IRAN'S DRONES ARE AMONG THE BEST IN THE WORLD

Not just about nuclear aspirations: Iran moving full steam ahead to develop a new aerial threat

Over the course of the last decade, the Iranian UAV industry has become a recognized global brand name, mainly due to the use to which the Russians have put the Iranian UAVs during the ongoing war in Ukraine. Iran, however, began to put the systems it has developed to use – either directly or via its proxy forces – many years previously.

 

By Yoav Limor  

 

Israel Hayom

Sep 27, 2024

 

 

Iran's Shahed-129 drone 

 

The Israelis are all too familiar with the threat posed by rockets and missiles. Years of Katyusha rockets from Lebanon followed by Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip provided Israel's civilian population with the best possible schooling in how to prepare and protect themselves against these threats, while the State of Israel used this time to develop counter-missile capabilities and other protection measures. Although any full-scale war would clearly introduce a completely new dimension to this type of threat due to the incomprehensibly substantial number of missiles in the enemies' arsenal, mainly Hezbollah, nonetheless, this is still a familiar challenge.

At the same time, but with much less of a PR hype, in recent years another threat has been gradually developing: unmanned aerial vehicles, usually referred to by their abbreviation as UAVs. Although there were some prior indications as well as a number of operational incidents that were publicized, and the war between Russia and Ukraine also struck a chord on this issue, but it is doubtful whether anybody in Israel – apart from the relevant professionals – is aware of the scope of this issue and the extent of the threat it involves.

This is a threat that is expected to pose a significant challenge to Israel in the future, both during routine and mainly in wartime. It is the result of an Iranian decision to make a dramatic investment in the development and production of UAVs, and their serial distribution, en masse, to a broad variety of key regional players, which have themselves turned to manufacturing UAVs based on the support and knowhow provided by Iran.

In practice, this is such a significant challenge that it has forced the IDF and Israel's defense industries to invest a parallel effort in order to be able to contend with it in a variety of ways – offensively, defensively and in terms of intelligence.

"We were surprised by the speed at which things occurred," says one military source, "In the world of missiles and rockets these processes go on for 30 years. Here, everything developed extremely quickly, including the option of decentralizing the production. Though we did pay attention to it relatively quickly and began to prepare for it accordingly, this is indeed a new and extremely challenging threat."

Simple but efficient

The Iranians' involvement in UAVs is nothing new. It began back in the 90s with an attempt to manufacture initial models with a view to diversifying the force employment capabilities of the various Iranian military units. Until that point, the Iranians had been focusing on the development and production of various types of missiles and rockets to a variety of ranges, including long ranges. Those readers with a sharp memory will probably be able to recall the headlines in Israel regarding the progress in the development of the Shahab missiles and additional platforms, capable of covering the distance between Iran and Israel and of carrying heavy payloads (including a potential future nuclear device).

The Iranians came to understand that unmanned aerial vehicles provide them with additional capabilities. In contrast to missiles, which fly openly and it is clear to see from where they were launched and where they are due to impact, a UAV flies at low altitude, slowly and with stealth, and can be operated for special, low-signature missions – from intelligence collection, attacking targets by dropping munitions, to suicide missions (often referred to as 'kamikaze" missions).

The manufacturing of UAVs is also much simpler than that of long-range missiles. An SSM (Surface-to-Surface Missile) exits the earth's atmosphere and must then reenter, and is subject to immense loads and structural pressures," explains Captain L., the officer in charge of UAV research at the Enemy Firepower Capabilities Technological Research Branch in the Research & Analysis Division at IDF Military Intelligence. A UAV flies in the atmosphere, it is based on a simple piston engine, and is much easier to manufacture."

From the very outset, Iran opted for a unique method to gain progress in its UAV program. In contrast to Israel or the USA, which develop their own systems, the Iranians based their effort on the 'catch-up' approach: using others in order to bridge the technological gap. They achieved this mainly by reverse engineering of US and Israeli UAVs that either fell or were downed during various missions in the region. Any such vehicle (or even its fragments) was delivered to Iran, analyzed down to the minutest detail by local experts, and then copied perfectly. This saved the Iranians many long years of research and testing during the production process, allowing them to rapidly progress to the stage of serial production of a variety of different types of UAVs for a whole spectrum of ranges.

