What Are The Immediate Lessons Identified From The Iranian Navy 'Friendly Fire' Incident?

The news has broken overnight that an Iranian live firing exercise in the Arabian Gulf appears to have gone disastrously wrong. Media reports indicate that a missile, fired by the Iranian frigate Jamaran appears to have struck an Iranian support vessel (the Konarak), leaving 19 dead sailors and the ship probably a total loss.

At the outset it is important to be clear that this is a tragedy for the families of the sailors involved. It is a timely reminder of the incredibly dangerous nature of maritime operations, and how things can quickly go horribly wrong in a very short time.

The incident raises several issues and concerns that are worthy of further consideration. Firstly, it once again highlights that there appear to be significant command and control challenges within the Iranian Armed Forces which could be a real problem at times of heightened crisis.

Earlier this year the shooting down of Ukrainian Airlines flight 752 in January by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was put down to confusion following the aftermath of the assassination of Qaseem Soleimani. But this incident, involving Iranian Armed Forces and not the IRGC again highlights that both sets of organisations appear to have procedures in place that make it possible for live missiles to be fired without full checks being made.

In the context of the region this is concerning because it indicates that it is possible for local commanders on the ground to carry out live firings without full checks being made, and potentially without being in full understanding of the local surface picture, or the whereabouts of friendly shipping.

One has to ask what this means for other circumstances, given the frequency by which Iranian forces (both Naval and IRGC) harass and exercise exceptionally unprofessional conduct near coalition vessels, whether a local commander could carry out a similar firing by accident or mistake, or even on purpose.

The continued lack of a robust chain of command, and the ease by which firings can occur, and local units carry out at times extremely dangerous activity at sea does raise concerns about the safety for shipping in the region as a whole.

It is also a reminder of the inherent danger of conducting high seas firings, particularly in very crowded waterways. Range safety is essential, and understanding what is on the range, and what has the potential, even in an extremely limited way to obstruct it and pose a risk is key. Anyone who has ever fired on Tipner Range in Portsmouth will be well aware of the frustrations caused by having to stop firing while yet another yacht sailed blithely near the danger area.

The UK has not conducted high seas firings against target ships for many years, but they are always extremely complex and risky ventures to do. Firing a live missile is fraught with danger – having been on the bridge of a Type 23 conducting a Seawolf firing when the round blew up seconds after launch, Humphrey is only too aware of what can go wrong, even in the most benign of conditions.

Testing means launching a missile and then hoping that it doesn’t explode or go wrong or roman candle out of control (as happened to the RussianNavy a few years ago) and that it then finds the right target and sinks it as intended.

These tests are also important to ensure that weapons work as planned. No amount of scientific research or theoretical concepts can ever remove the doubt that on the day, a CO could order a missile fired in order to strike a target, only for it not to work. In WW2 there were huge problems with torpedos not detonating on all sides, a reminder that complex advanced munitions often experience a lot of design challenges that only live firing can identify. 

The Royal Navy along with allies has traditionally used the deep north Atlantic waters for this task. Off the coast of the UK in various exercise areas are the watery graves of many former RN vessels, sacrificed to test weapons against. There is something moving about seeing the footage of a former home and vessel being torn to pieces in such a violent way. It is for the this reason that the RN is often reluctant to publish many images of test firings, particularly the final moments of a ships life, due to the impact it may have on her former crew.

When a target ship is used, there is a desire to get as much value as possible from it, and due to the nature of the tests, ships can often sustain a surprising amount of punishment. As they have been stripped of all flammable materials, explosives, fuel and other items that can cause secondary damage, the ship is essentially an inert lump of metal. This means that they can take a surprising amount of punishment before they sink.  Accounts suggest some ships can take multiple impacts of anti-ship missiles, gunfire and torpedos before finally succumbing to their injuries.

The US Navy has even sunk an aircraft carrier (USS AMERICA) to test the effect of missiles on these class of ships, although the findings naturally remain highly classified. Just one picture has ever leaked out of the death of the AMERICA (below).

The purpose of these sorts of firings is to confirm that missiles are working as intended, that their guidance systems, telemetry and other associated systems do what is expected of them, and that there is confidence that warshots drawn from the stockpile will work. They are also a good chance to use up stocks of missiles approaching their life end, where the warhead life is almost over and where it is not economical to extend it.

These firings are closely supervised in the UK to ensure civilian and wider safety. The MOD has a total of nine 12m long range safety craft capable of 28kts in service, operated under contract to ensure that where necessary the range can be safely patrolled and secured – these vessels, newly built, form part of a wider package of support craft operated on behalf of MOD doing many roles that the RN or RMAS used to carry out.

As the ships sink, they do so far from land or maritime and aviation traffic, and hopefully away from posing a risk to others. By contrast conducting live firing trials in the Gulf always poses a challenge, with significantly more constrained room to manoeuvre, far more merchant traffic around and the risk of things potentially going wrong in often contested waterways.

There is too a risk that in conducting these firings, poor communication, bad judgement or a willingness to fire when the range wasn’t known to be clear will potentially produce very tragic outcomes, and potentially an international incident. This firing demonstrates that things can and do go wrong very quickly at sea.

But it is important to not get cocky and assume that this can only happen to navies that we don’t get on with. Tragic accidents happen far more regularly than people perhaps realise, and act as a reminder that operating at sea is inherently a very dangerous business. The Royal Navy, US Navy and other NATO navies will all have had their fair share of near misses, things going wrong and on occasion fatalities as a result of something not going right on the day. We should be wary of assuming that somehow this couldn’t happen to us.

One final thought is that there is a risk in some quarters that people will see a fundamentally mission killed ship and assume that this means all ships are vulnerable. As noted most test firings occur against inert targets, not active vessels. There is considerable difference in the ease of firing a missile against a hulk waiting for it, or against a warship closed up and expecting to come under fire.

There are a whole raft of hard and soft kill countermeasures available to prevent missiles seeping through and hitting their targets. For instance, the Royal Navy has invested heavily over many years in ‘soft kill’ measures like ESM and decoys, which rightly remain almost entirely outside of the public eye, and for good reasons. Similarly there is also a range of more visible systems like Phalanx CIWS or anti-missile systems like Sea Viper and Sea Ceptor designed to intercept incoming missiles.

While this incident may have demonstrated that the C802 missile can hit (either intentionally or by accident) an Iranian warship not expecting to come under fire, it tells us very little about the effect the missile could have on a ship closed up at action stations. We must be hasty in drawing too many conclusions, although it is likely many questions will be asked about how the missile ended up hitting the Konarak, and what went so badly wrong.

In summary, the sea is an extremely dangerous place, and awful things can happen very quickly. This incident is testament to the need to invest as much in training, communication, effective command and control and other measures intended to keep ships operating safely and effectively as it is about the need to put ever more visually impressive guns onboard a vessel.