IRGC teases new missile

Brigadier General Seyyed Majid Mousavi and General Ali Abdollahi inspect an obscured weapon in an underground facility. (Noghtezan )

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) signalled it has a new type of cruise missile when it released a video and photographs on 10 November showing senior commanders inspecting an underground facility.

Released via the Noghtezan (precision strike) social media channel that often has exclusive IRGC content, the imagery showed Brigadier General Seyyed Majid Mousavi, the head of the IRGC Aerospace Force, inspecting the underground facility with Major General Ali Abdollahi, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces.

Noghtezan stated that the underground facility was a “new missile city” and that Maj Gen Abdollahi “unveiled a new surprise” during the inspection.

This was an apparent reference to a weapon that the two commanders slowed to inspect, but was obscured in editing process. The weapon appeared to be approximately the same size as the Paveh cruise missiles it was displayed alongside.

Elsewhere, the video showed cruise missiles that appeared to have a trapezoid cross section rather than the Paveh's cylindrical one. These were mounted on launchers and did not appear to have turbojet engines attached on top of their fuselage, like the Paveh, raising the possibility that the IRGC has developed a cruise missile with a reduced radar cross-section to make it harder to detect and intercept.

The underground facility also included large numbers of ballistic missiles of various types, including solid-propellent ones fitted with what looked like the manoeuvring re-entry vehicle for the Fattah-1.

When it was unveiled in May 2023, the Fattah-1 was stated to have a directional rocket motor in its re-entry vehicle that increased its speed in its terminal phase to make it harder to intercept.