In April 2006, Iran successfully test-fired a new high-speed torpedo called Hoot. It was test-fired again last July, along with various other missiles.
“The torpedo is capable of destroying the largest warships and any other vessel on the surface or beneath the water, and split it into two parts,” according to an Iranian Naval Forces official.
Technical specifications (pdf) for components of the Hoot torpedo are presented in an Iranian document (in Farsi) that was provided to Secrecy News. The document appears to have been produced by a subunit of Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization, according to a colleague who reviewed it.
“Only Iran and another country possess the technology to build this [torpedo],” the Iranian press reported after last July’s test, apparently referring to Russia and its Shkval torpedo. On 4 April 2006, Izvestiya Moscow said that the Hoot resembles the Shkval technically and in appearance, and that Shkval torpedoes may have found their way to Iran via China, where they were delivered in the mid-1990s. But Iranian officials insist the Hoot is a completely original production.
“From a tactical point of view,” said Rear Admiral Morteza Safari of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps naval forces, “what is of critical importance is that we are everywhere, while we are nowhere!” (Fars News Agency, July 10, 2008, via OSC).
“Let me briefly say that the intelligence that the Americans have about us is very different from the intelligence that they do not have about us,” he went on. “What I mean is that they have only little information, and there is a lot of intelligence that they are not aware of.”
DNA synthesis and export controls remain the primary regulatory safeguards against de novo production of harmful biological agents, yet governance frameworks lack the situational awareness and enforcement capacity to keep pace with rapidly falling technical barriers.
Called today to speak on behalf of U.S. science and technology, Dr. Jedidah Isler, astrophysicist, educator, strategist, policy-maker, and science communicator, will provide constructive, nonpartisan feedback to the House Committee’s hearing “American Global Competitiveness at 250: Legislative Proposals to Secure U.S. Technology Leadership.”
“Federal data and access to it is not a partisan issue. It is a people issue. Our country cannot achieve greatness without access to the data that measure what we value, who we are, and where we’re heading.”
The United States’ biosecurity governance system is structurally incapable of detecting and responding to certain classes of threats. U.S. biosecurity tools have not kept pace with technological advancements or a changing threat landscape.