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 A missile is an airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight aided usually by a propellant, jet engine or rocket motor. Historically, 'missile' referred to any projectile that is thrown, shot or propelled towards a target; this u ...

developed by

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

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

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

, enabling Iranian Air Force to strike HVTs .

Overview

The Ghassed was designed in accordance with the needs of the Iranian Air Force to strategic

arsenals An arsenal is a place where weapon, arms and ammunition are made, maintenance, repair, and operations, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether Private property, privately or state-owned, publicly owned. Arse ...

and

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

s. Once Ghassed is deployed, Iranian

fighter jets Fighter aircraft (early on also ''pursuit aircraft'') are 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 air ...

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 thermography (IRT), thermal video or thermal imaging, is a process where a thermal camera captures and creates an image of an object by using infrared radiation emitted from the object in a process, which are examples of infrared im ...

(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 v ...

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

radio signal Radio waves (formerly called Hertzian waves) are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the lowest frequencies and the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies below 300 gigahertz (GHz) and wavelengths g ...

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 Aerial bombs of Iran Guided bombs Guided missiles of Iran Air-to-surface missiles of Iran