U.S. Precision-Strike Missiles Cause Wide-Area Damage in Iran’s Lamerd

On the first day of the Iran-U.S. war, three Lockheed Martin Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) detonated above a sports complex and two residential neighborhoods in the southern city of Lamerd. Airwars, a London-based nonprofit that tracks civilian harm from U.S. weapons, mapped the blast sites and found civilian deaths as far as 50 metres (164 feet) from the mid-air explosions, with damage extending more than three times that distance. Iranian officials reported at least 21 civilians killed, among them seven children.

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The PrSM is designed to explode mid-air and disperse tens of thousands of dense tungsten pellets in all directions. Airwars’ analysis of photos, videos and satellite imagery showed buildings, streets and vehicles pock-marked in a pattern consistent with such pellet dispersion. One blast over the Shahid Naimi Sports Hall was linked to damage at a school roughly 557 feet away, while a pellet that struck a two-year-old child traveled under a mile from its point of detonation, according to geolocation measurements by Airwars and verification by the Associated Press.

LA Times

U.S. Central Command confirmed that PrSMs had been fired into Iran but denied any launch into Lamerd on the day of the strikes. A spokesperson stated that the footage from Lamerd suggested an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile, not a U.S. PrSM, and reiterated that U.S. forces do not target civilians. On March 1, Central Command posted an image it said depicted a PrSM being launched during the Iran operation, though it again denied responsibility for the Lamerd attacks. The Pentagon has since signed a contract exceeding $4 billion with Lockheed Martin to increase PrSM production, while the United Kingdom and Australia have also committed funds to procure the weapon.

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• “You would be hard-pressed to find a reason to use the PrSM in a densely populated area,” — Michael Meier

Associated Press