delusionofgrandeur

Two days ago (Feb 4th) Iran launch a sub-orbital rocket reportedly named Kavoshgar-1 as the inauguration of it’s space-program.

The USA was inevitably upset by the event and voiced it’s displeasure but more interestingly, a Russian foreign minister, a Mr Alexander Losyukov, has also commented that the start of the Iranian space program is a concern from their point of view also. The Russian foreign ministry considers that “Long-range missiles are one of the components of a [nuclear] weapons system”.

Now, that’s probably a good thing from the US point of view to have Russia potentially coming round to their way of thinking. Russia had previously taken the view that Iran was a long-way off from developing long-range ballistic missiles.

The rocket involved was reported to have be a Shahab-3 MRBM derived rocket and judging by the few pictures available, it was very similar to a normal missile. The missile reportedly reached an altitude greater than 100 km (officially entering ’space) but was only able to carry basic instrumentation to survey the upper atmosphere. It could be this was just a slightly modified Shahab 3 with minimal payload designed for a high-shot.

Although expected, I think it’s a bit of an over-reaction by both the US and Russia to say that this is pointing towards an Iranian long-range missile capability. It would be more credible if Iran had launched a Shahab 3 derived rocket with a Scud fastened on top as a second stage. Then I’d be worried too.

The US Department of Defence have also been superfluously saying that the technology for a space program is the same as that for a ICBMs. I should think that to anybody with half a brain it should be obvious that if a nation can put an object into orbit, they can also put an object anywhere in the world.

No doubt the US and Russian intelligence agencies will be looking for the real meat now. Any signs of Iranian development of multi-stage rockets or high-performance reentry vehicles will be hotly pursued.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under News, Space.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.