Iran’s newest gunship helicopter, unveiled Wednesday, might look awfully familiar to aviation historians. And it’s not unique in that regard. Almost all of Iran’s “new” weaponry — including jet fighters, ‘copters, warships, tanks, missiles and other equipment — is a copy of a much older U.S., British, Russian, Chinese or North Korean design.

But that doesn’t mean all of Tehran’s weapons suck. Far from it. While some of the sillier Iranian gear is obviously meant mostly for fleeting propaganda purposes, the main hardware is grounded in experience and hardship. Driven by desperation and shaped by the isolation that comes with widening external sanctions, Tehran’s copycat arsenal could contain a few nasty surprises for the U.S. and its allies in the unlikely event that tensions over Iran’s nuclear program come to blows.

For one, low-tech weapons force the users to fight creatively. “There’s a chance they’ll catch us by surprise,” Air Force Lt. Col. Dan Ward, an engineer and acquisitions expert and prolific writer (.pdf), tells Danger Room in an email.

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Iranian air force F-4. Photo ia: IIAF.net.

If Iran and the U.S. ever come to blows over Tehran’s nuclear program, U.S. warplanes could face an Iranian aerial arsenal that, while old, has been heavily upgraded. China is helping Iran add new sensors and weapons to U.S.-built F-4 Phantoms that are nearly 50 years old.

The upgrades don’t mean the Vietnam War-vintage F-4s are equal to American F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s — to say nothing of the stealthy F-22s. Nor should the U.S. underestimate Iran’s aerial capabilities. Enhancements can significantly boost the combat potential of older planes.

Read the rest at Offiziere.ch.

Iran has captured another U.S. drone, the country’s state-run Fars news agency reported overnight.

Ali Fadavi, commander of the naval branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, told Press TV (another state-run outlet) that the Scan Eagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was conducting a reconnaissance flight over the Persian Gulf when it entered Iranian air space and was captured.

Fadavi’s claim, and the Iranian footage, could be bunk. Even if the captured robot is real, it’s not clear whether it crashed or was somehow forced down. Cmdr. Jason Salata, a Navy spokesman, told the AP that all U.S. drones were “fully accounted for.” However, he did say that some Scan Eagles have been lost at sea in the past.

The alleged drone capture comes just a month after Iranian jets tried and failed to shoot down an American Predator UAV — and almost exactly a year after getting its hands on a stealthy U.S. Air Force Sentinel drone that crashed, or was hijacked, on the Iran-Afghanistan border.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

A Predator drone over Afghanistan in 2006. Photo: Air Force

The U.S. military’s drones are defenseless against enemy fighters — as an incident this month over the Persian Gulf shows. But that wasn’t always the case. In 2002 the Air Force fitted some of its early-model Predator drones with short-range Stinger air-to-air missiles. But even with the right weaponry the robots were likely a poor match for enemy fighters, and the Air Force ultimately stripped them of the missiles.

That decision had ramifications a decade later on Nov. 1, when a pair of Iranian Su-25 attack jet pilots tried their damnedest to shoot down an unarmed Predator conducting what Pentagon spokesman George Little dubbed “routine surveillance” over the Persian Gulf 16 miles off the Iranian coast.

The Predator fled for safer airspace, but not before the Iranians made two passes firing 30-millimeter cannons.

It’s not clear that the now-removed defensive armament would have made any difference in last week’s jet-on-drone violence. The one instance of an air-to-air-armed Predator fighting back against an attacking aircraft resulted in the drone’s destruction. “Best to say that results were inconclusive,” retired Air Force general Dave Deptula tells Danger Room.

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Photo: Flickr user gtrwndr87

Call it the Dior of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. In one of the more bizarre military inventions from Iran, the U.S. arch-enemy has reportedly developed a perfume machine to hide troops during combat.

Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported that an Iranian inventor created a “fragrance making and spraying device to deceive enemies on the battlefield.” The invention, called “Deceit Perfume” and jointly built as a “strategic project of the armed forces,” is intended to camouflage the smell of gunpowder by spreading odors over “vast areas.” Tehran’s troops will also have a choice of four agreeable aromas: fresh air, rainy weather, seaside weather (for the navy) and tea, according to the news agency.

There’s no telling how the device will deliver the perfume or how large it is — perhaps it’s in the shape of a gun — but the machine is said to be a “highly effective and strategic weapon for civil defense, and for pushing back enemy threats, surprise attacks and offenses,” inventor Mohammad Sadeh Pir-Tavana told Fars. Perhaps it could be used by Iran’s 3,500-strong ninja army.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Since at least February the Syrian government has been using Iranian-built Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to track and target Free Syrian Army rebels in their strongholds, including Homs and Hamah. Now some fresh commercial satellite imagery provides new details about the drone’s possible tactics and capabilities.

Based on the imagery, acquired by George Kaplan for his blog Open-Source Geo-Intelligence, the small, unarmed, propeller-driven Mohajer 4 drone is apparently limited in range. The Mohajer 4 most likely relies on control signals radioed from its launch base, unlike some Western ‘bots which can be controlled via satellite from facilities pretty much anywhere in the world. The Syrian UAV’s ability to transmit video is probably equally constrained.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Iran's diesel-powered, Russian-made Kilo class attack sub. DoD photo.

It can be hard to tell which announcements from Iran are true, which ones are wish-fulfillment, and which ones are simply Iran trying to keep up with the Joneses. Consider that when you hear the news that Iran is planning to build nuclear submarines.

