Commander: IRGC Navy to Be Equipped with 2,000-KM-Range Cruise Missiles Soon

“IRGC navy has made considerable progress in development and manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles, and now possesses hundreds of reconnaissance, surveillance, combat and kamikaze drones with different operational ranges of up to 1,200 kilometers (745 miles),” General Salami said.

He lauded the IRGC Navy’s defensive and offensive capabilities, specially in the field of navigation, and said, “The IRGC Navy has made a great achievement by increasing the velocity of its speedboats to nearly one hundred knots per hour.”

“In near future, the naval force will be armed with cruise missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers, and capable of targeting moving vessels,” the IRGC commander pointed out. 

General Salami went on to say that the IRGC Navy has developed various signal collection systems, jammers and electronic warfare systems, and that the hardware expanded both defensive and offensive capabilities of the force.

In relevant remarks on Friday, General Salami underlined that the IRGC Navy has full control over the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz by means of modern electronic warfare.

General Salami’s positive assessment of defense-battle preparedness the IRGC Navy came after his visit to the IRGC Command in the Persian Gulf islands and the Strait of Hormuz on Friday.

“The enemies of Iran must come to the understanding that any action from enemies at any scale and any place will not be tolerated by Iran and will receive quick, decisive, strict response,” he added.

General Salami said that all defensive equipment used by the IRGC are domestically made and all forces are at excellent level of preparedness to respond to any threat at any scale.

In relevant remarks on Wednesday, General Salami said that the IRGC Aerospace Force and the Iranian Army’s Air and Air Defense Forces are equipped with the most state-of-the-art technologies to defend the country.

General Salami made the remarks during the second day of major airpower drills involving the IRGC’s Aerospace Division, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF), and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Defense Force (IRIADF) on Wednesday.

“What we perceived during this exercise was a modern and advanced display of every aspect of air defense [operations] in the face of unpredictable scenarios,” General Salami said.

“By God’s grace, all the targets that entered the area [of the drills] were struck by the systems’ first shot,” he stated.

“The reason for this is that the IRGC’s Aerospace Division and the Army’s Air Defense Force have acquired cutting edge technology [for its] very modern and advanced systems,” the IRGC’s top commander added.

General Salami went on to specify the message that the drills have been assigned to convoy.

According to the commander, the exercises are meant to send across the “invariable message of unity” between the IRGC and Army in their duty to serve in the country’s defense.

The unity, he said, was rooted in the dual forces’ defensive cooperation during the Western-backed imposed war that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein waged on the Islamic Republic from 1980 until 1988.

Codenamed ‘Modafe’an Aseman-e Velayat 1400’ (Guardians of ‘Velayat Sky’ 1400), the exercises kicked off in the country’s sprawling Central Desert, with the goal of practicing defensive maneuvers in the service of the country’s “sensitive and vital” spots and testing the operational maneuverability of the Armed Forces’ new-generation defensive equipment among other things.

Over just two days, the maneuvers saw the combined forces successfully lay into all the targets that had been designated for the purpose of the drills by the country’s Integrated Air Defense Network, using at least six state-of-the-art air defense systems, namely Mersad-16, Tabas, Khordad-3, Khordad-15, Majeed, and Dezfoul. 

Also, domestically-built Qods radar was put into operation for the first time by the IRGC Aerospace Force in the operational phase of the joint large-scale drills.

Qods radar is able to monitor targets at a 500km range and altitude of over 90,000 feet. Tactical and single-vehicle capability, domestic software, the ability to deal with electronic warfare in various techniques, friend-enemy detection system and the ability to link with defense systems are among the characteristics of Qods radar system.

Commander of Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Qader Rahimzadeh said on Wednesday that the wargames ended after achieving all pre-defined objectives.

The wargames ended without the occurrence of any particular unexpected incidence after achieving its entire pre-defined objectives, and according to the designed program for it, he said.

“The exemplary discipline observed in all participating units, including the Army and the IRGC different units in this war game, was seen from the beginning to the end, and it was to a great extent the cause for its full success,” he added.

General Rahimzadeh said that the capability and steadfastness of the country’s air defense terminals, especially the terminals that have been added to the country’s solid air defense network was far beyond the scientific predictions and was quite in accordance with the catalogues of those terminals.

He said that the evaluations show the high level success in designing and manufacturing the country’s air defense network inside the country, reiterating, “It is our pride that the entire terminals used in this war game, including the radars, the missiles, the electronic war devices, etc., were all made in Iran and by the Iranian scientists and experts.”

“The sustainable and multi-layer communications among the participating units in this war game defused the cyber acts of the virtual enemy and continued throughout the war game,” he added.

General Rahimzadeh said that the message of this wargames is clear; it creates hope in the hearts of the nation, thanks to the might and harmony that could be seen in the wargames, and “thus we can claim that the skies of the sacred political system of the Islamic Republic of Iran are quite safe, and all the planes that are permitted to use our air space and continue their flights amid full security”.

“The war games’ special message for the enemies, too, is that the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, relying on grace of God, and the mighty hands of our young scientists and combatants who are under the command of the Supreme Leader, including the Army and IRGC forces, side by side of each other performed their mission harmoniously and precisely, and that means they are quite capable of defending the country’s skies competently,” he underlined.

General Rahimzadeh said that if anyone intends to make aggression against the territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s air space, they will doubtlessly be faced with the decisive and crashing response of the Iranian Armed Forces.