Iran to supply Russia with “hundreds” of Drones

[TheImmortal]

Most likely the Iranians have or will provide the drones needed to find the HIMARS as well as use them to help change the tide of the war because their progress has been slow, no two ways about it when you look at the whole entire frontline. Even getting pushed back in in some regions and haven't try to go on the offensive since. Even lost Snake Island.

The issue that should wake up Iran is space based EINT sats. They are killing Russia and Israel also uses them to attack Iran.

Basically they scan the radiation being emitted by radars and find moments of failure/maintenance/downtime/shift change. It allows real time spotting of holes in air defense radars. So then US can then tell Ukraine where to target and when.

That is one reason why snake island was abandoned. It would be like Iran trying to hold Bahrain from Saudi Arabia. It’s so easy to overwhelm a single tiny island, air defenses get overwhelmed. Troops get tired. Constant resupplying exposed naval fleet and drains resources. US learned this this hard way during Iwo Jima.

HIMARS is not some game changing weapon it’s merely a form of MLRS with a guidance kit on it. That’s all. Iran has its own (much cheaper) version. The issue in this case is Russian airforce doesn’t go beyond the front lines often and it’s real time space intelligence gathering looks to be very poor. Iran’s UAVs can help target these systems, but Russia has to find them first.

 

[Oldman1]

let just say ,last year we tested our own datalink system.
we have our own FLIR
we tested avionics and flyby wire with kowsar
we tested landing gears .
we have ejection sit that can be used from ground .
we have our radars
at last in recent years we managed to produce different titanium alloys
..
.

we don't have suitable engine yet. and that kept us at kowsar level

Well then if I was the Iranian government then at least have an engine on the table.

HIMARS is not some game changing weapon it’s merely a form of MLRS with a guidance kit on it. That’s all. Iran has its own (much cheaper) version. The issue in this case is Russian airforce doesn’t go beyond the front lines often and it’s real time space intelligence gathering looks to be very poor. Iran’s UAVs can help target these systems, but Russia has to find them first.

Sure its not a game changing weapon but in Iran's case, how much destruction can it cause with its arsenal? Especially against the U.S.? Look at the war in Yemen for example with launching IRBMs or SRBMS against Saudi Arabia and its allies. If Ukraine had many more HIMARS or M270s and targeting ammo supplies, barracks, C&C, airbases, etc. how much can that really change or have an impact?

 

[drmeson]

let just say ,last year we tested our own datalink system.
we have our own FLIR
we tested avionics and flyby wire with kowsar
we tested landing gears .
we have ejection sit that can be used from ground .
we have our radars
at last in recent years we managed to produce different titanium alloys
..
.

we don't have suitable engine yet. and that kept us at kowsar level

I just realized we have a domestic production of 5 airborne radars:

-IEI Bayyenat-I FCR on F-4E/D Dowran (Very similar to JL-10A of JH-7)

-IEI Bayyenat-II FCR on Kowsar-I (Domestic production of Grifo-346)

-Absar SAR on UCAVs

-Shahed SAR for UCAVs

-ISRC SAR for UCAVs

..........

The turbofan for fighter jets issue will be solved by 2025 I believe, till then we have to rely upon OWJ turbojet for Kowsar-I fleet. Rest of the ingrediants for Kowsar-II are already being produced. We can have a very potent Kowsar-II platform.

German reporter in Moscow: we have seen high-ranked Iranian officers in the hotel

"Haben im Hotel hochrangige iranische Militärs gesehen"

Nach Informationen der USA will der Iran Russland Militär-Drohnen für den Krieg in der Ukraine liefern. ntv-Reporter Dirk Emmerich sieht vor Ort in Moskau Indizien für eine entsprechende Partnerschaft des Kremls mit Teheran. Russland sei global nicht so isoliert, wie es der Westen bisweilen...

www.n-tv.de

High-ranking officials are not there to operate these UCAVs I am sure.

What are these guys doing in Moscow?

