Iran to test fire optimized smart bombs
2010/03/01 FNA
A senior Iranian military commander on Monday announced that the Army is due to test-fire an optimized version of the country's 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) smart bombs, Qassed (Messenger), in the near future.
Iranian Air Force Commander Brigadier General Hassan Shahsafi told FNA that early samples of the new version, called Qassed 2, will be tested in the near future.
The General reminded the capabilities of the Iran-made smart bombs, including high-precision and destruction power, and said that Qassed 2 has a longer range than its primary version.
He also said that Qassed 1 has already been mass-produced and delivered to the Iranian Air Force.
The Iranian Army's Air Force announced in September that it has successfully test-fired Qassed (Messenger) 1and 2, in aerial drills over the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.
Elsewhere, Shahsafi pointed to the deployment of the US Patriot missiles in the Persian Gulf, and stated, "That is not a new development. They had previously deployed and tested the systems in other places and gained no (positive) results."
US officials announced that the United States has expanded land- and sea-based missile defense systems in and around the Persian Gulf to counter what it calls Iran's growing missile threat.
Four Mideast countries to have the US system are Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain - which also hosts the US Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters - and Qatar, which has a modernized US air operations center that played a key role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
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