On July 15, the Iranian Navy held a ceremony in the waters off southern Iraq to announce the establishment of the first Navy's "drone aircraft carrier" division. This low-end version of the aircraft carrier is actually a modification of the Iranian Navy's active Antique-class ships, the Lavan Island tank landing ship, the D'Urva auxiliary ship, and a Kilo-class submarine. The carrier-based UAVs include the Pelican vertical take-off and landing UAVs, the Arrash suicide UAVs, the large Ababi series UAVs, and the Homa patrol and reconnaissance UAVs.
Among them, the "Arash" suicide drone was first launched in 2020 and appeared in several iranian exercises in 2021. The shape of the "Arash" UAV is like a cruise missile, with a clear wing structure, and the take-off method uses vehicles and rockets to assist flight, which is equivalent to a cruise missile. Unlike missiles, Arash drones have an organic wing structure that can hover over the target, or fly around the target for a period of time, after determining the precise position of the target, and then launch a strike.
In recent years, Iran has been very enthusiastic about this kind of drone for suicide attacks, as early as 2013, Iran had publicly released a "Thunder-85" drone, known as the Kamikaze drone by the US media, according to the designer's intention, it did not attack the target with its own airborne missile, but took a suicide attack to directly hit the target. "Thunder-85" weighs about 210 kg, wingspan of 5.3 meters, in the video on display can be found that the workmanship is very rough, some of the equipment including landing gear, cameras, and even warheads, are tied to its fuselage with ordinary tape, there is a suspicion of temporary patchwork, from a technical point of view, its level is really not flattering, especially the rough wooden propeller and wing and bulky landing gear, the overall level of technology is very backward.
In 2019, the Iranian Navy also showed off dozens of Abir-2 suicide attack drones it was about to receive, which were also very rudimentary in appearance, and the Iranian Navy said it was installed on the Iranian Navy's unique attack boats, ready to be launched at sea to carry out swarm attacks on the US aircraft carrier battle group. The Iranian Navy said the drones would consolidate its control of the Persian Gulf and strait of Hormuz.
This time, the Iranian Navy set up the first unmanned aerial vehicle division, there was a suicide drone figure, indicating that the Iranian Navy's thinking is clear and coherent, that is, the idea of the Japanese "kamikaze" aircraft in World War II, mass production of poor quality UAVs to save costs, in the war can be put into a large number of operations, in theory, it is a good way to asymmetric operations. The point is, in the operational environment of modern warfare, can kamikaze still function? The answer is no! This kind of aircraft cruise flight resistance is large, the speed is low, that is, 100 to 200 kilometers per hour, the maneuverability is poor, because the aircraft size is limited, the range is short, the size of the warhead is small, the power is insufficient, let alone the attack aircraft carrier, that is, the attack boat is not enough. In addition, due to low speed, poor maneuverability, can not be stealthy, if the real suicide attack is easy to be destroyed by the opponent's short-range air defense system, such as shipborne anti-aircraft machine guns, naval guns, etc., as for the "Hiram", shipborne laser weapons, not to mention, if it really comes to wartime, this suicide attack is tantamount to moths to put out fire, in fact, the ground air defense forces often use this aircraft model as a living target for high-altitude aircraft and anti-aircraft artillery training, so although Iran claims that it can achieve blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but in fact, if it really comes to wartime, Limited by the range, load and remote control distance of the UAV, in addition to the open signal, the UAV ground remote control base station is easy to find and destroy, and these remote control UAVs are easy to be interfered with due to the open frequency band, and these UAVs may really become headless flies, so the combat value of these UAVs is very limited.
However, we should also see that the technical level of Iranian UAVs is also continuously improving, for example, although the "Arash" UAV is still essentially a suicide drone, its technology has made great progress compared to the "Thunder-85" and "Abil"-2, and the Iranian army has practiced this domestic suicide drone in the military exercise of "Zur Fagar-1400" in 2021. In the exercise of the day, Iran's domestic "Arash" suicide drone hit the imaginary enemy target with high precision after flying over a long distance. The report said that before the combat drone destroyed the target, the reconnaissance drone was also used to monitor the exercise area first. Yes, with the continuous advancement of technology, this suicide drone is likely to cause a lot of trouble for the US aircraft carrier one day in the future.
Iran's frequent "bright sword" with such fanfare is based on its own political and strategic considerations, hoping to take this opportunity to show the strength of its military industry to deter opponents and make Western countries led by the United States and Israel scrupulous. The United States through the Iraq War, Libya War and a series of military operations around Iran, constantly stimulating Iran's nerves, these military operations launched platform in addition to the allies land-based airports is the United States aircraft carrier, the United States in the Persian Gulf cruise group has always been Iran's nightmare, so Iran frequently "bright sword", intended to deter the United States aircraft carriers. The Strait of Hormuz is within the operational range of Iranian drones, so deploying drones is also to enhance Iran's own military chips, indicating that it has the ability to do what it wants to do, and can effectively fight back against provocations from other countries.