On 21 October, Iraqi security services spotted a improvised launch track of the pro-Iranian Shiite militia of the 52nd Iraqi Popular Mobilization Brigade near the airport in the Tuzlmatu district of Salah al-Din governorate, and spotted a peculiar missile, the Iranian-made 358 anti-aircraft cruise missile, which was dropped in the grass when it was found, possibly during the retreat of the 52nd Brigade. This patrol missile is famous because it has shot down pterodactyls and rainbow drones, and it can be called a drone killer.
The 358 anti-aircraft patrol missile is actually a nickname given by the US military, and the Iranian number is unknown. The number is actually the U.S. Navy's cruiser NORMANDY intercepted and seized a dhow of unknown nationality in the Arabian Sea on February 9, 2020, intercepting about 150 anti-tank missiles, 3 surface-to-air missiles and 358 surface-to-air missile parts that Iran had supported the Houthis. The 358 missile got its name from this, which is really perfunctory! As casual as its name suggests, the 358 missile is also a product of a make-up.
The cruise missile is about 2.7 meters long and about 155 mm in diameter, and adopts a three-stage combination structure, and the wings can be quickly assembled. This facilitates transport assembly and covert launches, officially taking into account guerrilla play such as the Houthi. The cruise missile adopts a cylindrical projectile body, a three-wing surface structure, a semi-circular warhead, a large transparent window of the photoelectric seeker on the head, a guide head capsule and a laser proximity fuze at the rear, a dense fuze window that enables it to accurately detonate the directional fragmentation warhead at the rear, followed by the rudder cabin, equipped with 4 large inverted trapezoidal butterfly-shaped wings, very similar to the R-27 missile type, the rudder front edge swept forward, the trail edge swept angle is small, this design can be used with a weaker rudder to achieve high rudder effect within a certain flight envelope, Reducing the wash flow effect on the tail wing is conducive to the roll control of the missile, but there is also a problem of high resistance, so four triangular spoilers are installed behind the butterfly rudder surface, followed by an INS+ GPS guidance cabin, an autopilot and a data link communication cabin. The bomb adopts the design of photoelectric seeker + two-way data link, which can conduct back the seeker image in real time and accept remote control information, and the guidance method is still quite advanced.
Behind the communication chamber is a longer fuel tank and 4 X-shaped layout swept trapezoidal lift wings to provide the main lift to maintain long cruising flight, the tail is designed with model aircraft-class miniature turbojet engine + buried air intakes on both sides of the projectile, and the exterior is equipped with 4 X-shaped layout swept trapezoidal tails. It can be seen that its layout is designed for low-speed cruise flight, not to pursue high speed, take-off using a small solid rocket booster in series at the bottom, launched from the steel bar welded rail, throwing off the booster after take-off and starting to fly, the bomb can be in the air for 8-shaped track around the flight, The maximum flight speed is about Mach 0.8, the maximum shooting height may exceed 8 kilometers, through the real-time image backhaul remote control attack on the drone and other slow targets, this also has to fight a head-on attack, or tail chase can be strenuous, the speed is too slow, and finally by the fragment warhead to solve the battle.
This type of missile fully reflects the integrated wisdom of the Iranians, the fuel is kerosene, the engine is produced by the Dutch AMT company company 40 kg thrust civilian Titan micro turbojet engine (then priced at about 10,000 euros), the inertial navigation chip is made by Xsens Technology Company MTi-100 chip, but also uses a large number of commercial specifications of ordinary components, data links and other civilian equipment, GPS modules and other projectiles are Iran's own production. Interestingly, its engines and chips were exported to a company in Hong Kong, and it turned out that both companies disappeared, which was obviously done by the Iranians. This design makes the bomb very low,000 or so, only about $10,000, which is an affordable weapon in poor countries, and it is also easy to carry out covert transportation, and it can also be used for ground attacks.
This type of missile is inexpensive, easy to assemble, easy to use, can be called a new concept version of the poor weapon, but also able to achieve precision strikes, relative to the layers of limited military missiles, this kind of civilian technology assembly goods that want to use how to use it is absolutely guerrilla warfare experts such as the Houthis, poor and destitute such as Syria, with Iran's military strength, large-scale mass production There is no problem at all, and one or even several drones such as pterodactyls and rainbows are absolutely profitable behaviors. In fact, we can also change our thinking, directly using civilian drones and small warheads, our Feilong 10A series is this kind of thinking.
Sure enough, on May 21, 2021, the Hussey released a video confirming the shooting down of a Saudi Air Force Pterodactyl 2, and on May 23, they released another video confirming that they had shot down another Saudi Air Force Rainbow-4, and also specifically showed the infrared thermal image, high-definition white light and laser ranging equipment removed from the nose photoelectric pod. On June 21, 2021, Yemen's Houthis released a video confirming that they had successfully shot down a small U.S.-made Scan Eagle reconnaissance drone equipped by the Saudi army. Of course, this missile is not indefensible, after all, he flies low and slow, the pterosaur and the rainbow can completely raise the altitude to avoid air strikes, or hang jamming equipment to interfere with its communication lines, after all, civilian cargo is not comparable to military anti-interference. The more difficult part is how to quickly detect missile attacks. It can be seen that the 358 patrol missile reflects the command of the poor, and the Iranians do have a hand!