"All the Iranian platforms are based on a prototype that came from somewhere else," states Captain L., "The Shahed-136, which is currently in the headlines due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, is based on an Israeli UAV manufactured by Elbit. Its brothers in this series, the Shahed-141 and Shahed-197, are based on the US-made RQ-170 UAV."

Until the last decade, Iran made only relatively slow progress with its UAVs. Though it did succeed in recording certain successes, it only managed to attain capabilities that were extremely far away from what it really wanted. The dramatic technological changes undergone by the civilian world enabled it to bridge the gaps with lightning speed. Components, which until then had been developed in secret laboratories and were the property of a very limited group of technological superpowers, suddenly became widely available and could be purchased 'off the shelf' from civilian sites – from onboard computers and communication sets to navigation devices and even encryption devices.

However, over the last decade, Iran was subject to heavy international sanctions, making the task of procurement an extremely difficult one. To circumvent this obstacle, it established a series of companies and entities specializing in the procurement of various components and their shipment to Iran. Once they arrive in Iran, these components are assimilated in the various UAV programs, and above all they enable the Iranians to engage in the serial manufacture of large volumes of UAVs.

"The Iranians' ability to purchase commercially available off-the-shelf products (known as COTS) and to then integrate them in these systems was simply not an option 15 years ago," recounts a military source who specializes in this field. "This enabled them to make a highly significant leap forward that we have witnessed in recent years."

Bundles of cash mixed with diplomacy

This progress was also possible due to an additional Iranian advantage: friction. Similar to Israel, it is also in a constant state of friction with its enemies in various theaters. Some of this, mainly in the Persian Gulf, is the direct result of its actions, and some – in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – via proxy, forces operating on Tehran's behalf and under its guidance and instruction. This enabled Iran to gain constant experience with the various systems it developed, to learn lessons, and implement them quickly in the development and production processes.

The technological progress and the experience accumulated also enabled it to share some of the production processes with the proxies themselves. The savings are clear: not only the proliferation of military capabilities and a significant increase of the production floor space but also the change to open up the highly challenging bottleneck of shipping arms to the various operational theaters. This is especially prominent in the northern theater, where Israel has been engaged in a permanent campaign against the Iranian arms shipments (some of which have been recently exposed here in Israel Hayom).

Over the last decade, Israel has carried out thousands of strikes and other actions designed to disrupt these Iranian efforts to smuggle a variety of weapon systems and technological capabilities – from missiles and rockets to a variety of UAVs – and one of the methods that the Iranians came across in order to overcome the intensive Israeli effort was to transfer the manufacturing capabilities to their proxies – the Houthis in Yemen, the Shi'ite militias in Iraq and Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Although this process transformed the consumer into a manufacturer itself, it enabled the Iranians to become a key player in this field – and not only in relation to its own protégés. Iran has become a super-distributor of these advanced capabilities to a variety of countries, including superpowers. Russia is clearly the prime example of this, a global military superpower forced to seek aid from Iran in order to gain access to UAV-related capabilities. This began with procurement and has now moved on to the production process actually taking place on Russian soil. The Shahed-136, which due to the war in Ukraine has arguably become the best-known and most talked-about UAV in the world, has now been afforded the Russian title Geran (an abbreviation of the Russian name of the flower we know as a geranium).

In parallel, the Russians also operate other Iranian UAVs in Ukraine, such as the Shahed-131 and the Mohajer-6. To date, Russia has acquired some 1000 UAVs at an average price of 40 thousand dollars per unit, and in the future, it plans to produce thousands of UAVs in Russia, an issue of grave concern to the West and also to Israel, as this will be a solid connection between the global antagonist (Russia) and the regional antagonist (Iran).

Iran is also engaged in a similar process with China. Here too, a superpower was found to be lacking in this field and thus approached a much smaller and weaker nation than it to bridge the gaps. In the case of the Chinese, the Shahed-136 has been renamed, also after a flower, the Sunflower-200, and it too is due to begin serial production in China.

