Important Takeaways:

• According to the IRNA news agency, the Fattah-2 missile is equipped with a hypersonic glider warhead that places it “in the HGV… class of hypersonic weapons.”
• Iranian media reported that the Islamic Republic had become only the fourth nation in the world to make use of such technology.
• A hypersonic glide vehicle, or HGV, is a type of warhead that allows a rocket to maneuver and glide at hypersonic speeds
• Very few nations have operational HGV missiles to date. One of them is Russia, which possesses the ‘Avangard’ gliders mounted on its silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles like the ‘Sarmat’.
• The Russian HGV is capable of flying between 20 and 27 times faster than the speed of sound or between 24,000 and 33,000 kilometers per hour. It has a potential explosive yield of to two megatons, which is more than 100 times greater than the explosion produced by the US nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
• In 2019, China officially put its DF-ZF HGV missile into service. Mounted on a road-mobile medium-range ballistic missile, the Chinese hypersonic glider can travel up to 10 times faster than the speed of sound at a speed of 12,360 kilometers per hour and carry a nuclear charge.
• The US was expected to have its ‘Dark Eagle’ Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) enter service in September…
• Little is known about Iran’s Fattah-2 missile, as the national media provided very few details on the projectile’s technical characteristics. Its predecessor, the Fattah missile that was officially unveiled less than six months ago, had a range of 1,400 kilometers and could travel between 13 and 15 times faster than the speed of sound.

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