Military news

For the past two-plus years, the Iranian Army ground forces have been engaged in the process of reorganizing their forces away from a division-centric, to brigade-centric model. This is hardly a novel concept - Iran follows in the footsteps of both the Spanish, and U.S armies. However, instead of producing medium-weight expeditionary forces (i.e Stryker brigades), this transformation ass been geared toward fighting a defensive war against modern maneuver army. Until recently the army has maintained the same division-centric model it inherited from the imperial Iranian army, and fought their war with Iraq with. These were comprised of three combat brigades with the usual range of divisional-level support company/battalions. The purpose of the divisional staff was to coordinate combined arms operations between the brigades and support assets. Now, however, brigades rather than divisions are the basic combat unit capable of carrying out sustained combat operations. On Army Day 2012 Genera...

Located in north-eastern Iran, the 30th ID is among the smallest and lightest of the regular army divisions. The divisional headquarters along with the 1st brigade is based in Gorgan, in the Golestan province, while the 2nd brigade is found in Sari in the neighboring Mazandaran province. The infantry brigade in Bojnourd was, until very recently, attached to the 30th ID, but now operates independently. The current commander is Sartip Dovom (aka Brig. Gen. 2nd class) Mansour-Khumri. (Footnote 1) While it is unconfirmed at this point, there are possible indicators that the division is under pressure to relocate their garrison out of the city in order to relieve urban congestion. (Footnote 2) Operationally, the brigade falls into the army's eastern theater. Geography, as well as the lack of any high-density weapons like self-propelled artillery, tanks, or APC/IFVs suggests that the 30th ID is a second-tier unit designed to reinforce units like the 77th MID. The first brigade is located...

 Stylistic note: Since I've used a numbering system (i.e (1), (2), (3)) for both footnotes, and for annotating GE Imagery, I'd better codeify a new way to use them. Footnotes are designated by - unsuprisingly - the label "Footnote" inside the parenthesis, while the imagery annotations will not. The annotations will also likely all be grouped in the same location and be fairly self-evident Galen --- The newly-formed 130th independent infantry brigade (IIB) is one of the byproducts of the Army's 2011/2012 reorganization. Originally attached to the 30th infantry division (ID), the 130th IIB is based out of the city of Bojnourd in the North Khorasan province; its base located in the north-central part of the city itself. This means the brigade falls into the Army's eastern theater of operations tasked with defending Iran's Afghan/Pakistan border.  According to General Pourdastan, current commander of the Artesh's ground forces, this reorganization was aime...

The third* brigade of the 16th armored division in Western Iran, based out of Hamedan, was previously obscurred by low-quality imagery. A recent Google Earth update, with imagery from June 2011, now shows the base in relatively high-resolution along the 48 road leading northwest out of Hamedan ( 34.852852°, 48.446303°). * Though due to the recent reorganization which saw the formation of the 216th IAB it must be remembered that it would now be more accurate to refer to it as the division's second brigade. For the purposes of continuity, the former designation will be kept to avoid confusion. Unlike some nations which have a marked distinction between 'tank' and 'mechanized' brigades, Iran has – for the most-part – uniformly equipped their armored divisions with brigades of equal strength. The 16th AD is an example of this, rather than concentrating their tank battalions in full-strength brigades (i.e with multiple tank battalions) the army has favored an even distri...

The 38th independent armored brigade is based out of the city of Torbat Jam, east of Mashhad and close to the Afghan border. The current commander is Sartip Dovom (Brig. Gen. 2nd Class) Hamidreza Asadi. According to it's former commander, the brigade functions as a quick-reaction force tasked with responding to “infiltration” of enemy forces. In this manner, the 38th IAB would likely serve as a screening force in order to buy time for the mobilization of the 77th MID in Mashhad. This is supported by the geography of Iran's eastern border, which earily resembles the Fulda Gap in Cold-War Germany. Any attacking force wishing to take the key city of Mashhad, and continue westward toward Tehran must pass through two parallel valleys divided by a series of road-less east-west ridge-lines, with their garrison cities of Torbat Heydariyeh, and Torbat Jam (the latter being the more direct route). It may be somewhat poetic that 'Torbat' means "burial place". The base, l...

 Edit (08/23/14) - The following information is outdated and is in process of being updated. ---  I am trying out a slightly different format for this post. Instead of attempting to describe everything in the text and being forced to use clunky directional adjectives (ex: "200 m south-west of the western-most garage), I am now directly annotating the screenshots from Google-Earth which will hopefully allow a much more precise analysis of imagery. --- The 81st armored division is based in Iran's Kermanshah province on their border with Iraq. Naturally they were among the first forces to come into contact with the invading Iraqi army in 1980. At the outbreak of the war, their three brigades in Kermanshah, Sarpol-e Zahab and Eslamabad Gharb were outfitted with Chieftain MBTs and M113 APCs. (1) Today the situation is less clear; some evidence suggests that one of these brigades has been moved to a base nearer to Kermanshah in Bistoon. (2) There are, however, two unaccounted-for ar...

 Revised and Updated - August 23, 2014 --- Index : Abbreviations/Acronyms Introduction 16th Division HQ 116th Brigade 216th Brigade 316th Brigade Footnotes Appendix - Commander IMINT AND Organization Charts Abbreviations/Acronyms : AAA: Anti-Aircraft Artillery ACV: Armored Command Vehicle APC: Armored Personnel Carrier ARV: Armored Recovery Vehicle AVLB: Armored Vehicle-Launched Bridge BG: Brigadier General BG2: Brigadier General, 2nd Class Col.: Colonel Col2: Colonel, 2nd Class MANPADS: Man-Portable Air-Defense System MANPATS: Man-Portable Anti-Tank System PKO: Peace Keeping Operations SPA: Self-Propelled Artillery SPAAG: Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Gun UN: United Nations Introduction : The Iranian Army Ground Forces' 16th Armored Division is based in north-western Iran, and is associated with both the Army's North-West, and Western Regional Operations Headquarters. As of 07/2014, the Division is commanded by BG2 Abdulreza Shahri. Since 2011, in accordance with the Army's...