In both cases, with Russia and China, the Iranians are exploiting the process, not only to pump large volumes of cash into their dwindling coffers following many years of biting economic sanctions but also for a dangerous foray into the world of military and global diplomacy – increased proximity between the states and gaining support from Russia and China to obtain knowhow and various means, which until now had been well outside their reach.

A national-military project

Over the course of the last decade, the Iranian UAV industry has become a recognized global brand name, mainly due to the use to which the Russians have put the Iranian UAVs during the ongoing war in Ukraine. Iran, however, began to put the systems it has developed to use – either directly or via its proxy forces – many years previously. Even, during the Second Lebanon War way back in 2006, Iranian Ababil UAVs were operated by Hezbollah in their efforts to attack Israel. They were either intercepted by the IAF or crashed without succeeding in causing any damage or inflicting any casualties.

Later on, Hezbollah made a number of additional attempts to infiltrate various airborne vehicles into Israel – from UAVs to drones, another field in which a dramatic quantum leap has occurred in recent years in the civilian sector, enabling Iran to make significant progress in terms of the development and production of its military capabilities.

The Iranian UAV industry operates via two main channels in parallel: one takes place under the Iranian ministry of defense, or as it is officially known, the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), and the second one under the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Within the MODAFL, there are two key industries engaged in UAV production. The first is called HESA, which was founded in 1976 and is located in Isfahan. Initially, this company was involved in the manufacture of light aircraft, but today it is also engaged in the development and manufacture of UAVs, mainly the Ababil variants, which serve the Iranian air force and also some of its proxies – from the Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The two main variants, Ababil-2 and Ababil-3, are UAVs with a range of 100 km that are able to collect intelligence, attack targets and detonate themselves.

The other industry is called Qods. This industry was established in 1985, it employs hundreds of workers and is subject to US Department of the Treasury sanctions. Its flagship is the Mohajer. Mohajer-6 is an ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance) UAV with a range of thousands of kilometers and the ability to carry 4-6 guided munitions, and the Mohajer-10, which was exposed only two weeks ago, according to reports in Iran has a range of 2000 km and is capable of carrying a payload of up to 300 kg.

The other channel, run by the IRGC, is also in possession of two parallel industrial concerns. The first one is called KIPAS and is highly confidential. This industry operates under the auspices of the IRGC Qods Force, a special unit tasked with spreading the Islamic revolution outside Iran and which, among others, is responsible for leading the war against Israel.

The other industry is the Shahed Aviation Industries which was originally intended to provide the IRGC Aerospace Force with independent UAV production and operational capabilities, without the need to depend on the MODAFL or the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (Iran's regular air force). This was carried out as part of the process to gain power, led by the IRGC Aerospace Force Commander, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who following the targeting of Qassem Soleimani, became the dominant figure in the IRGC in addition to becoming the bitterest and most dangerous enemy to Israel, the moderate Sunni Arab states and the West.

Shahed manufactures a broad variety of UAVs, all of which are marketed under the same name (though the model number varies). The Shahed-197 is a UAV with a 7-meter wingspan, a flight range of thousands of kilometers and a cruising speed of 200 km/h, which is capable of remaining airborne without interruption for 20 hours. The Shahed-141 is a kamikaze UAV that can be also used for transferring arms, it has a flight range of 1800 kilometers at a flight speed of 185 km/h. The Shahed-101 is a kamikaze UAV that can also be used for intelligence-gathering purposes, it weighs 10 kg and has a flight range of 700 km.

The company's flagship product is the Shahed-136. This is a suicide attack UAV with a range of 2000-2200 km, which flies at altitude and at a relatively low speed of 185 km/h, which makes it more difficult to detect and intercept. As a result of the use of the Shahed-136 in the war in Ukraine, the USA, Canada, and the EU imposed sanctions on the Shahed Aviation Industries; although, the deals concluded with Russia (and now with China) for procurement of the system, and later on for its independent production, have enabled the Shahed Aviation Industries to continue to prosper.

