Iranian UAVs | News and Discussions

[aryobarzan]

RQ-170 bomber with four Jahesh-700 engines and two internal carried Raad-500 at 3200kg total load. That would be my wish.

This may be stupid question but can such a bomber be a manned bomber ..a pilot in the loop and we have a wing stealth bomber!!

 

[PeeD]

What are your thoughts on the possibility of an unmanned interceptor program either with Karrar or other platforms?

I'm not think Iran is yet at this stage but it can work on the AI software for the next decade.

Can ballistic missiles be launched from air and in horizontal position?

Yes and with a large benefit in range.

This may be stupid question but can such a bomber be a manned bomber ..a pilot in the loop and we have a wing stealth bomber!!

Sure that would be an option but an unmanned bomber is the most favorable option. It would do the point-strike mission completely autonomously.

 

[Saleh99]

@skyshadow this is the iranian loitering munition copy of Israeli Harpy? Most probably used in aramco attack?

 

[skyshadow]

@skyshadow this is the iranian loitering munition copy of Israeli Harpy? Most probably used in aramco attack?View attachment 694984

yes it seems so this is the one that hit Saudi Arabia some say its Iranian some say its a copy of China but no one said anything about it being a Israeli copy , most experts believe its a Iranian design

 

[Raghfarm007]

Used by police force:

 

[WudangMaster]

This may be stupid question but can such a bomber be a manned bomber ..a pilot in the loop and we have a wing stealth bomber!!

I guess you could do it in a way that does not change the shape of the airframe if the two side lobes/humps are altered for intakes for engines and the center region converted into a manned cockpit area but there will be COG issues, etc.
If you change the airframe altogether, then you have to go back to scale model, wind tunnel test, etc. Better to leave it as it is and scale up but keep engine, fuel tanks, air intake, and everything in the same place in the airframe because the design is proven but modifying it too much can lead to problems. Also as seen from the sofreh mahi projects earlier, these shahed/rq-170s are exactly something that the military in Iran had deemed necessary before anyway. One of the sofreh mahi maquettes always implied at being manned a plane, but all official statements were towards it being a uav/ucav only platform.
Now it makes me wonder what scaling up to 4 Jahesh-700 would look like; would they all be clustered together in the center or put out in the wings in pairs where the humps are now?

 

[aryobarzan]

I guess you could do it in a way that does not change the shape of the airframe if the two side lobes/humps are altered for intakes for engines and the center region converted into a manned cockpit area but there will be COG issues, etc.
If you change the airframe altogether, then you have to go back to scale model, wind tunnel test, etc. Better to leave it as it is and scale up but keep engine, fuel tanks, air intake, and everything in the same place in the airframe because the design is proven but modifying it too much can lead to problems. Also as seen from the sofreh mahi projects earlier, these shahed/rq-170s are exactly something that the military in Iran had deemed necessary before anyway. One of the sofreh mahi maquettes always implied at being manned a plane, but all official statements were towards it being a uav/ucav only platform.
Now it makes me wonder what scaling up to 4 Jahesh-700 would look like; would they all be clustered together in the center or put out in the wings in pairs where the humps are now?

Good points..The reason I asked the question is that in my mind the weakest point of any Drone is the data link and that linke can easily be jammed by a sophisticated adversary. Imagine the enemy knows how much Iran will rely on various Drones for her operations and naturally will concentrate on the link disruption. Of course if AI is involved then the link becomes less critical but that is some time far away. A pilot in a bomb bay flying the craft by Instrument and "way point" only came to my mind but hey I am just doing brain farts..lol

 

[Stryker1982]

Good points..The reason I asked the question is that in my mind the weakest point of any Drone is the data link and that linke can easily be jammed by a sophisticated adversary. Imagine the enemy knows how much Iran will rely on various Drones for her operations and naturally will concentrate on the link disruption. Of course if AI is involved then the link becomes less critical but that is some time far away. A pilot in a bomb bay flying the craft by Instrument and "way point" only came to my mind but hey I am just doing brain farts..lol

That's probably how they did the strikes on SA. You can have data links radiating through Saudi Airspace without it being picked up. Those cruise drones certainly were pre-programmed with waypoints.

 

[Sineva]

Can ballistic missiles be launched from air and in horizontal position?

The russian Kinzhal is basically the air launched version of the iskander.

One could easily imagine an air launched fateh 110,zulfiqar,dezful, or pg retrofitted zelzal,though the main problem would be an appropriate carrier aircraft.This is where something like a mig25 would be superb,maybe iran should have a word to the syrians about acquiring its old mig25 force for refurbishing as aero-ballistic missile carriers.
Failing that iran would be limited with using subsonic aircraft like the il76 and although these would not provide much of a speed increase for the missile they would certainly provide a decent altitude increase and a potentially huge range increase,plus the ability to potentially carry more than one missile.
Another possibility would be an aero-ballistic version of the Raad 500 for the Su24 as well as separating warhead retrofitted nazeats.
The irgc-af did carry out a launch of an aero-ballistic fajr 4 variant from an su22,so work is certainly being done on the concept in iran and one can clearly see the potential even with pg retrofitted 333mm artillery rockets.

