The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)’s chief commander says that the country’s Armed Forces have, thanks to completely indigenous efforts, equipped themselves with the world’s top-of-the-range defensive technology.
Major General Hossein Salami was speaking on Wednesday, during the second day of major airpower drills involving the IRGC’s Aerospace Division, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF), and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Defense Force (IRIADF).
Codenamed ‘Modafean Aseman Velayat 1400’ (Guardians of ‘Velayat Sky’ 1400), the exercise kicked off in the country’s sprawling Central Desert, with the goal of practicing defensive maneuvers in the service of the country’s “sensitive and vital” spots and testing the operational maneuverability of the Armed Forces’ new-generation defensive equipment among other things.
“What we perceived during this exercise was a modern and advanced display of every aspect of air defense [operations] in the face of unpredictable scenarios,” the commander noted.
“By God’s grace, all the targets that entered the area [of the drills] were struck by the systems’ first shot,” General Salami stated.
“The reason for this is that the IRGC’s Aerospace Division and the Army’s Air Defense Force have acquired cutting edge technology [for its] very modern and advanced systems,” he added.
Message of the drills
General Salami went on to specify the message that the drills have been assigned to convoy.
According to the commander, the exercises are meant to send across the “invariable message of unity” between the IRGC and Army in their duty to serve in the country’s defense.
The unity, he said, was rooted in the dual forces’ defensive cooperation during the Western-backed imposed war that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hossein waged on the Islamic Republic from 1980 until 1988.
Over just two days, the maneuvers saw the combined forces successfully lay into all the targets that had been designated for the purpose of the drills by the country’s Integrated Air Defense Network, using at least six state-of-the-art air defense systems, namely Mersad-16, Tabas, Khordad-3, Khordad-15, Majeed, and Dezfoul.
Source: Iranian media
