Russia has secretly been helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles since 2023 under a program code-named C430L, the Financial Times reports.
The program continued even after the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran, according to an FT investigation based on leaked Russian correspondence, travel records, and an analysis of military patents.
The program’s main goal, the journalists say, was to help Iran develop a ramjet engine capable of sustaining cruise missile flight at several times the speed of sound.
Rosoboronexport ran the program on the Russian side, coordinating the project with NPO Mashinostroyeniya and bringing in leading Russian missile designers to work on C430L.
Missile weapons experts say the technology being developed is intended for anti-ship missiles and weapons capable of striking ground targets. “This is the transfer of a highly strategically sensitive military technology from Russia that the Iranians have wanted to acquire for decades,” said Fabian Hinz, a senior analyst at the British organization Conflict Armament Research. “A program like this would require political clearance from the very top in Russia.”
Iran has already built the ramjet engine and conducted flight tests, the FT reports, though there is so far no evidence that the supersonic cruise missile developed with Russian assistance has entered service.
In June 2024, Vladimir Putin threatened, at a meeting with representatives of international news agencies, that Moscow would supply “similar weapons” to regions of the world “where strikes will be carried out on sensitive facilities of those countries that do this to Russia” in response to strikes on Russian territory with Western weapons, the FT reports. The C430L program was already underway at the time, according to the outlet.
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