The Ghassed is a family of

guided bombs A guided bomb (also known as a smart bomb, guided bomb unit, or GBU) is a precision-guided munition designed to achieve a smaller circular error probable (CEP). The creation of precision-guided munitions resulted in the retroactive renaming of ...

and

missiles In military terminology, a missile is a guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor. Missiles are thus also called guided missiles or guided rockets (when a previously unguided rocket i ...

developed by

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

It is a highly accurate rocket-boosted smart bomb with a range of and a

warhead A warhead is the forward section of a device that contains the explosive agent or toxic (biological, chemical, or nuclear) material that is delivered by a missile, rocket, torpedo, or bomb. Classification Types of warheads include: * Explosiv ...

, enabling

Iranian Air Force * Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force , patron = , motto = , "Skyhigh is my place" , colours = Ultramarine blue , colours_label = , march ...

to strike HVTs .

Overview

The Ghassed was designed in accordance with the needs of the

Iranian Air Force * Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force , patron = , motto = , "Skyhigh is my place" , colours = Ultramarine blue , colours_label = , march ...

to strategic

arsenals An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...

and

bomb A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the Exothermic process, exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-t ...

s. Once Ghassed is deployed, Iranian

fighter jets Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...

can destroy enemy targets by this high-precision bomb without coming into the range of enemy fire. The Ghassed is a powered

air-to-surface missile An air-to-surface missile (ASM) or air-to-ground missile (AGM) is a missile designed to be launched from military aircraft at targets on land or sea. There are also unpowered guided glide bombs not considered missiles. The two most common prop ...

designed for strikes at long range against various targets. It is a rocket-boosted version of the MK-84 bomb, with the rocket motor increasing the launch range and so giving the launch aircraft protection from whatever defenses may protect the target. Ghassed can be deployed by Iran's F-4 and F-5 fighter jets. A TV/IR-guided bomb has either a conventional television

video camera A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film). Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other ...

or an

infrared camera Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

(for

night vision Night vision is the ability to see in low-light conditions, either naturally with scotopic vision or through a night-vision device. Night vision requires both sufficient spectral range and sufficient intensity range. Humans have poor night vi ...

) mounted to its nose. In remote-operation mode, the controller relays information through

radio signal Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz (GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (shor ...

s to a human operator, who is usually on board the bomber plane. The remote operator relays commands to the control system to steer the bomb through the air—the bomb acts something like a remote-control plane. In this mode, the operator may launch the bomb without a specific target and sight, and then pick up the target from the video as the bomb gets closer to the ground.

Variants

References

{{Weapons of Iran Guided bombs Guided missiles of Iran Air-to-surface missiles of Iran