Sanctions circumventing UAVs

We can roughly split up the production processes as follows: the Iranians cast the wings by themselves in Iran into casts that Iran builds and then later dries and bakes, or in the country in which the UAV is manufactured (Yemen, Lebanon or in the near future in Russia); it purchases the engine (usually Chinese piston engines); the warhead is cast in Iran; and the technology it buys on the civilian market. The warheads vary according to the mission and fragmentation is often added to them in order to increase lethality and the extent of the damage.

The Russians, for example, have mainly been using 50 kg warheads in their combat in Ukraine. They purchase the UAVs in Iran and ship them to Russia mainly by air and recently by ship too across the Caspian Sea, and they pay Iran for them either in hard cash or in gold bullion in order to circumvent the sanctions.

This growing cooperation between the two states is a cause of serious concern to Israel, also as the Iranians are exploiting it to move ahead in a number of different areas – information on various fields, including the development and manufacture of hypersonic missiles and satellite launch vehicles, as well as promoting transactions (including Su-35 fighter aircraft) and culminating in intelligence and operational cooperation. According to the source, "They are trying to squeeze the lemon dry."

The first two industries, which operate under the MODAFL, focus on the domestic needs of Iran itself: they are the main suppliers of UAVs to the Iranian army, with the main objective being the defense of Iran's sovereign territory. In contrast, the two industries operating under the IRGC focus their efforts on foreign objectives: either by direct operation or via Tehran's various proxies.

The IRGC's need for instant solutions for its needs in the field is sufficient to prod the industries under its command to work at a much more rapid pace and produce results in relatively short time periods, while the industries working under the MODAFL tend to engage in more long-term projects. Just to what extent these industries share knowledge and capabilities is not fully clear, but they do share at least one common objective beyond the interests of the Islamic state itself: both of them are working full steam ahead to sell their UAVs anywhere possible around the world, both to inject cash into the system and also to increase their influence. All four of these industries are subject to a variety of different sanctions. Some of them entered the list as they were involved in attacking various elements in the region, while others have been sanctioned due to their involvement in the war in Ukraine. Though these sanctions do make the procurement processes more difficult for the Iranians, the large scale development of this field in Iran – and the growing demand for UAVs of Iranian manufacture – underscore the fact that the sanctions' effectiveness is extremely limited, especially when Russia and China top the customer list.

"As, for the most part, these are civilian components that can readily be purchased on the open market, the Iranians have little difficulty in overcoming the sanctions," says the military official. "Even if any specific procurement channel is blocked, they immediately find an alternative one."

Israel in the crosshairs

Over the years, Iran has considerably increased its use of UAVs in all theaters where it operates. The most intensive use of this type of weapon system – which in itself is perhaps the most effective test site for the Iranians – has been made by the Houthis in Yemen. Hundreds of aircraft were operated against a variety of targets, including the methodical attacking of Saudi targets, even in the capital Riyadh.

In the past, Iran itself tried to avoid the direct use of UAVs that it manufactured in order not to get involved in direct conflicts, leaving its proxies to fight with Saudi Arabia, Israel and even the USA. This Iranian hydra-like method of force employment – whose aim is to constantly challenge its adversaries while leaving Iran itself safe and off the battlefield – is all too well known, and provides its enemies, above all Israel, with a permanent predicament and a dilemma of whether to make do with an ongoing, bloody conflict with the proxies or to cause Iran to pay a heavy price itself, on its own soil.

This dilemma will probably be seriously intensified in a large-scale war such as any future Third Lebanon War, when Israel will have to deliberate the option of exercising its deterrence by striking at Iran and the concern that such a move might well draw Tehran directly into the fighting.

In recent years, Iran has begun to release some of these shackles, starting to operate UAVs also directly for its diverse objectives. The first such operational use against Israel was on February 10, 2018, when a Shahed-141 UAV was launched from the Syrian air force base of T4 towards Israel, in response to Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria. Israel monitored the UAV throughout its flight and an IAF Apache combat helicopter intercepted it near the town of Beit She'an.

