The Raad (, 'thunder') or RAAD is an Iranian wire-guided

anti-tank guided missile An anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), anti-tank missile, anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) or anti-armor guided weapon is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily armored military vehicles. ATGMs range in size from shoulde ...

based on the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

9M14M Malyutka (AT-3b Sagger) missile. The Raad began mass production in 1988 and was publicly unveiled in 1997. It is manufactured by Parchin Missile Industries, a subsidiary of Iran's

Defense Industries Organization The Defense Industries Organization (DIO) is a conglomerate of companies run by the Islamic Republic of Iran whose function is to provide the Armed Forces with the necessary manufacturing capacity and technical abilities. In recent years, the DI ...

. The Raad family comes in four variants: the base RAAD missile, a clone of the 9M14M Malyutka-M (AT-3b Sagger); the I-RAAD, with

SACLOS Semi-automatic command to line of sight (SACLOS) is a method of missile command guidance. In SACLOS, the operator must continually point a sighting device at the target while the missile is in flight. Electronics in the sighting device and/or the ...

guidance, the RAAD-T, with a

tandem warhead A tandem-charge or dual-charge weapon is an explosive device or projectile that has two or more stages of detonation, assisting it to penetrate either reactive armour on an armoured vehicle or strong structures. Anti-tank Tandem charges are ef ...

, and the I-RAAD-T, with both a tandem warhead and

guidance. RAAD means thunder in Persian. It is not an acronym and many sources do not capitalize the name.

History

During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran had an acute need for anti-tank missiles, necessitating the country to buy AT-3 Sagger missiles. Iran also acquired the HJ-73, the Chinese version of the Sagger. Indigenous manufacturing work began in the tail end of the war and mass production began in 1998, with the Raad being the first anti-tank guided weapon to be built by Iran. The RAAD was obtained with Russian assistance. The weapon was unveiled on April 30, 1997. The RAAD has almost identical components with

9M14 Malyutka The 9M14 Malyutka (; "Little one", NATO reporting name: AT-3 Sagger) is a manual command to line of sight (MCLOS) wire-guided anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) system developed in the Soviet Union. It was the first man-portable anti-tank guided mi ...

, from the battery to the guidance unit. According to

SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is an international institute based in Stockholm, Sweden. It was founded in 1966 and provides data, analysis and recommendations for armed conflict, military expenditure and arms trade a ...

, 1500 RAAD/Sagger missiles were built or imported by Iran between 1996 and 2001 and 2,250 from 1996 to 2004. As of 2015, 4,500 RAADs were made in Iran.

Combat use

Iran supplied Hezbollah with the Raad in the early 2000s and

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

used Raad missiles in the

2006 Lebanon War The 2006 Lebanon War was a 34-day armed conflict in Lebanon, fought between Hezbollah and Israel. The war started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, thoug ...

. Israel captured ten baseline RAAD missiles on the

Karine A The ''Karine A'' affair, also known as Operation "Noah's Ark" (), was an Israeli military action in January 2002 in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forces seized MV ''Karine A'', which, according to the IDF, was a Palestinian freigh ...

in January 2002. The Raad has been used in the Syrian Civil War by Hezbollah fighters, and the

Syrian Army The Syrian Army is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. Up until the fall of the Assad regime, the Syrian Arab Army existed as a land force branch of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, which dominanted the military service of the fo ...

. I-RAAD missiles have been used by ISIL fighters in Iraq. On October 7, 2023,

Al-Quds Brigades Al-Quds Brigades (, ''Sarāyā al-Quds'' meaning "Jerusalem Brigades") is a paramilitary organisation and the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which is the second largest armed group in th ...

militants used a RAAD-T during the raid on Israel from Gaza.

Variants

RAAD

The RAAD is an identical copy of the Russian 9M14M Malyutka-M (NATO AT-3b "Sagger").

RAAD-T

The first improvement of the RAAD missile, the RAAD-T has a

to defeat

explosive Reactive Armor Reactive armour is a type of vehicle armour used in protecting vehicles, especially modern tanks, against shaped charges and hardened kinetic energy penetrators. The most common type is ''explosive reactive armour'' (ERA), but variants includ ...

. However, the RAAD-T still uses the obsolete MCLOS guidance of the original RAAD. According to its export material, the RAAD-T has improved maneuverability over the base RAAD and has 400 mm RHA penetration after reactive armor.

I-RAAD

For ''Improved RAAD'', the I-RAAD has a different launcher with a tripod-mounted

guidance system that makes the missile much easier to aim. The specific SACLOS method is a TV differential tracker. The guidance unit is similar to that of the Chinese HJ-73 system, and possibly the HJ-73C model in particular. First seen in 1998. RAAD missiles can be used by I-RAAD launchers. It's used to defeat ERA armor.

I-RAAD-T

The I-RAAD-T system combines the tandem-warhead of the RAAD-T missile with the SACLOS guidance system of the I-RAAD launcher. RAAD and I-RAAD missiles can be retrofitted to the I-RAAD-T standard. The I-RAAD-T also includes a simulator that allows operators to be trained on the system without actually firing a missile. 400 mm RHA penetration after reactive armor.

Operators

* *

Non-State actors

* : Acquired I-RAADs.

References

{{Reflist Anti-tank guided missiles of Iran Hezbollah rocket systems Military equipment introduced in the 1980s Anti-tank guided missiles Rocket weapons Anti-tank weapons Military equipment of Iran Guided missiles of Iran