It is often presented as the “ultimate nec” of missiles. In the war between Israel and Iran initiated by the Israeli attack of June 13, the Fattah-1, an Iranian missile whose name can be translated by “victorious”, is a lot of talk. Unveiled in June 2023 by the Iranian regime, it is qualified as hypersonics. Indeed, it would have, according to its designers, a speed between Mach 13 and Mach 15, between 16,000 and 18,500 kilometers per hour, for a range of 1,400 km. It is also presented as very difficult to detect and interceptable by defense systems.
The impressive capacities attributed to this missile, which Iran said it had used on June 18, do not fail to react on social networks. In a publication viewed more than two million times on X, the president of the UPR François Asselineau said for example recently that “no NATO country, not even the United States, has such missiles”.
Is Fattah-1 really a hypersonic missile?
Is considered hypersonic a speed greater than Mach 5. As Etienne Marcuz, a researcher associated with the Foundation for Strategic Research, explains, in the military vocabulary, the hypersonic term more specifically designates a missile “the majority of the flight of which takes place in the atmosphere, and which has a significant capacity for maneuver”. With the difference in particular of ballistic missiles, the volume of which is made larger outside the atmosphere.
For the Fattah-1, drawn on a tense trajectory, “the warhead has a small engine which allows it to maintain a hypersonic speed for a larger part of its flight, where a conventional aerodynamic missile will gradually lose speed,” explains Etienne Marcuz. However, the specialist in strategic weapons does not strictly speaking Fattah-1 as a hypersonic missile, but rather as a “hybrid”: “It is fired with a booster like a ballistic missile, and the tank with which the head is not very important, which limits the capacity for maneuver”.
How undetectable by radars is it undetectable?
Unlike other ballistic missiles, Fattah-1 actually poses more problems for anti-missile defense systems. “A ballistic missile will come out of the atmosphere, in a bell trajectory. Because it rises above, it is detectable from further away. For Fattah-1, the trajectory is tense or grazing, it will therefore stay longer under the horizon of radars, “develops the expert.
However, it is not fundamentally undetectable: “it will be just detected later”. Its ability to maneuver makes interception as much more difficult, because its trajectory is not predictable. “This requires intercepting it later or having interceptors who themselves have a significant ability to maneuver, which is not the case for Israeli interceptors,” said Etienne Marcuz.
How many missiles of this type have Iran?
Today, it is difficult to estimate the level of production of Fattah-1 by Iranian industry, and the number of these missiles available to the army. “They are complicated to identify on satellite images because they use the same propellers as other types of missiles.” It is also difficult to assert with certainty that Iran has actually drawn these missiles since June 13, although it is established that they have already served against Israel in October 2024.
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Unparalleled technology worldwide?
What about the technological advance that Fattah-1 represents in comparison with the missiles of other military powers represents, and in particular the NATO countries? As explained by the researcher specializing in missiles and drones Fabien Hinz at Point, “Regardless of propaganda and exaggeration sometimes associated with Iranian affirmations concerning the development of defense technologies, its soil-to-ground missile programs display progressive and regular development”.
Indeed, NATO countries currently have no hypersonic missiles. For Etienne Marcuz, this observation is nevertheless explained more by choices of investments than by a delay in technological development. “The development choices were rather brought to aviation, when they have rather developed ballistics”, notes the researcher, who also specifies that “France is developing the V-Max, a hypersonic glider, which is much more ambitious than that, more efficient in terms of maneuverability”.
