Russian GLONASS Satellites Guided Iranian Missiles to US Target in Iraq

Iran used Russian GLONASS satellites to navigate its missiles while striking United States military bases in Iraq.

The use of satellite guidance enabled precision strike on January 8- said to be with an accuracy of 10 meters- which has surprised US and Israeli specialists, Israeli news site, Debka File reported on Monday.

The site quoted unnamed Russian sources as saying, "Russian military sources said that, during the Iranian missile attack on two U.S. air bases in Iraq, on January 8, it was Russia that provided support to Iran. Russian sources claim they had given Iranians access to the Russian global navigation network, GLONASS, which is the Russian equivalent of the American GPS system.”

The site further said that according to Russian sources, 19 missiles were fired from the territory of Iran, 17 of which hit the targets."

Iran has been silent as to the location from where it fired the missiles and the distance they covered before hitting their targets. However, Pentagon briefings to US media said all the staff in the base had been evacuated to underground shelters as they had a few minutes of advance notice.

The  (Iranian) response was a high-observable attack using ballistic missile forces - as opposed to a low-observable attack using terrain-reading cruise missiles and suicide drones like the one which was used in the Saudi refinery attack, Iran’s Press TV news outlet said.

American radar and satellite reconnaissance would have spotted the attack within a minute of it being launched but  the US choose not to counter it by launching anti-missile systems which are based in a number of locations around the Middle East.

The US would most certainly have located the source of the Iranian missiles but did not sent warplanes to destroy the launch systems perhaps to avoid an escalation.