Ukraine sold Soviet missiles to everyone, but Iran will be punished for it
A combined Houthi drone and cruise missile attack on two oil refineries in Saudi Arabia last Sunday raised an avalanche of difficult questions.
While the Americans, like an idiot investigator from a bad detective story, are trying to make Iran look like the worst in this incident and turn it into a monastery, unbiased experts want to understand how the technologies for producing long-range cruise missiles capable of bypassing the air defense systems of one of the richest countries in the world and successfully hitting targets fell into the hands of impoverished Yemeni rebels, previously unnoticed in advanced technical creativity.
Military experts are given food for thought by the found fragments of a cruise missile in the desert, not far from one of the attacked Saudi oil plants.
fragments of a Houthi cruise missile
As previously reported, the tail section of the cruise missile discovered among the wreckage is almost identical to that of the Quids-1 missile, which the Houthis demonstrated at a military equipment exhibition this summer.
Gradually unwinding the thread, experts come to the conclusion that the traces lead to Soviet X-55 cruise missiles, which Ukraine received at the end of 1991 along with other military property of the collapsed USSR.
Military experts and journalists immediately recalled a scandal that broke out in the early 2000s involving the sale of several X-55s along with a package of documents to be disposed of as part of the disarmament program.
The accusation against Ukraine was brought forward by the then Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov. He said that the Ukrainian company Progress, part of the state concern Ukroboronexport, in 2000-2001 sold six X-55 missiles to Iran and the same number of missiles to China in violation of the law on the non-proliferation of missile weapons.
The US government immediately became interested in the scandal, since in 1994 it entered into an agreement with Ukraine to transfer a certain number of Soviet X-55s remaining in warehouses to Russia, while the Ukrainian side was obliged to destroy the remainder and all documents due.
What added piquancy to the situation was the fact that this was the only case of leakage of nuclear missile technologies from the republics of the former USSR.
In 2004, the SBU opened a criminal case, and its main defendant was Russian businessman Oleg Orlov, who at that time lived in the Czech Republic.
Ukraine accused Orlov of smuggling a P1999F radar station to Eritrea in the fall of 14 and of illegally selling X-55SM cruise missiles to China (also known as AS-15, produced in the former USSR and capable of carrying nuclear weapons, including at a distance of up to 3000 km ).
Until 2004, Orlov lived in Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic), after which he asked to be granted political asylum. Having been refused, the businessman tried to travel to the United Arab Emirates, but was arrested at Prague airport. The Supreme Court of the Czech Republic decided to transfer Oleg Orlov to Ukraine.
Vladimir Evdokimov, a former SBU employee and general director of Ukraviazakaz LLC, who was sentenced in the summer of 2005 by the Kyiv Court of Appeal to six years in prison, was tried behind closed doors in the Orlov case.
In the same missile case, the former head of Ukrspetsexport Valery Malev, who died in a traffic accident in 2002, as well as Australian citizen Haider Sarfraz, who also “just in time” got into a car accident in January 2004, appeared in the same missile case.
While the investigation lasted, the Ukrainian side tried to shift all the blame onto the Russian businessman Orlov, foaming at the lips, convincing all progressive humanity of its innocence.
However, already in March 2005, under the weight of ever new evidence and pressure from frightened politicians from Washington, Tokyo and Tel Aviv, Prosecutor General Piskun, and after him the “orange” President Yushchenko, admitted that in 2001 there was a fact of smuggling by Ukraine 12 Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran and 6 missiles to China.
With Yushchenko, however, the bribes were smooth, since this fact did not compromise his administration in any way, but only affected the “pro-Russian” corrupt official Kuchma and his henchmen. Yushchenko, on the contrary, looked all in white, seeking cooperation, publicity and demonstrating “full transparency.”
Subsequently, it turned out that the X-55 strategic cruise missiles, sets of documentation for their production and operation, special control and measuring equipment and competent missile specialists ended up in Iran as a result of an unprecedented special operation, which involved the intelligence services of four states, representatives of several transnational corporations and influential non-governmental organizations.
