Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has unveiled the “Fattah,” the regime’s first hypersonic missile, on Tuesday morning a week after the regime claimed a successful test.
According to Iranian media, the Fattah hypersonic missile has a range of 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) and hits speeds of up to Mach 15 (5.1 km or 3.2 miles per second) before hitting its target. The reports claimed that the missile is able to bypass and destroy air defense systems.
At the claimed speeds, Fattah could theoretically reach Israeli targets in under seven minutes.
The Fattah features a moveable secondary nozzle and uses solid propellants, allowing it to reach high speeds and “perform various maneuvers inside and outside the earth’s atmosphere,” according to the Iranian Fars News Agency.
Fattah’s current range is just short of the distance between Tehran and Tel Aviv, but IRGC aerospace chief commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh suggested on Tuesday that the IRGC could look to hypersonics with a range of 2,000km (1,242 miles) in the near future.
Hypersonic missiles are projectiles that can move at a speed of at least Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.
So far, Russia and China have displayed an array of hypersonic weapons, with Moscow being the only one thought to have tested them in combat. The United States has also tested hypersonic missiles but lags slightly behind its two rivals.
The unveiling ceremony was attended by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, IRGC Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami and other high-ranking officials. Later in the day, Iranian media published footage purporting to show a test launch of the missile.
🔰مجموعه تصاویر باکیفیت از موشک هایپرسونیک فتاح🔰 pic.twitter.com/MZRJxnIICx
— Mohammad Shaltouki | محمد شلتوکی (@mohshaltouki) June 6, 2023
In November, Hajizadeh claimed that Iran had developed a new hypersonic missile that could reach Israel in 400 seconds
At the time, Iran’s Sobh-e-Sadegh newspaper published a threat in Hebrew on its front page, reading “400 seconds: General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force, said that Iran has obtained technology for hypersonic missiles.”
