Iran begins shipping dangerous Fath-360 missiles to Russia
Expert in aviation market development Bogdan Dolince commented on reports about Fath-360 ballistic missiles, which Iran has most likely already started supplying to Russia.
Worrying information about Russia's ally's next moves began to appear in the public space as early as August. Now, however, the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran has already begun shipping short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. American intelligence findings indicate that these are Fath-360 missiles.
Bogdan Dolince believes that this type of weapon in the hands of the Russians will be a significant problem from the Ukrainians' point of view. This is not only due to the construction and capabilities of the Fath-360 missiles but also due to the shortages in anti-aircraft defence that the Ukrainians are experiencing. In his commentary, he noted that due to their high speed (when hitting the target, they reach speeds of up to Mach 4), Iranian-made missiles can only be shot down by certain air defence systems - Patriot, NASAMS, or S-300.
"If the Patriot and NASAMS systems provide a small number of launchers and mainly cover large cities, then the S-300 has a different problem. There is already a significant shortage of missiles for these complexes. Realizing that Russia may have received about 200 such missiles, we will most likely not be able to intercept most of them," said the expert quoted by the Unian agency.
Fath-360: Capabilities of Iranian missiles
As explained by Norbert Garbarek, a journalist for Wirtualna Polska, Fath-360 are short-range ballistic missiles, which allow for targeting up to 75 miles away. They are equipped with a warhead weighing 330 lbs. Each missile of this type has a length of approximately 17 feet and a diameter of nearly 1.3 feet. The designers used GNSS and GLONASS satellite guidance systems and inertial navigation, resulting in a relatively high precision for the Fath-360.
Iran has been arming Russia for months. In Ukraine, Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 drones from this Asian country are used on a large scale. Cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has also resulted in large amounts of various types of ammunition for the Russian army, but ballistic missiles are a significantly more dangerous weapon. As noted in "The Wall Street Journal," the West's findings that Tehran also has missiles with a range of up to 500 miles are concerning.
