Iran starts biggest air defense war games

Iran began its biggest ever air defense war games on Tuesday to test its ability for air defense. According to sources, the five-day war games were being held near nuclear facilities and included tests of long-range missiles. Iran said earlier this month that it had developed a home-made version of the Russian S-300 missile system and would soon test-fire it.

Moscow supported a fresh round of U.N. sanctions against Iran in June, and then refused to deliver an order of S-300s to Iran after persistent lobbying by Israel and the United States.

The S-300 is a mobile, long-range air defense system that can detect, track and destroy ballistic missiles,cruise missiles and low-flying aircraft.Tehran has been hit by various international sanctions for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment activities. Uranium can be enriched to produce fuel for nuclear power plants or, if enriched to a higher level, to make atomic bombs.

Fire breaks out at Russian missile maker

MOSCOW: A major fire broke out Wednesday in Moscow at a building belonging to Russian missile manufacturer Almaz, the maker of air defence weapons including the S-300 missile system, officials said.

The fire at the company”s design bureau had spread over an area measuring 800 square meters (8,500 square feet) and dozens of firefighters had been sent to the scene, a spokesman for the Emergency Ministry, Yevgeny Bobylev said.

Nawaz says he rejected intl pressure on nuclear tests

PML-N patron Nawaz Sharif has said that it was he who managed to conduct the first nuclear tests and did not give in to the international pressure in this regard, and added that it were the politicians who made the dream to make Pakistan a nuclear state realized.
Addressing a gathering to mark Youm-e-Takbeer at Aiwan-e-Iqbal in Lahore, Nawaz said that he did not have peace after India test-fired the missile system, while the global community united against the decision including the then US president Clinton.
But it was with the support of his friends and the whole nation that the dream got realized. He said that had there been a dictator, no nuclear tests could have been conducted. He maintained that it was after the tests that India agreed to resume dialogue and prime minister Wajpai visited Lahore.

Iran to Mass Produce Heat-seeking Missiles

TEHRAN: Iran to Mass Produce Heat-seeking Missiles, Iran is going to mass produce a new generation of domestically built air-to-air heat-seeking missiles which can track targets via their infrared emission.

Air Force commander Brigadier General Hassan Shah-Safi told IRNA on Saturday that having been successfully test-fired in different situations, the heat-seeking missiles are now going to be mass produced at the Defense Ministry.

This missile is fired towards the target by a plane and can track the object until it hits it, Shah-Safi said. It has a range of up to 100 kilometers, he added.

According to the top commander, the missile has been tested with a range of more than 40 kilometers, but its range could be modified to increase at higher altitudes.

Shah-Safi said Iran has also produced different kinds of air-to-air missiles, adding that radar-evading planes are being sample produced on a small scale as well.

To advance its defensive capabilities against any possible attack, Iran has so far launched different kinds of missiles.

In June, Iran inaugurated the production line of a domestically-made, supersonic ground-to-air missile system called ‘Shahin’.

The system, which has a range of more than 40 kilometers, is capable of targeting fighter jets and helicopters.

Earlier in May, Iran also successfully tested its new solid-fuel Sejjil 2 missile, which is designed to be more accurate and swift than previous Iranian-made models. It has a major deterrence power.

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Iran to Mass Produce Heat-seeking Missiles was first posted on November 14, 2009 at 10:50 pm.