Joint Offensive

R ecently, the IRGC unveiled its first underground drone base. In the images published from this base, numerous UAVs, generally Shahed-136, were seen along with stacks of ballistic missiles of various types. According to officials, Shahed-136 has a range of 2,000 kilometers, and each base can operate 60 UAVs simultaneously. Interestingly, long-range suicide drones were stored among ballistic missiles. The motive for this can be explained as the facilitating of long-range joint offensive operations by each base independently.

Despite equipping with a relatively small warhead and low speed, it is very accurate, sorely troublous to detect and track, inexpensive, and easy to use in a large-scale swarm.

In the case of combined assault, we can describe two scenarios:

1: In this situation, the objective of the attack can be defined as the destruction of protected vast targets, against a foe with significant classical power. For example, to attack an enemy air or naval base, the burden of destroying hard and major targets will be on the ballistic missiles. Although, Anti ballistic air defense systems around the target could decrease the effectiveness of the onslaught. Even reduces it to such an extent that the operation is practically defeated. An initial solution to overcome missile defense could be to launching numerous ballistic missiles simultaneously to outnumber the enemy defensive systems. Such a solution, although quite possible, is too expensive. In a combined attack, the first wave of the attack, which is the operation to suppress the antiballistic air defense (SEAD), is carried out by suicide drones. This solution, addition to being more cost-effective, can also have a much higher success rate, as ballistic defense systems are generally weak against targets such as suicide drones. On the other hand, more ballistic missiles, which are expensive and valuable equipment, can be used to hit the other targets.

2: This scenario can be described as a reverse of the first case. In areas with low protection, but numerous small fixed / mobile targets, the combined attack can be an advantageous Initiative. In this case, first, the main targets get neutralized by ballistic missiles, then a swarm of suicide drones loiters over the target area to conduct search and destroy operations.

Other possibilities of such a drone includes the following:

• Carrying out deep strike operations, blocking enemy forces from reaching operational areas.
•Surgical operation, precise destruction of strategic targets all across the conflict zone to paralyze hostile forces.
• providing close air support for ground forces
• Disrupting the enemy logistic.
• Execution of A2/AD operations in the network-centric warfare and swarm operation format.