The article says that the problem is “frost”, but doesn’t mention brittleness.
Could that mean that frost build-up on the wings or on the electronics undercuts their effectiveness?
Thanks.
Was. It was independent under the Soviets, but no longer. It is now defunct as separate branch. It was folded into the Russian air force by Yeltsin in 1997-1998, when the military was undergoing a drastic downsizing.
I can’t believe the first Google hit lied to me. 
The Iranians very well might have built them based on “home” conditions, and it appears that most of Iran just doesn’t get very cold.
Maybe it never occurred to them that they’d be personally using them in a cold climate but, if true, that is incredibly poor practice. I worked a lot on new product development and testing. We tested everything for combinations of extremes in temperature and humidity (among many other things). I find it hard to believe that they didn’t do that.
I believe it. They were expecting their customers to be other Middle Eastern nations. Who ever thought they’d be selling to the Russians, of all people? That’s like finding a snow mobile market in Tonga.
We tested things to extremes that aren’t going to ever happen on Earth. It’s standard practice in manufacturing engineering. You do that to learn where it breaks.
Hitting Russian bombers is what Ukraine needs to do. These are not replaceable any time soon.
Eh, ordinary aircraft, like every airliner everywhere use, can’t handle freezing temperatures on their own. They need de-icing facilities. I can see Iran not bothering to include that in their shipments, on the assumption that their buyer would have their own de-icing equipment. Which Russia probably has, on paper. Just like all of the other military assets they have on paper.
While I have no doubt there are parts of Iran that get beyond frigid, do they get to Ukraine-in-December-and-into-winter levels of cold at relevant altitudes and other conditions (for example, even if it gets just as cold in the mountains, such conditions might have other significant differences that would diminish the value of testing)? I wouldn’t presume that a regional power would test anything beyond its own immediate sphere of influence. Because there would presumably be no need to, because it would cost money to do so, because any changes to function in extraterritorial extremes would likewise cost even more money (and for what benefit?), and because it simply might not be feasible to. Where were Iranian developers going to go to perform testing for Ukraine-in-winter-like conditions? And with what strings attached from whatever host regime?
Most of Ukraine doesn’t get very cold. The conditions along the front to date have been hovering around freezing with a few forays to -10 or so. Ground is barely frozen. Ukrainian winters are not Moscow winters, which are themselves not arctic winters. Average temps in Kyiv in January are high -1 low -7, and a degree or two higher in Dec and Feb. Granted, record lows are into what even we western Canadians describe as fucking cold (all-time low in Kyiv is -40), but that’s rare and so far this year there haven’t been any extreme temperatures at all. Possibly because we on this side of the globe have been stealing all the cold air, low of -30 here tonight.
Can’t you do this in a testing facility?
It gets cold as planes fly high. Nothing new there. The issue is on the ground when the plane (or drone) has been idle in freezing temps. Add in snow or freezing rain.
ISTM these can all be tested in a facility made to replicate those conditions. We have wind tunnels to test airflow without flying a plane. Why not cold conditions?
Celcius, or Fahrenheit?
Yes!!
All they can hit, since civilians don’t shoot back.
On the general topic of “how cold does it ever get in Iran?” my Tehran-born wife would be angry with me if I did not point out that Iran is a very large country with a wide variety of terrain, geography, and climate, including some of the best ski resorts in the region.
This, for example, is Dizin.
Now whether the thinner air of higher-altitude drone testing might counterbalance the value of cold-weather flight, I don’t know. But there’s certainly the opportunity to test-fly drones in snowy conditions.
More discussion on Iranian climate would be a hijack, I think, so if anyone wants to continue we should carve it off. But for now, let’s just stipulate that Iran is not wall-to-wall desert.
To someone in the Middle East, that still sounds pretty damn cold.
With insufficient clothing, and possibly being pretty stationary, you’ll end up shivering uncontrollably, with marked loss of faculties, within hours.