According to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, Rear Adm. Abbas Zamini said that Iran is “at the initial phases” of this sub-making venture. The news agency also noted the admiral’s recognition of Iran’s “astonishing progress in developing and acquiring civilian nuclear technology for various power-generation, agricultural and medical purposes,” which allows Iran to “think of manufacturing nuclear-fueled submarines.” Read: this is still in the conceptual stage. Zamini also said that all countries have the right to manufacture nuclear-powered submarines for peaceful purposes. And Iran wouldn’t violate any international treaties by doing so — unlike, say, if it built the bomb.

In other words, it’s a military program involving nuclear energy, but with enough distance from a nuclear weapons program to give Tehran freedom to build it.

If Iran can pull it off. It’s possible, though it’ll be difficult and take a long time. First, Iran will have to miniaturize the country’s nuclear technology into a safe and working power plant capable of powering a sub. Second, one does not just install a nuclear plant onto a submarine. Iran will have to build a new sub from scratch around the future sub’s nuclear plant.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

The U.S. Air Force is quietly assembling the world’s most powerful air-to-air fighting team at bases near Iran. Stealthy F-22 Raptors on their first front-line deployment have joined a potent mix of active-duty and Air National Guard F-15 Eagles, including some fitted with the latest advanced radars. The Raptor-Eagle team has been honing special tactics for clearing the air of Iranian fighters in the event of war.

It’s been years since the Air Force has maintained a significant dogfighting presence in the Middle East. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq Boeing-made F-15Cs flew air patrols from Saudi Arabia, but the Iraqi air force put up no resistance and the Eagle squadrons soon departed. For the next nine years Air Force deployments to the Middle East were handled by ground-attack planes such as A-10s, F-16s and twin-seat F-15E Strike Eagles.

The 1980s-vintage F-15Cs, plagued by structural problems, stayed home in the U.S. and Japan. The brand-new F-22s, built by Lockheed Martin, suffered their own mechanical and safety problems. When they ventured from their home bases in Virginia, Alaska and New Mexico, it was only for short training exercises over the Pacific. The F-15Cs and F-22s sat out last year’s Libya war.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Four months after capturing a crashed U.S. stealth drone near the Iran-Afghanistan border, Tehran claims it has hacked into the ‘bot’s classified mission-control system. If true, it could mean Iran is making good on its vow to reverse-engineer the stealthy, Lockheed Martin-built RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone and produce homemade copies.

But that’s not likely. “Based on my experience,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a former CIA director, told reporters, “I would seriously question their ability to do what they say they’ve done.” A Pentagon drone program manager was far more blunt. Speaking to Danger Room on condition of anonymity, the program manager said Iran’s claim “sounds like complete bullshit.”

No one wants to talk on the record about the super-secret Sentinel. The Air Force declined Danger Room’s requests for comment. So did Lockheed Martin. But they may not need to say anything. Iran’s public comments about the RQ-170 do a pretty good job of debunking themselves.

Iran has a long history of faking major weapons developments. That said, many observers — myself included — at first believed Iran was lying about capturing the Sentinel. That, at least, turned out to be true.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

RQ-170 captured by Iran. Photo via David Cenciotti.

When one of the U.S. Air Force’s secretive RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drones crashed along the Afghanistan-Iran border in December and wound up in the hands of the Iranians, it did only “limited damage” to a U.S.-led effort to spy on Tehran’s suspected nuclear facilities.

That’s one surprising conclusion of a revealing new story published by The Washington Post on Saturday.

The wedge-shaped Sentinel drone was part of a tag-team surveillance effort over Iran that began as early 2006 and also involved the CIA, the communications-intercepting National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency that analyzes satellite imagery and the spy bureaus of America’s closest allies, the Post reports. The major finding of the ongoing effort: that Iran is still a year away from producing a nuclear weapon — if that’s Tehran’s intention. “Certain things are not being done,” an intelligence source says of Iran’s nuclear initiative.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Cyclone-class Coastal Patrol Ship USS Firebolt (PC 10) steams ahead during an exercise in the Arabian Gulf. U.S. Navy photo.

If the U.S. Navy goes to war against Iran, its tiniest ships could play the biggest role. Diminutive minesweepers and coastal patrol boats are being upgraded, rearmed and pushed to the maritime front line in the Persian Gulf. Which is kind of ironic: the bigger-is-better Navy has been trying to get rid of the warships for years.

Small ships have never really been the Navy’s thing. Tasked with deploying all over the world, far from its U.S. shipyards, the Navy prefers big vessels capable of carrying lots of fuel and supplies and taking a beating on long ocean crossings. The average size of an American destroyer has more than doubled since the early 1990s, now tipping the scales at 9,000 tons displacement.

But small ships have an edge in certain situations. For one, they can safely sail in shallow waters and get closer to an enemy’s coastline. These advantages didn’t stop the Navy from planning to replace a few dozen patrol boats and minesweepers, each weighing in at just 1,000 tons, with Littoral Combat Ships that were three times the weight. Over the years the Navy gave away several of its patrol boats to The Philippines and the Coast Guard. In 2006 and 2007 the sailing branch decommissioned half its minesweepers, even though they were barely 10 years old. The remaining small ships weren’t expected to stick around much longer.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Karrar drone. Iranian defense ministry photo.

Iran is planning to build drones for the Venezuelan military. Just so you know, it sounds worse than it is.

That’s according to Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, chief of U.S. forces in South America. According to Fraser, who spoke to reporters in Washington on Wednesday, the drones are to be manufactured in Venezuela with Iranian help and will likely be used for “internal defense.” The exact kind of drones isn’t clear. But the robots are probably too small to be armed.

“I would put it in the ScanEagle class of UAV,” Fraser told U.S. News & World Report‘s military blog DOTMIL. “It’s not up into the Predator class.”

Read the rest at Danger Room.