On January 2, US President Donald Trump ordered assassination of Iranian General Suleimani, and Iran retaliated by launching a missile at U.S. bases in Iraq at night on January 8th. According to Iran, this time Iran fired more than 30 missiles. According to reliable sources from Iran, two types of ballistic missiles were used in the strike against the US military bases in Iraq: Fateh-313 missile and Qiam-1 missile. Fateh-313 ballistic missile is the latest modification of Fateh-110 missile.
The outside has rumored that Fateh-110 copies Dongfeng-11 ballistic missile from China. According to Chinese military analysts, Iran’s solid ballistic missiles are indeed of Chinese descent, but they are not developed from China’s current DF-11 ballistic missiles, but from B610 ballistic missiles. After the 1979 revolution, Iran was sanctioned by the West, seeking improvement of SA-2 ground-to-ground missiles from China, which gave birth to China’s first ground bomb model for foreign trade – Type 8610 missile, an improved version of HQ-2 (Hongqi-2), called M-7 as export name. Iran and China signed a contract of more than 200 million US dollars, ordering 200 M-7 missiles. After importing M-7, Iran organized domestic factories to carry out imitation and production.
The imitation is named Tondar-69, with a diameter of 600mm, a range of 150km, and a circle probability error of 50m. Based on Tondar-69, Iran began to develop Fateh-110 (which means “conqueror”) missile with a solid rocket engine in 1997.
In 2002, the first-generation Fateh-110 began its flight testing and was deployed in the same year, with a range of 200 kilometers; the second-generation model, which was finalized in 2004, had a range of 250 kilometers; and the third-generation, which was deployed in 2010, had a range of 300 kilometers, with a load range 50% higher than the first-generation Fateh-110, showing that Iran ’s missile casing material and fuel technology had made big progress. Fateh-110 uses inertial guidance, the error of the circle probability is less than 50 meters, less than one-third of the Scud missile.
And in the past 20 years, with the development of microelectronics and optoelectronic technology, miniature laser gyroscopes have been widely used, and Iran can easily purchase them in the international market. The high-precision navigation system has greatly improved accuracy of Iran’s missiles, of which the combat effectiveness has increased by more than ten times compared to Scud missiles. Therefore, a small number of launches could achieve greater results.
Yemen’s Houthi armed forces have also repeatedly launched Fateh-110 ballistic missiles against Saudi-led coalition forces, and even hit General Command of Saudi and Gulf States Forces, causing dealth of several senior UAE and Saudi military officers, including Saudi Special Forces Commander Abdullah Sakhayan, as well as about 500 coalition soldiers.