Report: Russia helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles

Russia has been helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles, the Financial Times reports.

According to the newspaper, the development program began in 2023 and would mean that Tehran would be able to attack US aircraft carriers and other vessels in the Middle East.

The Financial Times says its investigation was based on Russian correspondence, travel records and military patents, and describes the program as “one of the most significant known transfers of strategic military technology from Moscow to Tehran.”

Some of Russia’s top experts in the field were involved in the Iranian program, the report says.

The development program is reportedly focused on a ramjet propulsion system that would allow a cruise missile to fly at multiple times the speed of sound.

The report says that Iran has built and tested the system, but there is no evidence that a supersonic cruise missile using the technology has been deployed.

“This is the transfer of a highly strategically sensitive military technology from Russia that the Iranians have wanted to acquire for decades,” Fabian Hinz, an expert on Iranian missiles and senior analyst with Conflict Armament Research, tells the newspaper. “A program like this would require political clearance from the very top in Russia.”