On September 5, Iran's Revolutionary Guards released a video announcing the official commissioning of the first new Suleimani-class stealth missile boat developed by Iran. According to the Revolutionary Guards, this type of boat has a displacement of about 600 tons, and the structure adopts the same two-body wave-piercing design as the Type 22 missile boat of our army. However, compared with the Type 22 boat, this Sulaimani-class missile boat is not only equipped with a flight deck, but also is said to be equipped with a vertical launch system. General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, said: "This is the first domestically produced warship in the Republic of Iran equipped with vertical-launch, short- and medium-range air defense systems. ”
Pictured: Newly commissioned Sulaimani-class missile boats
Pictured: Sulaimani-class weapon configuration
Judging from the video released by the Revolutionary Guards, the vertical hair of this Sulaimani-class missile boat should be arranged between the bridge and the mast, where there are two long strip openings and four square openings. The opening of the long strip may be the flame discharge channel of the hanging hair system, and the square opening should be the hanging hair well. If there is a flame discharge channel, it means that the ship's vertical firing is a hot launch design of the missile directly ignited in the silo, which is in line with the current technical route of Iran's domestically produced land-based vertical launch air defense system. However, in terms of the number of vertical firing units, the Iranian media actually said that the Sulaimani class has 16 units of vertical firing and can launch a Hunter-3 anti-aircraft missile with a range of 150 kilometers. This is very confusing, because the top of the missile boat has only 4 square openings, if it is a 16-unit hanging fire, then it can only be 1 pit and 4 bombs arrangement.
Pictured: Position of the Suleimani-class missile boats
Figure: Zoom in to see the hanging wellhead
However, 1 pit and 4 bombs mean that the size of the adapted missiles has to be reduced, and generally can only be adapted to short-range and medium-range air defense bombs, such as the Russian 9M100 missile with a range of 10 kilometers and the ESSM improved Sea Sparrow missile with a range of 50 kilometers can be arranged in 1 pit and 4 bombs. Long-range anti-aircraft bombs with a range of 150 km cannot be 4 bombs in 1 pit because the size is too large. Therefore, the Iranian media report is obviously biased, combined with General Bagheri's statement that "the vertical launch of this type of boat can launch short-range and medium-range air defense missiles", the real design of the Suleimani-class missile boat should be able to launch medium-range air defense missiles with 1 pit and 1 pit 4 bombs to launch short-range air defense missiles.
Pictured: Iran's newly demonstrated land-based tactical hunter air defense system is equipped with two different sizes of interceptor shells
Just last week, Iran showed off a land-based vertical-launch air defense system called Tactical Hunter, which happened to be equipped with two sizes of interceptor bombs. One is a small-size short-range interceptor and the other is a large-sized medium-range interceptor. Therefore, the vertical firing of the Sulaimani-class missile boat may be the naval version of the system, but the missile boat is not equipped with a matching phased array fire control radar, which is confusing. Without a supporting radar system, the missile boat cannot provide target allocation information and flight correction for medium-range anti-aircraft missiles, so why should a boat be equipped with radar to provide target search and indication services for the launcher?
Pictured: The radar configuration on the Sulaimani-class mast is simple
At present, the Information on the Sulaimani-class Missile Boats released by the Iranian military is still very small, and the released pictures also lack the close-up clear shots at the top. Therefore, this missile boat still has a layer of mystery, and the details of the ship's vertical launch system and the specific configuration of the anti-aircraft missile still need to be confirmed by Iran's official release of a clearer picture or live-fire target shooting.