"These new missiles enjoys supersonic speed and cannot be tracked or intercepted by enemy," the commander said, adding that missiles can hit targets 300km away with high-precision.
He added that the IRGC will provide the media with the footages of the new missile, named "The Persian Gulf", in coming days.
FNA will release several photographs of this missile in hours.
Elsewhere, Jafari also announced that the IRGC has just finished designing and developing long-range passive radars and will soon start production, adding that this new radar system covers within a 1,100km-radius.
"These radars would remarkably increase the IRGC's capability in identifying sea-based targets," he noted.
Iran has been pushing an arms development program in recent years in a bid to reach self-sufficiency. Tehran launched its arms development program during the 1980-88 Iraqi imposed war on Iran to compensate for a US weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own jet fighters and armored vehicles as well as radar-avoiding missiles and other high-tech weapons.
Yet, Iranian officials have always stressed that the country's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country.
Anytime an article is using a title that says "
Iranian Ballistic Missile Scores a Direct Hit on a Target Ship" I am interested. With that said, I'm not sure the anti-ship capability of a missile is being demonstrated well when the target ship is stationary.
Iran demonstrated today a new type of short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) based on the Fatah 110 platform, capable of hitting targets at a range of up to 250-300 km with high precision. During an operational demonstration the missile was fired at a target vessel floating in the Persian Gulf, scoring a direct hit. Accordingly, the new missile was named ‘Persian Gulf (Khalij Fars).
The missile apparently uses mid-course inertial guidance (INS) and an electro-optical homing seeker to achieve terminal attack precision. Previous versions of the Fateh 110 (also designated M-600 in Syrian use) used a tipped nose, while the current model has a rounded nose presumably housing the guidance kit. As the new version demonstrated in this test, the accuracy of the new missile is far better than the 0.3% of the range, attributed for the earlier model of Fateh 110 which relied only on inertial guidance. This type of solid-rocket propelled missile can carry a 450 kg warhead.
Iran’s Fateh 110 is based on the Chinese DF-11A SRBM, and China has a whole bunch of DF-11A SRBMs. A few thoughts.
- Iranian ballistic missile technology continues to improve. Iran continues to invest in the improvement of their ballistic missile inventory and capability. Iran is exploiting the range and speed of SLBMs for maximum effectiveness. It is unclear what the top speed of a Fateh 110 is when on terminal descent, but point defenses like SeaRAM or CIWS are unlikely to stop this missile.
- The Fateh 110 is a credible weapon system. The simplicity of the system insures low cost and high lethality. That may also make the missile easier to counter, but the requirement that an enemy must counter an attack by a low cost weapon system is an important indicator that a weapon system is well designed. Iran's shorter range approach to anti-ship ballistic missiles removes a lot of the difficulty China faces with the DF-21D.
- The old art of saturation attacks is not lost on the Iranians, indeed it can be described as appearing to be the tactic intended in many of their capabilities. Given the limited stores of defensive missiles on ships, no Navy can afford to get caught up in an equal exchange of missile rounds with Iran as their inventory continues to grow. It's basically the old Soviet saturation model, eventually the number of missiles the Soviets would deploy would overwhelm the defense.
As ballistic missiles become more common as strike weapons against ships, the question isn't whether the US will be capable of countering these weapons - our investments to do exactly that are sound. The question is, how many other Navies will be capable of countering these threats? AEGIS is the most tested missile defense system in the world. Where does that leave the rest of the world?
Link to the video:
http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8911...18V0708958.wmv
The weapon shown is a modified Fateh-110 missile, which was better known as a short range surface-to-surface ballistic missile. In the video however, the missile's nose looked different as it lacked a pointed tip, replaced by a rather circular edge. One website claims that this missile actually uses electro-optical guidance in the terminal phase (stumbled upon it in a defense-related blog: Iran... Posing A Credible Threat To The U.S. Navy (Missile) : Satnews Publishers). Other than the different nose, which might explain the incorporation of an optical guidance kit, the video footage also seems to show the missile's own-view as it homes into the target. Electro-optical terminal guidance or not, I must admit that I was startled by this "ballistic" missile's deadly accuracy. However, we must take note that the target was a stationary barge. A 300km range missile travelling at Mach 3 (as claimed by IRGC) would take approximately 5 minutes to reach its target. A target warship travelling at standard 30 knots would be able to cover around 5 kilometers in that time.---------------------------------Quite regularly there are news items in the press about new missile developments inIran. In fact, some of the listings of these weapons enumerate myriads of projects but with scant information about their characteristics, capabilities and performance. Furthermore, the exotic names and numbers tend only to confuse the reader, particularly as some are probably only different names to the same project.