At the same time, a cover operation was carried out, as a result of which misinformation about the transfer to Iran of technology for the production of ablative (high-temperature-resistant and invisible to radar) coatings for ballistic missile warheads forced Israel to speed up the development and production of an expensive missile defense system, useless for intercepting the X-55. The Hetz (Arrow-2) missile defense system is capable of intercepting Shihab missiles, but was helpless against the X-55.
Israeli air defense system “Hetz” (Arrow-2)
Missile smuggling, which has become the subject of a criminal case in Ukraine, has finally made it possible to find a reasonable explanation for reports coming from Iran that back in the spring of 2001, at one of its defense enterprises, the appearance of “an unknown body, 5,5 m in length and 0,7 m wide."
And in August 2005, shortly after the presidential elections in Iran, this matter took an even more interesting turn after the representative of the Iranian opposition group NCRI, Alireza Jafar-zadeh, blew the cover, as if Iranian industry had mastered the production technology of the X-55.
According to information released by NCRI in August 2005, two of the X-55 missiles delivered to Iran were transferred to local specialists in reverse engineering, or, simply, pirated study and copying.
According to military experts, the Ukrainian blue thieves were still afraid to hand over samples of Soviet military weapons to Iran and China, but sold the training equipment at a reasonable price along with the KNO-120 control stand for testing missiles.
At the same time, experts doubt that Iran managed to achieve the technical characteristics of the X-55 for its “reverse” copies. In particular, doubts have been expressed that the Iranian copy of the X-55 is capable of carrying a charge weighing 450 kg and hitting targets at a distance of 3000 km.
Houthi cruise missile Quds-1 at an exhibition this summer
On the other hand, open sources say that the technical specifications issued by the Iranian government to its rocket scientists require a flight range of 1500 km in order to be guaranteed to reach any point on Israeli territory.
another photo of the Quds-1 missile in the company of Houthi drones
Further, apparently, the Islamic Republic supported its brothers in faith, the Yemeni Houthis, in their fight against the Saudi interventionists, sharing with them details and documentation of its own Soumar cruise missile, developed “based on” the X-55. Jokers joke that the Iranians named their rocket in gratitude to Ukraine and in honor of Maidan activist Victoria Syumar.
similarities and differences between the Iranian Soumar cruise missile (bottom) and the Houthi Quds-1
It should not be surprising that the Houthis are capable of launching an air-launched missile from a ground-based launcher. On the Internet you can find videos and photographs of Iranian Soumar missile launches from containers installed on a ground mobile complex.
launch of an Iranian cruise missile “based on” the X-55 from a ground-based complex
Ideas about the need to supply the Armed Forces of the USSR with an attack cruise missile arose at the turn of the 1960-70s. Full-scale work on it was authorized on December 8, 1976 by a corresponding government decree on the creation of a low-altitude missile system with the X-55 missile.
The development of the rocket was entrusted to the Dubna IKB "Raduga", in cooperation with more than 100 enterprises of the Soviet military-industrial complex. Like its American counterparts - ALCM and Tomahawk, the X-55 was supposed to have an autonomous guidance system, including an inertial system and an extreme navigation system that could track the terrain and compare it with reference data. As a result, the missile was able to fly at a range of up to 2500 km at an extremely low altitude (40-110 m).
The Tu-55 bombers (capable of carrying 160 missiles) and Tu-12MS (95 - 10 missiles) were chosen as the X-16 carrier. Also considered, but rejected, was the option of deploying and launching the X-55 from heavy military transport aircraft.
In general, the creation of the X-55 was the result of the effective collaboration of dozens of enterprises of Soviet industry, and at a time when Soviet aviation science and production were at the highest point of their development.
It is unlikely that one would dare to condemn Iran, China or the Houthis in the current situation - these countries acted, first of all, based on national interests, as any other sovereign government would have acted in their place, seeking to protect its country and people by all available means.
The only side that deserves contempt in this whole missile mess is “independence” Ukraine, which from the very beginning relied in its personnel policy on unprincipled and corrupt creatures, whose entire patriotism boils down to parading in trousers and shedding tears at the first chords of “Vmerla Puppy” . But if something happens, Iran will be punished.
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