Iranian nuclear scientist killed in bomb blast

(CNN) -- A blast in a Tehran neighborhood reportedly killed a nuclear scientist Wednesday morning, the latest in a string of attacks against such scientists in the country that Iran has blamed on Israel.
A motorcyclist placed a magnetic bomb under Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan's Peugeot 405, the country's IRNA news agency said.

The blast wounded two others who were passengers in the car, the news agency said.
Roshan worked at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province, according to another news agency, Fars.

Natanz, which is said to have 8,000 centrifuges in operation, is one of two facilities that are enriching uranium in the country. This week, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency identified the second in the mountains of Qom province.
The Wednesday attack followed a similar mode of operation as others that have killed nuclear scientists in the capital city.

On January 12, 2010, Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed in a blast when an assailant stuck a bomb under his car. Officials later arrested a person in connection with that incident.

In November 2010, nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari was killed in a blast where, again, a bomb was stuck under a car by someone on a motorcycle.

"The bomb used in the (Wednesday) explosion was a magnetic bomb, the same kind that were used in previous assassinations of Iranian scientists. And the fact is that this is the work of the Zionists," Fars news agency quoted Tehran's Deputy Governor Safarali Baratloo as saying.
Iran uses the term 'Zionist' to refer to Israel.

The nation has been engaged in a war of words with Israel, whom it accuses of trying to destabilize the republic.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is for energy purposes only, disputing allegations by the United States and other countries that it is trying to develop a weapons program.
Ali Ansari, a professor at the Institute for Iranian Studies at Scotland's University of St Andrews, said more information needs come out about the victims to help determine who's perpetrating the attacks.

Some have speculated that the victims were members of the opposition movement and could have been targeted by internal forces, Ansari said.

"But if it is true that Israel is behind it, Iran should make a formal complaint to the U.N. so they can get an answer from Israel," Ansari said."Because if they really think some other country is killing their nuclear experts, why are they not giving them more protection?"
Iran's 1st Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said the attacks would not stop the country from achieving its scientific goals, IRNA reported.

"Iranian scientists become more determined to take steps in line with the aspirations of the Islamic Republic in spite of terrorist operations," Rahimi told the news agency.

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BBC:
The US has condemned the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in a car bomb attack in north Tehran.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said the US "had absolutely nothing to do" with the attack.

Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, who worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, died along with the driver of the car.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US.

Both deny any involvement.

Washington and its allies suspect Tehran of secretly trying to develop a nuclear weapons capacity but Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.

"The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this. We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like this," said Mr Vietor.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization described the killings as "a heinous act".

Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said on state TV that the bomb attack would not stop "progress" in the country's nuclear programme.

Mr Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, was a university lecturer who supervised a department at the Natanz plant, the semi-official news agency Fars reported.

Iranian officials said two men on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car during the morning rush hour and detonated it outside a university campus.

CNN's Shirzad Bozorgmehr and Lateef Mungin contributed to this

Aviation Week report on RQ-170 Sentinel loss

AVIATION WEEK/BILL SWEETMAN

The first clear pictures of the center-line reconnaissance bay on Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel show that the small unmanned aircraft was carrying sensor balls mounted in an internal compartment with specially treated transparent panels—developed for the F-22—when one of them crashed in Iran on Dec. 4.

The new pictures were taken at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan on Sept. 30. The images show that a wheels-up landing would have inflicted massive damage to the bay and sensor package.. That package is “similar to some of the podded electro-optical/infra-red [EO/IR]systems” used by other non-stealthy aircraft and unmanned aerial systems, says a veteran black-world engineer with insight into U.S. UAS programs.

The accident was caused by a “lost [data] link, followed by, or simultaneous with, another malfunction,” says a second official involved with the program. Putting the loss into perspective, “We’ve lost over 50 MQ-1s [Predators] and 9s [Reapers], so this should not be a surprise.”

The U.S. Air Force squadron that flew Sentinels was activated in 2005 and the stealthy, unmanned aircraft was first photographed at Kandahar in 2007. Early RQ-170 operations were conducted from both Afghanistan—with CIA involvement—and South Korea.

The RQ-170s were brought back to the U.S. in 2009, re-equipped with a full-motion video (FMV) camera, and then redeployed to Afghanistan, say USAF intelligence officials. At that time it was operated by the USAF 432nd Wing’s 30th Reconnaissance Sqdn. (RS), then at the Tonopah Test Range Airport in the northwest corner of the USAF Nevada Test and Training Range. The wing also flies the Predator and Reaper, and the Tonopah base was once the clandestine home of the F-117 stealth fighter.

Prior to refitting, the aircraft carried a long-range, EO/IR camera thought by U.S. analysts to be used for monitoring missile tests and other activities in sparsely populated eastern Iran.

