Meet the Quds1 cruise missile. Made in Yemen?

"On September 14, several explosions rocked the Khurais oilfield as well as the Abqaiq refinery, one of Saudi Arabia’s most vital petrochemical installations. Several hours later, the Houthis claimed that they had targeted both facilities with ten drones as part of their “Balance of Deterrence” campaign.

What made this attack different from other recorded Houthi drone attacks was not only the unprecedented amount of material damage caused but also lingering doubt about the nature and the attribution of the attack. First, a video allegedly showing flying objects entering Kuwaiti airspace led to speculation that like a previous “Houthi” drone attack this strike might actually have originated in Iraq or even Iran. While the video remains unverified, the fact that the Kuwaiti government launched a probe into the issue lends some credence to the idea that something might have happened over Kuwait that day. Speculation about the origins of the attack was further fueled by a tweet by Mike Pompeo in which he claimed that there was no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.

Then the question arose whether drones had been used at all, or whether the attack might in fact have been a missile strike. Previous Houthi drone strikes against oil facilities tended to result in quite limited damage which could be an indication that a different weapons system was used this time. Indeed, Aramco came to the conclusion that its facilities were attacked by missiles. Even more curious, several pictures began to emerge on social media purportedly showing the wreckage of a missile in the Saudi desert. While the images appear real, neither the date the photos were taken nor their location can be verified. Social media users quickly claimed the images showed a crashed Iranian-made Soumar cruise missile. The Soumar and its updated version, the Hoveyzeh, are Iran’s attempts at reverse-engineering the Soviet-designed KH-55 cruise missile, several of which the country illegally imported from Ukraine in the early 2000s. Others claimed it was the Quds 1, a recently unveiled Houthi cruise missile often claimed to be a rebranded Soumar."  armscontrolwonl

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TTG raised the issue of whether or not this wave of strikes was done by UAVs or cruise missiles.  IMO this cruise missile could be built in Yemen with Iranian assistance.   I am very interested in the question of what the actual vector of the attacks was in this case.  pl

/www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1208062/meet-the-quds-1/

Comments

[Johnb]

My thanks JPB. Would they be more vulnerable to an explosive force than a penetrative force.?

[Dave Good]

PRV s are devices too small too shoe up at the resolution of satellite photos used here.
Of more concern is the complete absencr of what you would expect theday after an attack like this. Where are the emergency vehicles? The crews hauling away debris? The goses?poolsof water and foam? There is no one ther

[turcopolier]

Dave Good

Probably hiding.

[JP Billen]

Let us both hope your 50-year prediction does not come to pass. Be optimistic. shoot for two years or six.

[JP Billen]

I would suspect so, but am no expert.

[JP Billen]

Colonel Lang is correct I think. Weren't those photos taken the same day? Probably only key Aramco personnel were allowed in to assess safety concerns prior to clean-up.

[BABAK MAKKINEJAD]

One can apply Bayesian statistics to this.

We must agree that we are not at the start of US-Iran Hostilities.

Nor are we at their final phase.

So we can say that we are at the 25%, 35%, 50%, 65%, 75% point in duration hostilities.

We set the probability of each possibility as 20%.

So far, the hostilities have lasted 40 years.

If we are at 25% point, then 160 more years of hostilities are ahead of us.

If we are at 75% point, we are facing another 13 year until these hostilities are ended.

The average time of hostilities would be (160+ 114+80+62+53)/5 = 77.8 years.

Since 40 years have already past, we are looking at another 38 years.