Tel Aviv: One of the main weapons used by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) on the opening strike in Tehran that killed the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei was a special version of the Rafael ROCKS missile.
”It penetrated the building where the Iranian leader was with others in utmost accuracy,” an Israeli source said.
According to an official Rafael release, the ROCKS is a new generation extended stand-off range air-to-surface missile designed to strike high-value stationary and relocatable targets in a GPS-denied arena.
Equipped with either a penetration or blast fragmentation warhead, the missile can destroy above-ground or well protected underground targets in heavily surface-to-air defended areas.
According to the Israeli company, the pilot allocates a mission for the missile before release. The mission includes target coordinates, impact angle and azimuth, topographic imagery data, and fuse delays.
ROCKS is released well outside of the surface-to-air defended area, and performs a high-velocity trajectory to minimise attrition of both launching aircraft and missile, providing high target kill success.
The missile uses its INS/GPS for conducting its midcourse trajectory. Homing, up to target destruction, is performed by using its scene-matching technology or anti-radiation capability, overcoming any GPS jamming scenario.
Officially, there was no Israeli comment on the weapon systems used in the opening strike.
-The writer is an Israel-based freelance journalist. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
