The development of the "Mesbah 1" (Lantern), a new air defence system for countering aircraft, cruise missiles, choppers and other low-altitude threats, was announced by Iran's defence minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi Wednesday, May 5. It will go into operation in the near future. debkafile's military sources say that if Iran has indeed designed a weapon of this type and quality, it has come up with a powerful answer to US and Israeli cruise missiles, which pose the biggest threat to Iran's nuclear facilities in a military strike.
Vahidi boasted that the Mesbah can fire 4,000 shots a minute, is very precise and can be operated by a smaller crew than similar artillery systems. He claimed it was also effective in tracing and shooting down unmanned aerial vehicles - drones.