 

[dbc]

US fraking pulls out of the ground 30-50 a barrel. Iran and Saudi Arabia pull out at $1-$2 in their best fields and less than $15 in others. You simply cannot compete with those profit margins

Iran's average production cost per barrel is $1.94 according to Rystad Energy while Saudi is higher at $3 per barrel. Here I speak of the cost of lifting a barrel of oil from the well. The production cost for US Shale is $5.85. The cost you quoted earlier includes production, taxes, capital spending and overhead for the US. In Iran and Saudi production isn't taxed and capital spending is subsidized by the state.

The lower cost of production in Iran can be explained by Iran's recovery rate.
Low tech, low cost ergo low recovery rates. Iran's recovery rate post sanctions is the lowest in the industry at an anemic 4.5%, in contrast Saudi is at 50%. Even the unconventional oil produced at the Permian the largest shale basin in the US averages 26%.

Sure Iran can increase production but it comes at the price of significant under exploitation of her reserves. Iran needs an infusion of technology and investment to significantly improve her recovery rates before it can compete with the big boys.

Oh and don't take too long, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi are depleting fields bordering Iran much faster than Iran thanks to sanctions and internal bickering within your state apparatus.

 

[QWECXZ]

While Iran also developed Laser enrichement facilities (atleast one is officially known).

There are currently no laser enrichment facilities in Iran. I wonder what officially known facility you are referring to.
In fact, Iran's experiments with laser enrichment date back to late 1990s, done covertly.

 

[TheImmortal]

The production cost for US Shale is $5.85.

please provide proof of this claim.

I cannot find any supporting data that US shale is ~$6 barrel to pull out of the ground and “taxes & capital spending & overhead” is the rest. Cost of production of US oil in 2002 (before frakking) was $7-8. So not sure how frakking, which is generally considered the most expensive form of oil extraction outside of maybe cold water deep arctic drilling, is cheaper than old traditional US oil extraction.

I believe cost of production is closer to $20+ And cheaper in existing wells and more expensive in new wells being drilled. Again I haven’t found data either way as much of the data focuses on breakeven cost of wells.

 

[TheImmortal]

Sure its not a game changing weapon but in Iran's case, how much destruction can it cause with its arsenal? Especially against the U.S.?

Which arsenal are you referring to? If your referring to Iran’s HIMARS like systems they have range of 100-120KM. Again a weapon that is limited to 50 miles (US or Iran) isn’t a game changer. It is limited to infantry level and not considered an major area denial weapon.

So unless US was invading Iran via land (highly unlikely) these weapons are useless outside of ground warfare.

A weapon that can strike strike 700-1500KM using quasi ballistic to glide flight trajectory carrying 500-750kg warhead is considered lethal and game changing as you can target the enemies key areas (C&C, oil terminals, bases, etc) and since your enemy (USA) isn’t next door he has to spend much more money bringing his weapons to your shores to replace what you destroyed.

Look at the war in Yemen for example with launching IRBMs or SRBMS against Saudi Arabia and its allies.

They aren’t game changers either. Even when it’s hit bases and killed foreign troops inside and outside Yemen. Or airports or oil terminals. The war has continued.

Yemen is firing rather cheap missiles against multi million dollar interceptor missiles. Saudi Arabia is draining its coffers in a war it will never win. At best it can hold half of Yemen and Houthi’s other half. The dream of getting rid of Houthi influence and sending them back to the very North is long over. Just a war of attrition at this point and Yemen has nothing to lose.

If Ukraine had many more HIMARS or M270s and targeting ammo supplies, barracks, C&C, airbases, etc. how much can that really change or have an impact?

That’s my point. HIMARS and M270s are infantry and battle line weapons not game changing long range weapons.

And you are talking about Russia, the country that fought Hitler’s war machine and sacrificed millions at Stalingrad. You think a few ammo depots or barracks being hit will change their mindset?

The West has spent over 30B (likely much higher) to keep Ukraine from losing completely. Without that aid, Ukraine would be out of drones, guns, artillery, air defense systems. They would have fallen like a rock in the ocean.

