Jul 9, 2008 09:00 PM
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Tue Feb 9
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Skip the politics, let's get to the tech: The Shahab-3 missiles that Iranian solidiers test-fired today — a blatant bring-it to Israel and America — could land a nuke in Tel Aviv. (The city's startup sector was recently dubbed the world's #8 tech hotspot by CNET, less than 240 milliseconds from Sand Hill Road and believe me, no packet loss from those guys.) The missile is based on North Korea's Nodong-1, an Iranian-funded adaptation of the Soviet Scud missiles that Saddam Hussein's troops lobbed at Israel in the first Gulf War. No, it's not true that these missiles are so old they use vacuum tubes instead of silicon chips. It's not true that their guidance systems are built from American GPS gear, as much as the Valley would like to take credit. What is true is that the Shahab-3's biggest vulnerability — a tendency to tumble out of control on the way down to the target — may have been fixed.
The Shahab-3 is just over 50 feet long and 4 feet thick. It weighs over 17 tons at launch. Don't let its stubby profile mislead you — it can be programmed to change course several times in midflight, making it hard to shoot down.
The weapon debuted 10 years ago, in a parade during Iran's Sacred Defense Week. The parade missile was reportedly decorated with signs reading, "Israel would be wiped from the map" and "The U.S. can do nothing." Since then, refinements to the design have increased its estimated range from 800 miles to as much as 1,250 miles, carrying a warhead up to 1,500 pounds — plenty of room for a nuke. Tel Aviv is only 650 miles from the Iranian border.
If you really want to go deep on the Sahab-3, there's lots more in a Federation of American Scientists report, and this encyclopedic Global Security entry includes several detailed diagrams. But take note: Even the FAS doesn't have new data from the past two years. (Photos by AP/Ruhollah Vahdati, AP/Sajjad Safari, AFP/Getty Images)
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