Probably the craziest air launch of a missile was the 1974 launch of a minuteman icbm from a c5 galaxy

 

[VEVAK]

RQ-170 bomber with four Jahesh-700 engines and two internal carried Raad-500 at 3200kg total load. That would be my wish.

IDK about that! If your going to put as many as 4 relatively expensive engines (Compared to LACM engines) on a single platform you best be sure that platform can carry twice as may PGM or else the cost benefit analysis would make no sense.

So I'd say yes to a 4 engine version of the Simorgh but no to the Raad-500! If Iran ever builds a 4 engine version that Aircraft they should at the very least carry 6-8 1000lb ordnances...

Iran is on the verge of developing a ram jet engines so they can equip them with a ram jet powered LACM
an engine with a 2.5 Min burn time at an average speed of 2500kph should give about 100km which I think is more than sufficient or they can develop a smaller 1000lb version of the Raad-500


Another thing Iran could potentially do is take off the wings of a few junkyard aircrafts modify them and simply design and build a fuselage section to mount engine, weapons bay...
Years of research went into designing those wings so you can even use them as a cast and build a composite wing around them....
No reason to let those wings go to waist

 

[Hack-Hook]

RQ-170 bomber with four Jahesh-700 engines and two internal carried Raad-500 at 3200kg total load. That would be my wish.

that's not my wish , my wish is an RQ-170 bomber with a single engine based on Jahesh-700 but the power output of at Least j-85 , that would be the way to go

an other day an other unknown Iranian drone , that small camera shows advancement in camera department from Mohajer-2 and Ababil-3 drones

View attachment 694943

View attachment 694948

View attachment 694947

for god sake they didn't even removed the handle from Mithaq launcher

 

[skyshadow]

that's not my wish , my wish is an RQ-170 bomber with a single engine based on Jahesh-700 but the power output of at Least j-85 , that would be the way to go

for god sake they didn't even removed the handle from Mithaq launcher

old days were fun

 

[Shawnee]

an other day an other unknown Iranian drone , that small camera shows advancement in camera department from Mohajer-2 and Ababil-3 drones

View attachment 694943

View attachment 694948

View attachment 694947

The first one was H-110 Sarir UAV more than 7 years ago. This one is not even the second one but the third one.
The banner mistakenly says the first AA drone.
Interesting that they spent the time to remove the handle of Mithagh for Sarir in 2013.
H-110 was the only Iranian drone with both front and rear engines.

 

[Oldman1]

The russian Kinzhal is basically the air launched version of the iskander.

One could easily imagine an air launched fateh 110,zulfiqar,dezful, or pg retrofitted zelzal,though the main problem would be an appropriate carrier aircraft.This is where something like a mig25 would be superb,maybe iran should have a word to the syrians about acquiring its old mig25 force for refurbishing as aero-ballistic missile carriers.
Failing that iran would be limited with using subsonic aircraft like the il76 and although these would not provide much of a speed increase for the missile they would certainly provide a decent altitude increase and a potentially huge range increase,plus the ability to potentially carry more than one missile.
Another possibility would be an aero-ballistic version of the Raad 500 for the Su24 as well as separating warhead retrofitted nazeats.
The irgc-af did carry out a launch of an aero-ballistic fajr 4 variant from an su22,so work is certainly being done on the concept in iran and one can clearly see the potential even with pg retrofitted 333mm artillery rockets.

Probably the craziest air launch of a missile was the 1974 launch of a minuteman icbm from a c5 galaxy

Yeah but they won't rely on firing an ICBM from a cargo plane these days.

 

[VEVAK]

that's not my wish , my wish is an RQ-170 bomber with a single engine based on Jahesh-700 but the power output of at Least j-85 , that would be the way to go

for god sake they didn't even removed the handle from Mithaq launcher

I think a proper bomber version of the Simorgh should to at the very least have 12,000 lbf of dry thrust and how you choose to get there really depends on how cheap and quick one engine can be produced compared to the other!
Iran is currently producing the Owj(J85) engine at a rate of 6 per year which is a rather absurdly low number and at that rate the cost of the manpower required to produce one engine is far too high for the production of an engine like that to make any kind of sense.

If your not producing engines like the Owj or the Jahesh-700 at a rate of at least 1 per day then your clearly not producing them in sufficient numbers for their production to make sense. And even more complex turbofan engines like the RD-33 or F-110 should not take any longer than a week to produce.
I can only HOPE that TEM(Company making Jahesh-700) doesn't make the same idiotic mistakes that OWJ aviation has made on jet engine production.