfully developing the technology that will lead it sooner or later to possess both IRBMs and ICBMs.
In parallel, IMO, research is probably ongoing somewhere on nuclear weapons. The IRGC Aerospace Force is the likely agency for such covert research. The need for miniaturizing the weapon to mate it with the missiles will take some time.
How long is anyone’s WAG. pl
https://spacelaunchnow.me/launch/qased-noor-2
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force – Wikipedia
Iran’s IRGC sends Noor 2 satellite into orbit – report – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)
Yes. Well known, same rockets.
JPCOA only targets nuclear weapons, not their high-speed delivery by air if my information is correct
Izzies will have to get brainpower.
Difficult task…
Some little background information:
A French general dealing with the employment of officers abroad – for this region: military attachés and UNIFIL in contact with IDF – wrote that on returning from their 2-year mission, almost all of them had become anti-Israeli. Or lost their earlier enthusiasm.
d74
I said nothing about JCPOA. I am dealing with the real world, not a “scrap of paper.”
Colonel:
I think that it really won’t take all that long to miniaturize the warhead, especially if they keep the yield low (My guess would be the 50-100 KT range). Implosion squeeze systems allow for small amounts of fissionable material to be used. And I think that the Iranians know a thing or two about high explosives.
The most difficult part would be the timing of the HE detonations. But the growth of drone tech and the commoditization of off the shelf programmable board (e.g. Arduino) would make this a shit-ton easier.
I have a sneaking hunch that thumbdrives with development data have made their way from a certain peninsula in asia to the descendents of the Achaemenids. Plus they have the head start of importing some fairly recent weapons systems to take apart and take ideas from for their missile systems.
I think that it is important to remember that our missile program was kickstarted by bringing in the folks that developed the V-2.
Whether one likes it or not, the tech that we fret about is old tech. We can spiff it up and claim that the latest generation nukes make everything else obsolete, but the truth of the matter is the old saw about nuclear weapons and hand grenades has some meaning here.
Don’t doubt for a minute that Iran feels that they are facing an existential threat. This kind of thing focuses the mind.