ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Iran has revealed two new-generation radar stations, which became further developments of the Meraj and Matla ul-Fajr series of radar units. Photo: YouTube / Persian_boy A demonstration of new developments in the field of the latest-generation radar stations of the Meraj and Matla ul-Fajr series took place in Iran . The latest developments of the Electronic Industries Organization of Iran were presented in the presence of Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan in the city of Shiraz, which is the main center of the Iranian electronics industry, where similar ceremonies are traditionally held. The Meraj-4 mobile three-coordinate radar station has already been showed, but for this time it was officially presented. It is assumed that the new radar station may become a part of the perspective air defense system of Iran. The Matla ul-Fajr-3 new mobile three-coordinate radiolocation station, which became a further development of the Iranian Matla ul-Fajr series of radar units , was also pre...

One of the key sectors of Russian military modernization is its tank fleet, which still includes many unmodernized T-72B and T-80U tanks. In order to close the tank quality gap with NATO, Russia opted to upgrade the T-72B to the T-72B3 standard, a modernization that yielded a modern tank comparable to the T-90 at a fraction of the cost of buying a new T-90. The T-72B3 tank, which entered service in 2011 at the rate of about 200 a year and which became widely known thanks to the annual Tank Biathlon competitions, was intended to be a stop-gap measure until the T-14 of the Armata family became operational. According to the statements by the Uralvagonzavod, Russian procurement plans entailed the purchase of 2,000 T-14 MBTs. These plans appear to have been modified due to several factors which appeared in the last two years. The first was the crisis in Ukraine and the heightened state of conflict with NATO. The crisis raised the need for a truly modern MBT comparable to NATO’s tanks to bec...

Written and produced by SF Team: J.Hawk, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson When the “end of history”, meaning the establishment of a permanent Western hegemony over the entire international system, was proclaimed in the early 1990s, it was not yet obvious how the pursuit of said hegemony would evolve over the succeeding decades. The “velvet” expansion of the 1990s into the post-Soviet vacuum gave way to the “iron fist” for which the 9/11 terror strikes provided the excuse and which meant invading whichever country Washington desired. However, the “iron fist” efforts in the post-9/11 world demonstrated West’s weakness , as sustaining operations in Iraq and Afghanistan proved too much for NATO. This failure ushered the post-“post-9/11″ world, and the “Arab Spring” became the first, though far from the only, demonstration of the evolved Western strategy which fuses the earlier approaches. The “velvet” aspect is still there: Western entities claim they are promoting “universal human values” whic...