What is Fattah 2?

About Fattah 2

• Fattah, which means conqueror in Farsi, is a hypersonic ballistic missile.
• It was developed by Iran. It is a new version of its first domestically made hypersonic ballistic missile named ‘Fattah’.
• Features:
  • It is equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) warhead that can manoeuvre and glide at hypersonic speed.
  • It uses a liquid-fuel rocket propellant.
  • The precision-guided two-stage missile, can hit targets within a range of 1500 kilometres with a velocity of Mach 15 (fifteen times the speed of sound i.e 18522 km/hr).
  • It can make quick turns to avoid defence systems.
  • It is equipped with a warhead that has a spherical engine running on solid fuel and movable nozzles that allow it to change course when outside the atmosphere to accurately help it evade air-defence systems.

What is a Hypersonic Missile?

• A hypersonic missile is a weapon system which flies at least at the speed of Mach 5 i.e. five times the speed of sound and is manoeuvrable.
• These missiles are extremely fast and far harder for surface-to-air missile defence systems to target.

Q1) What is a Ballistic Missile?

Ballistic Missiles are launched directly into the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere. They travel outside the atmosphere, where the warhead detaches from the missile and falls towards a predetermined target. They are rocket-propelled self-guided weapons systems which can carry conventional or nuclear munitions.

Source: Gravitas: Is Iran's Fattah-2 Hypersonic Missile a game changer in West Asia?