Russia pledges maintenance of military equipment in Iran

“We are creating a special service center in Iran, to which we have supplied our air defense systems,” Kozhin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

Moscow will set up a global network of its service centers to ensure the maintenance of Russian military equipment. “We have always had a weak point in our defense industry — the maintenance-related issues. We have been able and are able to produce amazing equipment, to sell it, to fulfill a contract, but we had problems with service… A big group of our defense industry producers able to conduct maintenance activities of their equipment has entered the market… It significantly changes the situation, because our centers are being built in almost every region, or they already exist there,” the presidential aide explained.

Legislation has also been put in place to establish such facilities.

In 2007, the delivery contract of Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Iran was signed, but in 2011, Iran sued Russia in the Geneva Arbitration Court after Moscow suspended the contract the year prior, citing a UN Security Council resolution for an arms embargo on Tehran.

In April 2015, Russia resumed talks on S-300 deliveries following a framework agreement on the landmark JCPOA nuclear deal. The S-300s has meanwhile assumed combat duty.

This week, the Israeli Air Force published a video of the apparent destruction of the Russian-made S-1 by the Spike NLOS designed by the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the video shows how the man-portable fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missile and anti-personnel missile with a tandem-charge HEAT warhead, launched on May 10 destroys a vehicle with military equipment.

In the explanation, it is specified that the destroyed materiel was a SA22, by NATO classification. According to the Russian classification, this is a self-propelled anti-aircraft missile system Pantsir-S1.

Israel says the missile system manufactured in Russia belonged to the Syrian army, but the British Daily Mail reported that the air defense complex had belonged to Iran.

The ex-commander of the Russian 4th brigade of the Air Force and Air Defense, Lieutenant-General Valery Gorbenko said the destruction may have been due to the human factor. “We can not exclude the possibility that the complex was not combat ready, perhaps there were no crew at that time, and as the missile was unexpected the complex could not repel the attack,” he said.

According to rumours on social media however, some dummies were destroyed.