Iran's supply of Fath-360 missiles to Russia raises alarm
Market development expert Bogdan Dolince commented on reports about Fath-360 ballistic missiles, which Iran has most likely already started supplying to Russia.
Information regarding the movements of Russia’s ally began appearing in the public sphere as early as August. Now, the American daily "The Wall Street Journal" has reported that Iran has already started shipping short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. According to American intelligence findings, these are Fath-360 missiles.
Fath-360 supplied to Russians. This is a dangerous weapon
Bogdan Dolince believes that this type of weapon in the hands of Russians will be a significant problem from the Ukrainian perspective. This is due not only to the construction and capabilities of the Fath-360 missiles but also to shortages related to air defence with which Ukrainians are struggling. In his comment, he emphasised that due to the high speed (when hitting the target, they can reach speeds of up to 4 Mach), Iranian-produced 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 faces a different problem. There is already a significant shortage of missiles for these complexes. Realising that Russia may have received about 200 such missiles, most of them likely will not be intercepted," said the expert, quoted by the agency Unian.
Fath-360 - Capabilities of Iranian missiles
As explained by Norbert Garbarek, journalist of Wirtualna Polska, the Fath-360 are short-range ballistic missiles that allow attacks on targets up to 120 kilometres away. The warhead used in them weighs 150 kilograms. Each such missile is approximately 5 metres long and almost 0.4 metres in diameter. The designers applied GNSS and GLONASS satellite guidance systems and inertial navigation, resulting in relatively high precision for the Fath-360.
Iran has been arming Russia for months. In Ukraine, drones from this Asian country, such as Shahed-131 and Shahed-136, are used on a large scale. The cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has also resulted in large quantities of various types of ammunition for the Russian army, but ballistic missiles are undoubtedly a more dangerous weapon. As noted in "The Wall Street Journal," it is concerning that Western findings indicate Tehran also has missiles with a range of up to 800 kilometres in its arsenal.