The RQ-170’s operational altitude of 50,000 ft. gives it an advantage over other lower-cost UAVs and the manned RC-135 Cobra Ball (for monitoring foreign missile tests) that are restricted to about 30,000 ft. and below. However, the Sentinel is not a high-end, very low-observable stealth design with sophisticated sensors. It is instead a robust, reduced-signature, sensor truck designed to maintain high sortie rates.

Other stealth design features include a variant of the “toothpick” leading-edge profile developed for the B-2. Stealth dictates sharp leading edges, but bluff shapes are better for aerodynamics and stability. The compromise on the RQ-170 and B-2 is to make the edges sharp at their ends, where more radar scattering is most likely, and more blunt at the mid-point.

Initially, flights are thought to have been conducted along the borders of Afghanistan. avoiding the airspace of neighboring countries. However, after adding shorter-range FMV, the aircraft operated in Pakistan’s airspace to monitor the compound of Osama bin Laden, and later over Iran, defense officials say.

The RQ-170 has a dual history of operations for both the CIA and Air Force.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE AT AVIATION WEEK

Everything you wanted to know about UAS - but were afraid to ask:

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Iran enriching uranium at fortified underground complex

BBC:
Iran has begun enriching uranium at a heavily fortified underground site, the UN's nuclear watchdog has confirmed.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said medium-level enrichment had begun at the Fordo plant, in northern Iran.

Iran has said it plans to carry out uranium enrichment there - but insists this is for purely peaceful purposes.

The West argues Tehran is building a nuclear weapons capacity. The US called the work at Fordo a "further escalation" in the dispute.

The existence of the facility near Qom, in the north of the country, only came to light after it was identified by Western intelligence agencies in September 2009.

All nuclear material in the (Fordo) facility remains under the agency's containment and surveillance”

Tehran said it began the project in 2007, but the IAEA believes design work started in 2006.

BBC Iran correspondent James Reynolds says the facility has attracted plenty of attention and suspicion.

It is underground, heavily fortified and protected by the armed forces - making it a very difficult target for air strikes.

The US and Israel have refused to rule out attacks on Iranian facilities.

On Monday a spokeswoman for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Gill Tudor, said the agency could "confirm that Iran has started the production of uranium enriched up to 20%".

She added that "all nuclear material in the facility remains under the agency's containment and surveillance".

Iran insists enriched uranium is needed to make isotopes to treat cancers. But analysts say 20% enrichment is an important step towards making uranium weapons-grade.

In Washington, state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said such a level of enrichment was "a further escalation" of the Iranians' "ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations", and suggested "a different kind of a nuclear programme".

Bell building Magellan in Amarillo.

Image: Bell B412

Bell to build new commercial helicopter in Amarillo

Breaking with its recent past, Bell Helicopter plans to produce its next new commercial helicopter, code named Magellan, at its military aircraft plant in Amarillo.

The decision to build the new aircraft model in Amarillo, rather than at Bell's commercial aircraft production facilities in Mirabel, Canada was announced today in an email to employees from Bell CEO John Garrison.

Bell manufactures gear boxes, rotorblades and other commercial aircraft components in Fort Worth.

Magellan is Bell's program to develop a new medium capacity helicopter, probably capable of hauling about 15 people and with long-range capacity to get to offshore oil rigs. The company officially launched the program a year ago, with no fanfare, but is expected to detail the aircraft's projected capabilities at the annaul Heli Expo trade show that will be held in Dallas next month.

The following is the text of Garrison's message:

Following a company-wide assessment to determine the best use of our production facilities to meet all of our future requirements, we have decided to conduct final assembly, production test flight and delivery of the Magellan aircraft at our Amarillo, Texas facility.

Amarillo was selected principally based on capacity. Our operating plans call for commercial aircraft production in Mirabel to continue to ramp sharply in the years ahead in anticipation that the commercial market will return to growth in the near future, while military production in Amarillo is projected to decline with lower V-22 requirements with the second multi-year contract.

Cross-leveling our capacity in this case to support our balanced business requirements is the best solution for the company as a whole, ensuring that all our production centers remain engaged, and driving lowest overall costs in order to remain competitive in both our commercial and military markets.

This is not a change in our manufacturing and final assembly strategy. Mirabel remains our principle commercial aircraft assembly center and commercial airframe design center of excellence; and Amarillo remains our military assembly and delivery center of excellence. Engineers in Mirabel assigned to the Magellan development team will continue that work.

In a company memo circulated to its employees in January 2011, Bell officially acknowledged Magellan and said it was a follow-on to “Project X.” Many observers believe the rotorcraft builder is working on a medium-twin helicopter to replace the venerable 412–whose basic airframe dates back to the early 1960s and the single-engine UH-1 Huey–and that this new twin would be aimed primarily at the superheated deepwater offshore oil-and-gas market but has both civil & military applications.

Related: Bell betting 1 Billion on new helicopter R&D