It was thus refreshing, so to speak, to actually see an Iranian TV program which in fact did show the experimental launching of one such weapon - claimed to be the Fateh-110, and preceded by views of the missile on the launcher.
In itself this test launching is not an earth shaking event. The Iranian effort to develop solid fuel technology started during its war with Iraq and is well documented. This effort strives to replace the ubiquitous liquid propellant technology (to be found in many third world countries and which is a legacy of the Soviet Union's largess in handing down old SCUD missiles to just about anybody) with a more convenient and flexible technology. Also well documented are the origins of this switch in technology, prompted mostly by the PRC.
What was interesting in these photos was the missile's configuration itself and some potential capabilities this configuration will provide. This missile is purported to be a surface to surface tactical missile with "exceptional accuracy", according to the Iranian commentators. However, a close scrutiny of the three sets of fins on the missile shows that only the front ones are movable. The two rear sets, adjacent to each other, are in fact solidly bolted down to the missile's body. Another interesting feature surfaces upon closer examination of the rear end and the nozzle of this single staged missile. The nozzle has no visible thrust vector controls such as jet vanes, control jets or other means. While in theory secondary injection could be employed (and not be visible) it is most unlikely to be employed in this product of a fledgling missile effort. In other words the initial stage of the flight, possibly all the way to motor burnout is unguided, requiring passive aerodynamic stability. This is possible since in the Iranian movie the missile fairly leaps out of the launcher, which is set at about 70 degrees to the horizontal.
Here however comes the interesting part. With fuel burnout the CG (center of gravity) of the missile will move forward. Coupled with the initial (during launch) required margin of stability, the missile will become exceptionally aerodynamically stable during its free flight phase, a characteristic which will militate against adequate trajectory control (necessary to achieve that "exceptional accuracy") by those puny fins on the front. A reduction of the aerodynamic static stability could solve this problem and apparently the designers of this missile, whoever exactly they were, chose an original solution, to best of our knowledge never exercised in that particular way, before. A close examination of the rear of the missile shows that apparently the rearward set of fins is attached to the rest of the missile by a single set of four bolts (one for each fin) and that there is a space between the cylindrical envelope (that serves as the seat of the rear fins) and the rocket nozzle exit. It is quite possible that at motor burnout this section, rear fins and all, is separated (probably by the actuation of explosive bolts) from the rest of the missile and slides back to fall off. This scenario is supported by the existence of a cable conduit, clearly visible running along the missile body and ending right where are the bolts holding the rear fins.
The resulting new aerodynamic configuration will suffice to give the missile a much better trajectory control, with terminal accuracy limited only by the quality of the guidance inputs - inertial or GPS - which may justify the claims of the Iranians. Furthermore, this could be achieved by the usage of the fairly small fins on the nose with the attendant advantages of smaller actuators and lesser power requirements.
However, the better trajectory control has several other advantages. When flying a pure ballistic trajectory, the range of the FATEH-110 missile is generally given (In the literature) as approximately 170 kms, which also gives an apogee of more than 60 kms. If however at some point after burnout (but most probably after coming back down to an altitude of about 8 kms) the missile is flown in an aerodynamic gliding (coasting) mode, exchanging its excess velocity and altitude to aerodynamic lift, some 50 kms can be added to the range. Furthermore, the aerodynamic trajectory will complicate prediction of missile's target and flight path and make interception more difficult. Finally, for a small price in range, such a missile could maneuver in the lower atmosphere, further complicating the problem of interception.