On September 14, 2019, Iran conducted its most famous and effective attack to date, when it launched dozens of UAVs and cruise missiles at the facilities of the Saudi Arabian national oil company, Aramco. This surprise attack caused significant damage to Saudi Arabia's oil production capability, sending shock waves across the region, mainly due to the American decision not to take action in defense of Saudi Arabia in the form of any offensive retaliation against Iran. The lessons of this incident are still echoing to this very day and form the basis, to some extent, of Saudi Arabia's lack of trust in the USA, and the extensive Saudi demands for various types of weapon systems (including unmanned systems) to enable them to defend themselves in the future.

On the verge of the threshold of escalation

The incessant hits that it suffered from the IAF strikes in Syria led Iran to look for a new medium via which it would be able to exact revenge on Israel. As part of this, commencing two years ago, a wave of attacks began in the Persian Gulf against ships, either wholly or partially owned by Israeli businessmen, but which sail under foreign flags and with foreign crews.

On March 25, 2021, Iranian UAVs hit the Lori, a partially Israeli-owned container ship that was sailing in the Arabian Sea. On April 13, 2021, a UAV hit an additional vessel under partial Israeli ownership, the Hyperion Ray, and on July 3, 2021, a third attempt was carried out, also against a ship with Israeli owners, the CSAV Tyndall.

The fourth attack in the series occurred on July 29, 2021. A Shahed-136 UAV hit a ship called the Mercer Street, killing a British and Romanian national. Britain was outraged and a severe diplomatic crisis ensued between the two states, following which the IRGC – apparently under the orders of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – ceased its attacks on shipping in the Gulf region. The Iranians, who sought to remove the sanctions imposed on them due to their nuclear program, feared the intensity of the conflict with the West and thus decided to calm things down in this particular area.

But the Iranians did remain active in another theater of course – the fight against Israel. On March 15, 2021, two Shahed-197 UAVs launched from Iran to Israel were intercepted. This was the first operational interception by an IAF F-35I Adir stealth combat aircraft, and it was kept under wraps for a year until it was allowed to be made public. In another case, on April 2 this year, a Shahed-101 UAV was intercepted after crossing the border from Syria into Israel. This particular UAV was downed using electronic jamming and it crashed in the southern Golan Heights near the Sea of Galilee.

As the Iranian industries operate separately, there are a considerable number of figures involved in the development and production processes, and later on in the operation and dissemination of these systems to the various other elements. Some of them belong to the MODAFL and are responsible for HESA and Qods, others operate under the auspices of the IRGC and are responsible for KIPAS and the Shahed Aviation Industries, and some for the end users in Qods Force or the various proxy organizations.

As mentioned, Hajizadeh is the most dominant figure, mainly in view of the expedited operation and procurement processes carried out over the last year with Russia (and China). He is also responsible for the attacks on Saudi Arabia – including those against the Aramco facilities – and for the attempts to operate long-range Iranian UAVs to penetrate Israeli airspace.

Another senior figure in the IRGC who is active in this field is Abdollah Mehrabi, who is in charge of the UAV industries within the IRGC, including the Shahed Aviation Industries.

A third senior official is Sa'id Izadi, the Head of the Palestinian Branch in the IRGC-Qods Force Lebanon Corps, who is in charge of all the support provided to the Palestinian terrorist organizations and Iran's ties with them, including the transfer of funds, knowhow, and weapon systems to these various organizations (chiefly Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad). Izadi is also involved in the efforts to develop the UAV industry in the Gaza Strip, which encounters objective difficulties due to the fact that the Gaza Strip is a closed enclave and relies on independent development alone, and also as Israel tries to take advantage of every round of violence or strikes there to destroy facilities, weapons, and capabilities that these organizations try to develop.

There are two key figures working in this field in the Iranian MODAFL. The first one is Seyyed Hojjatollah Qureishi, the Head of the Logistics Branch at the MODAFL, who is in charge of arms exports and as such heads the security ties with Russia. Qureishi led the process of the UAV sales to Russia, reaping considerable praise for his success. He is also actively working to promote similar processes with additional states and is currently active in the establishment of a UAV production plant in Tajikistan, as well as the efforts to help Armenia in its war against Azerbaijan. An additional figure is Qassem Damavandian, who is in charge of the Qods Industries that manufacture the Mohajer series of UAVs.

