Commander of the Iranian Navy Rear Admiral Shahram Irani said that the country’s destroyers have been armed with the indigenous Abu Mahdi naval cruise missiles with a range of more than 1,000 km.
Rear Admiral Irani stated that the country’s destroyers had received the missiles and that the delivery would be officially announced soon, Fars News Agency (FNA) reported.
In August 2020, Iran unveiled two new missiles which were named after top Iranian Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s PMU, who were assassinated outside Baghdad’s international airport in a US raid in January 2020.
The combat capability, destructive power and operational range of Abu Mahdi naval cruise missile are significant, according to military officials.
The missile is developed by the Iranian Defense Ministry and has a range of over 1,000 kilometers. It can be deployed in a short period of time, can choose among targets in the field, and can bypass enemy defenses, among other capabilities.
Defense officials say the Iranian Navy’s surface-to-surface cruise missile power has doubled and that the country’s destroyers will be deployed to high sea with 8 cruise missiles mounted on them.
In another development, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Ground Force successfully test-fired the new version of Fajr-5 rocket equipped with a thermobaric warhead which has amplified the destructive power of the projectile.
Iranian Experts at the Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization of the IRGC Ground Force have armed the Fajr-5 rocket with a thermobaric warhead.
The new thermobaric warhead is reportedly enhancing the rocket’s destructive power -- 1.5 times more than that of trinitrotoluene (TNT) -- and also increasing the rocket’s blast radius and thermal effect.
The thermobaric explosive’s lower sensitivity than TNT has made it a safer option in comparison with conventional warheads.
The thermobaric warhead’s function would also make the Fajr-5 rocket a suitable weapon for the fight against terror groups in mountainous regions.
Fajr-5 is known as the most advanced and longest-range version of the Fajr ground-to-ground rockets that have manufactured in various classes with different utilities. The 333 mm rocket that runs on solid fuel has single- and two-stage versions, with a range of 75 km and 180 km, respectively.