The west isn’t stupid. They are giving arms that prolong the conflict to inflict PAIN on Russia not to HELP Ukraine gain back territory. There is a difference.

 

[drmeson]

You didn't even need spare parts to build the American drones or the American aircraft like the F-14s. What you need or want is the actual copy of the aircraft. The moment you get your hands on SU-35s or 34s, you are good to go in the long run. Whether the Russians change their mind, would the Iranians really worry?

Iranian aviation industry has been playing with american planes for a long long time. They can copy them from scratch with local avionics (F-5E/F => Kowsar), modify their aerodynamics (F-5E/F => Saeghe I/II), rebuild them and upgrade them extensively (F-4E/D, F-14). Same is not true for Russian fighter planes. The reason is more political then technical. It took IRIAF years to study and bring SU-24M to operational status, and as per reports even today the fleet is having difficulty with spares. They sent entire squadrons of SU-22 and SU-25 to Syria and Iraq to probably get rid of the maintenance strain. Meanwhile we never saw any proper upgrade of the MIG-29 fleet. The radar and avionics on the MIG is ridiculously obsolete and airframes are now asking for MLU by age. We are hearing news of an MLU center being set up in mehrabad but I personally believe a proper Russian hand must be involved there. Russians have this history of not letting their clients touch their systems indigenously. You need to upgrade any Russian plane, you need to contact the Russian front companies that usually have offices in eastern European countries (Serbia, Belurus, previously in Ukraine). No country in the entire world has ever pulled an extensive upgradation on any fourth gen russian fighter/attack jet without sending back money to Russia through whatever way. Compare that to our extensive upgradation on F-4E/D that brought the plane to JH-7 like strike capability. Same case is with F-14AM which saw the partial airframe rebuilt, with datalinking, massive radar upgradation with new long-range BVR missiles installations. Iranians probably know more about F-5E/F then Northrop itself ever did.

Then there is unreliability in supplies too. in 1990s we ordered 72 x MIG-29 and 30 MIG-31. We only got 24 MIG-29 9.12 (Russian sources claim they delivered 40 airframes). The 48 MIG-29 and 30 MIG-31 became victims of Yeltsin's fear of American sanctions. What happens if Iran gets 50 SU-35S and then Russians pull the plug on spare parts supply? the fleet will become useless. Yes Iran can start establishing up a SU-35S reverse engineering setup that may get functional in next 10 years. But even that will require a manpower of some 10000 managers/workers/technicians of different types and Billions of USD. Project will suck life out of Iranian aviation industry.

Instead what Iran can do is focus on its domestic fighter program. We have one platform that is called Kowsar (from scratch + parts repository-based building of F-5E/F) which in its weight category is probably the most advanced fighter jet in the world. It is not easy to mess with a 1m2 RCS bearing aircraft that can search/ track an F-16 size adversary at some 110/93 KM distance, can jam your ARH missiles, datalink with UCAV's+other fighters+Airdefence Radars, can take out ground targets with a Ballistic computer like SU-24MK. All the while, the same airframe is known to have beaten F-15C, F-14A in dogfights. We believe its production will conclude by 2026 and then there will be a newer, better generation that may have technologies like AESA radars, HOTAS, Single Crystal Turbofan etc. So we can have shiny new 50 x SU-35S for 6 Billion USD to procure and operationalize and then spend 10-12 more years trying to understand it to reverse engineer while making Moscow furious

OR

for the same amount of money we can build 400 Kowsar-I/II/III while simply asking Russia to MLU the MIG fleet and if they can, provide more airframes (may be ~50). An interception wing made of all datalinked 50 x F-14 + 70-80 MIG-29 + Hundreds of Kowsar I/II is a good force, atleast to deal with regional adversaries in conjunction with layered LORADS and SHORADS. While 100+ x F-4/E/D+SU-24MK2 and 300+ MALE UCAVs can take the attack role along with our very strong Missile forces. I feel Tehran understood this game much earlier.

