The Iranian Revolutionary Guard unveiled its new kamikaze after a year of development, the Fars News Agency reported on Friday.
The idea of a suicide drone was just a suggestion made by the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Guard, Major General Hossein Salami, in September 2019 and a year later, the IRGC unveiled their new weapon.
“If light drones are combined with speedboats, they can hit their targets from 10 km away,” Soleimani said last year.
Last week, 188 new Iranian combat drones joined the naval force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as three new classes of drones, bearing the names “Sepehr”, “Shahab 2” and “Hodhod 4”.
What is noteworthy in the new aircraft is a drone bearing the name “Ababil 2”, which has been installed on the speedboats, in addition to some war drones and reconnaissance aircraft.
According to the agency: “The drone (Ababil-2) was developed and has a range of 100 km, flight duration from 75 to 120 minutes, and the height of the flight ceiling to 11,000 feet, and its maximum speed was 250 km per hour.
The Fars News Agency noted that this aircraft “is one of the cheapest options to be used in the role of a suicide explosive drone, which uses the (JATO) platform for take off and flight, and can be recovered by parachute or (skid) vehicle and for this reason it does not need a runway to land and take off.”
The agency discussed the advantage gained from this suicide drone, compared to the cruise missiles, as these “operator-guided aircraft provide the ability to direct them at all stages of flight, and the user can strike the drone at different targets from different directions and aim at the end.”
The agency indicated that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy has already received 70 Ababil 2 drones, in addition to large quantities of warplanes.