Hundreds of workers and experts from diverse fields work under these figures – from the various engineering disciplines and technological worlds to intelligence and operations. Since this Iranian capability has made dramatic progress in recent years it has also facilitated a significant leap forward in terms of the broad variety of force employment options at its disposal. Against Israel, for example, this enables Iran to adopt offensive options using a variety of systems and ranges, beginning with its close proxies in Lebanon and Syria (and Gaza), via its more remote proxies in Iraq and Yemen, and culminating in the independent launching of UAVs from any location within Iran.

Any such attack requires meticulous planning. This starts from the selection of the appropriate aircraft (intelligence collection, attack, kamikaze), moves on to selection of the munition, and ends with planning of the flight path to limit the risk of exposure and interception. This presents Israel with a significant headache as it is then forced to adapt its defensive arrays to deal with the new threat: not only missiles arriving from a high altitude, but UAVs (and cruise missiles) that fly at a slower speed and a low altitude, thus presenting a thorny challenge to the radars that are supposed to detect them (and on the other hand, make it easier to intercept them due to their low flight speed, compared with the more complex task of intercepting missiles and rockets).

In practice, the Iranians are so taken up by this new world of UAVs, which is rife with endless opportunities, that they are currently focusing their main efforts primarily on the development of unmanned aerial vehicles. The IRGC Aerospace Force has no airplanes, and its arsenal is made up chiefly of a broad variety of missiles and rockets, UAVs and diverse air defense systems, which it also disseminates to its various proxies. "This enables it to realize its policy – force employment underneath the threshold of escalation, in other words, to attack targets without risking becoming entangled in war itself," says the military official.

The challenge: Countermeasures and interception

In relation to Israel this is an especially dramatic change. "This is not a missile launch that is a clear red line involving a breach of the threshold of escalation that would certainly lead to war. UAVs enable Iran to operate with a relative degree of clandestineness, even from a great distance, though we do currently see a clear concern among them from a potential Israeli response to such action on Iranian soil."

This has occurred, among others, following strikes in Iran that have been attributed to Israel. Such a strike, which is attributed to the Mossad, was carried out using UAVs in March 2022 leading to the destruction of dozens of Shahed UAVs on the ground at a plant in the city of Kermanshah in Iran. An additional attack, in February this year (which too was carried out using UAVs and was also credited to the Mossad), hit a plant in the vicinity of the city of Karaj at which Iran manufactured UAVs.

These attacks caused a certain degree of damage to Iran and also evidently conveyed a strong message, but they have not put an end to the process. "The Iranians now boast a sufficiently adequate level of competency," says Captain Y, the Head of the I&W (Indications & Warnings) Section in the Iran Branch in the Research & Analysis Division at IDF Military Intelligence. "They know how to manufacture, how to launch and hit the target. Even if their capability is not of a global first-rate quality, their approach is to work with quantity: to launch en masse, and then some will fall on the way be downed, but some will eventually arrive at the target. As far as they are concerned, this is a sufficient means of implementing their force employment doctrine."

As far as Israel is concerned, this is one hell of a headache. The next war might not only bring with it a downpour of missiles and rockets but also an extremely challenging multi-theater UAV threat operated by a variety of forces – from the UAV units of Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, to the Iranians themselves. The job of the intelligence is not only to provide advance warning in order to enable the employment of countermeasures or interception so that we are not forced to rely on a strong defensive posture alone, but also to collect intelligence designed to enable the IAF and the defense industries to become familiar with the various weapon systems and threats and their capabilities, and to develop an appropriately tailored detection and interception response using a broad variety of means.

The experts believe that the future will be no less of a challenge. "We live in a world where in no time at all we will be using drones to send deliveries, where systems are able to talk or transfer information and images from one to another," says Captain L. "At some point in the future, the endless diversity is bound to reach a point of saturation as each airborne system requires appropriate experts, technicians, logistics, and a different mode of operation, but the quantity will simply keep on growing – and consequently the challenge will not become any easier."