Russia has stated they will react with ‘military means’ if the proposed US-Czech anti ballistic missile system is deployed in the Czech Republic.

The USA made an initial agreement with the Czech Republic today over siting of the system which Russia believes will undermine their own balistic missile capabilities. The official US line is that the ABM system is designed solely for interception of launches from ‘rogue states’ (probably Middle Eastern states or perhaps specifically Iran).

A Russian foreign ministry statement said:

“we will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods,”

Russia isn’t specifying but I’m hoping when they say they will respond with ‘military-technical methods’ they are implying they would use ‘Electronic Attack’ or radar jamming rather than rolling the Russian military machine into Prague. It seems clear that the Russian line is they will not be interested in any more diplomacy on the matter once an ABM system is deployed.

I don’t think it’s the greatest idea to antagonise Russia as they’re just about as strategically paranoid as everyone else who played a part in the cold war and are now left wondering exactly where they stand. Russia already offered to allow stationing of an ABM system on their own soil and this was turned down which undoubtedly worried them even more.

It’s certainly true that the system proposed for the Czech Republic would be far too small to block a Russian strategic launch in any meaningful way but Russia may be seeing this as the ‘thin end of the wedge’ in terms of US and future NATO plans for ABM systems.

A merchantman, Westward Venture has fired warning shots at a small boats, thought to be Iranian in the Persian Gulf.

The Westward Venture is reportedly under contract with the US military.

On the approach of the Iranian boats, Westward Venture first attempted to raise them by radio, then fired a pyrotechnic flare and when the boats continued to approach, the ship’s security crew opened fire with automatic small arms. It is not immediately apparent whether the gunfire was directly toward the Iranian boats.

SS Westward Venture is a 17,500 gross tonnage 744 foot long freighter launched in 1977 and registered in Tacoma (US)

According to ULS, there would be a maximum of 45 people on board.

SS Westward Venture can be tracked online in near-real-time.

It is expected that the news of this tension-increasing event in the Gulf will apply further upward pressure on oil prices.

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.

“I am coming to you… you will explode after a few minutes.”

This quotation may well be the VHF radio equivalent of “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” according to El Reg.

Apparently, there is a phenomenon on marine monitored VHF frequencies known as the “Filipino Monkey” which quite literally refers to a ‘Troll’ who transmits on the monitored marine channel 16 in order to ‘grief’ diligent radio operators at the other end. (All ships at sea must maintain a watch on channel 16)

While this may nominally mean generic insults about the operator’s mother or other lineage, it can also be a somewhat comical response to broadcast anti-collision warnings or more formal transmissions.

So how does this relate to last weeks ‘confrontation’ between the US Navy and Iranian fast patrol boats. Well, as the register points out, the USN can’t be sure that the transmission they heard actually came from the Iranian boats.

We cannot make a direct connection to the boats… It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by… I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.

It could just as easily have been transmitted by a bored Oman ship’s radio watch operator 20 miles away who was tired of listening to USN posturing that day.

Now the US Navy are understandably twitchy about people proclaiming that they are ‘going to explode’ because the USS Cole was bomed back in 2000 by Sudanese suicide bombers. Of course, this isn’t the [demonstrated] style of the Iranian Navy who seem to do things the ‘old fashioned’ way using various projectile weapons and torpedoes.

I’d like to think that if the Iranian navy were actually intending to broadcast a declaration of war via ship-ship VHF, they’d at least prepare a slightly less comedic sounding statement beforehand.