On Sunday 19 May, a helicopter Bel-212 Iranian crashed in the Varzaqan region, in the north ofIran. The president of the Islamic Republic was present on board Ibrahim Raisi and the Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan, a senior cleric from Tabriz, an official of the Revolutionary Guard (the Pasdaran) and three crew members. All the occupants died in the crash on the side of a mountain. The causes of the fatal accident are still under investigation, but there was a heavy fogand Tehran also leans towards the hypothesis of the accident being due to adverse weather conditions.
What happened reminds us that transporting multiple eminent political or military personalities on a single vehicle is always a very high risk: in the event of an accident like the one that happened on Sunday, there is a risk that the leaders of a nation or a particular entity will be beheaded in a one shot. It is good practice, in these cases, to divide personalities along different lines, but this is not what we wanted to underline when looking at Sunday’s tragic events.
Almost immediately after the disappearance of the presidential helicopter, in fact, Iran has asked for international help for research, and Russia, Türkiye and the European Union responded quite differently. If Moscow, in fact, limited itself to sending personnel to organize search teams, Ankara she was asked for a helicopter AS-532 “Cougar” it’s a drone particular to carry out reconnaissance from above in search of the wreck, while the European Union has made available the images of its Copernicus satellite constellation at the explicit request of Tehran.
The Turkish drone was a “Akinci”, obviously unarmed, but which however is equipped with particular sensors: an Aesa radar (Active Electronically Scanned Array) called Murad, a Sar radar (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and an infrared surveillance system as well as an electronic warfare and signals intelligence suite (Sigint)) which make the Akinci a UAV (Unmanned Air Vehicle) among the best in the world regarding Istar capabilities (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target acquisition and Reconnaissance).
The helicopter”Cougar”, built by Eurocopter, was in the Csar variant, that is Combat Search and Rescue that is, equipped to recover friendly personnel behind enemy lines. In particular, it is equipped with a global positioning system, inertial navigation, Doppler radar, tactical air navigation (TACAN), VHF multi-directional VOR and distance measurement equipment. Furthermore, the “Cougar” is equipped with observation domes on the cabin doors, search light, infrared sensor (Flir) and panoramic detection radar.
For all intents and purposes, therefore, it is about high-tech tools and assets able to carry out searches in adverse conditions as effectively as possible. The Iranian request to be able to access satellite images of the Copernicus constellation and to be able to use Turkish means therefore makes us understand that the capabilities of situational awareness (situational awareness) and surveillance/reconnaissance Iranian ones are not up to par with Western ones.
Rather strange for a country that wants to become a regional power and intends to equip itself with atomic weapons by possessing the largest arsenal of ballistic missiles in the Middle East. There situational awareness space, precisely from the point of view of ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, is particularly important to identify targets with precision and to have those early warning capabilities (in jargon early warning) which are essential for responding promptly to an attack. Evidently Iran has not yet reached a technological level that can achieve this type of situational awareness.
Even more curious was to observe that Iran, that is, a country that includes a thriving drone industry of various types (as we know they are used by Russia in Ukraine and by the Houthis in the Red Sea), does not have UAVs capable of carrying out search and rescue missions, or rather, does not have UAVs equipped with sensors capable of being used for this too particular type of mission, in particular Ir (infrared) ones.
The threat posed by the Iranian armed forces has many times been exaggerated for reasons of political gain, and although it should not be underestimated, this incident allows us to give a more realistic picture of it.