There are currently no laser enrichment facilities in Iran. I wonder what officially known facility you are referring to.
In fact, Iran's experiments with laser enrichment date back to late 1990s, done covertly.

In 2002 Iran established a pilot uranium laser enrichment plant at Lashkar Ab'ad, and between 2002 and 2003 conducted enrichment experiments.

https://www.nti.org/education-center/facilities/lashkar-abad/

 

[dbc]

please provide proof of this claim.

I cannot find any supporting data that US shale is ~$6 barrel to pull out of the ground and “taxes & capital spending & overhead” is the rest. Cost of production of US oil in 2002 (before frakking) was $7-8. So not sure how frakking, which is generally considered the most expensive form of oil extraction outside of maybe cold water deep arctic drilling, is cheaper than old traditional US oil extraction.

I believe cost of production is closer to $20+ And cheaper in existing wells and more expensive in new wells being drilled. Again I haven’t found data either way as much of the data focuses on breakeven cost of wells.

Barrel Breakdown

The cost of producing a barrel of oil and gas varies widely across the world, setting up winners and losers as the price of crude fluctuates at historically low levels.

graphics.wsj.com

 

[QWECXZ]

In 2002 Iran established a pilot uranium laser enrichment plant at Lashkar Ab'ad, and between 2002 and 2003 conducted enrichment experiments.

https://www.nti.org/education-center/facilities/lashkar-abad/

I am quite aware of Lashkar Abad, but that facility has not been active in laser enrichment since E3+1 talks in 2004 and the extent of their success in industrial level enrichment has never been publicized or is not publicly or officially known at all. Also, Iran wasn't really self-sufficient back then as Iran imported at least copper vapor lasers back then. The status of laser enrichment in Iran after 2004 is unclear.

Laser enrichment in Iran started in 1970s. In fact, it was an American expert who transferred the technology to Iran in late 1970s. Back then, the Americans could enrich 1 kilogram of uranium from 0.7% to 5% in a single day. The Shah had a very ambitious nuclear program and Akbar Etemad, the then head of the AEOI, was highly interested in acquiring the technology even in 1970s.

 

[TheImmortal]

Barrel Breakdown

The cost of producing a barrel of oil and gas varies widely across the world, setting up winners and losers as the price of crude fluctuates at historically low levels.

graphics.wsj.com

Good data....here’s also Better breakdown data

Cost of Crude Oil Production by Country and Crude Oil Prices - knoema.com

knoema.com

More true cost would be:

Production cost 5.4
Transportation 3.1
Capital spending 7.7

= $16

You still have to add these two other factors as they are instrumental in getting the oil to market.

The taxes part you are right can vary widely between developed country’s privatized oil industry vs nationalized oil industry countries....so I omitted those numbers for the USA.

So Iran is ~9.1 including all 3 factors and USA is ~16.2

But while you mentioned Iran’s supposed depleting reserves due to archaic extraction technology (which you are correct) and supposed neighbors stealing Iranian resources due to shared fields (yes and no), you don’t mention the recent publishing data on US reserves which show depletions of recoverable reserves at a significant rate.

 

[dbc]

But while you mentioned Iran’s supposed depleting reserves due to archaic extraction technology (which you are correct) and supposed neighbors stealing Iranian resources due to shared fields (yes and no), you don’t mention the recent publishing data on US reserves which show depletions of recoverable reserves at a significant rate.

are you serious?

Ranking nations by the most likely estimate for existing fields, discoveries and as-of-yet undiscovered fields (proved, probable. possible and undiscovered), the United States is at the top of the list with 264 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves, followed by Russia with 256 billion, Saudi Arabia with 212 billion, Canada with 167 billion, Iran with 143 billion, and Brazil with 120 billion (Table 1). U.S. Holds Most Recoverable Oil Reserves Thanks to unconventional resources, the United States is ahead of both Russia and Saudi Arabia in Rystad Energy’s latest estimate of global oil reserves. www.aogr.com

 

[sha ah]

The UK defense ministry stated that Russia would run out of missiles 2 months ago. Russia has alot of stock from the Soviet era. Basically the western nations underestimated Russia. They have enough stock for WW3, literally. The Soviets especially built up a massive stockpile and aside from that the Russians have factories, they have the infrastructure to build more. They have enough artillery shells and bullets to last for years. A few ammo dumps are nothing since most ammo dumps during a high intensity conflict like this only have enough stock for a few days. Thinking that the Russians are going to run out is wishful thinking at best.

Armies don’t produce artillery and mortar forever. They need to be stored somewhere. And Russia (and Ukraine’s) storage skills are questionable given how many brand new tanks they let rot away after Cold War.

Look how fast US manpad supply got depleted and they have a budget of $700B+. Russia budget is $60B and who knows how much of that reaches the end user due to corruption.

Remember Russia is using tens of thousands of artillery shells a week. There is only so much inventory they have dating back to Cold War stocks. They won’t run out, they likely been restarting factories and assembly lines to produce artillery shells/bullets/ammo/etc

Buy if they can order 500,000 shells from Iran for cheap....why not?

Most ammo dumps during a conflict like this only have enough stock for a few days at most. The Russians have alot more ammo where that came from.

I don't think you realize how much inventory the Russians have. The UK predicted that they would run out of missiles 2 months ago. They have warehouses filled to the brim in Siberia, not to mention they prepared for this war for 7 years. Also they have massive factories and industry that allows them to produce large amounts very quickly.

They'll run out quickly if their warehouses will continue to explode

 

[sha ah]

There's a reason why the Ukrainians have been targeting ammo dumps specifically. Let's say Ukraine launches 8 rockets, Russia shoots down 7, but if one hits the ammo dump, because of the chain reaction, the entire facility goes sky high. Whereas if you consider the same scenario for an airbase for example, 1 missile hitting an airstrip wouldn't be such a big deal.

The Russians have shot down HIMARS rockets. Images have been published online, but there's only so much they can shoot down. No system is full proof. Look at Patriot PAC3 performance in Saudi Arabia against cheap Iranian export drones. Look at Iron Dome against homemade Hamas rockets. No system is full proof.

Just yesterday the Russians shot down a dozen or more rockets launched by the Ukrainians but you can never get them all. Anyways now the Russians will adapt. They will likely disperse their ammo, store it in underground bunkers, be more secretive, beef up their air defenses. During this war the Russians have been really good at adapting and I guarantee they'll do it again.

Anyways it seems as if the Russians have now entered Seversk and the outskirts of Bakhmut and Soledar. The Ukrainian defensive lines are crumbling again. Yesterday Ukrainian officials stated that Ukraine had lost 500 soldiers. The real number is likely much higher. Now Ukraine is recruiting women to fight. I don't think that they can sustain such losses for much longer. Germany had millions of soldiers at the end of WW2 but they still lost. Not every soldier is a good soldier or an elite soldier after all.

Well then if I was the Iranian government then at least have an engine on the table.


Sure its not a game changing weapon but in Iran's case, how much destruction can it cause with its arsenal? Especially against the U.S.? Look at the war in Yemen for example with launching IRBMs or SRBMS against Saudi Arabia and its allies. If Ukraine had many more HIMARS or M270s and targeting ammo supplies, barracks, C&C, airbases, etc. how much can that really change or have an impact?

 

[Raghfarm007]

German reporter in Moscow: we have seen high-ranked Iranian officers in the hotel

"Haben im Hotel hochrangige iranische Militärs gesehen"

Nach Informationen der USA will der Iran Russland Militär-Drohnen für den Krieg in der Ukraine liefern. ntv-Reporter Dirk Emmerich sieht vor Ort in Moskau Indizien für eine entsprechende Partnerschaft des Kremls mit Teheran. Russland sei global nicht so isoliert, wie es der Westen bisweilen...

www.n-tv.de

Those are not military officials from Iran, they are Pistaches salesmen.....