The Shahed-136B UAVs in the parade on 21 September. (NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) displayed a new type of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called the Shahed-136B during the Armed Forces Day parade in Tehran on 21 September.
Three of the UAVs were towed past the VIP stand on a trailer with a poster identifying them as Shahed-136Bs in Persian. No details about the UAV's performance were provided by official sources.
While its name implies the new type is a development of the well-known Shahed-136 long-range one-way-attack (OWA) UAV, it looked very different, dispensing with the delta wing configuration in favour of a more conventional aircraft layout. It still had a propellor at the rear, but the engine exhausts were not visible, and it had air intakes both on top and along the sides of its fuselage.
The Shahed-238, a jet-powered version of the Shahed-136, also made its parade debut, although it has been displayed in the IRGC Aerospace museum in Tehran since November 2023.
The parade also featured an ostensibly new type of ballistic missile that was labelled the Jihad, with the Iranian media reporting that it has a 1,000 km range. This looked like the missile that has been unofficially referred to as the Qiam-2 as it appears to be a derivative of the Qiam, an extensively modified version of R-17 ‘Scud' liquid-fuel ballistic missile, with a manoeuvring re-entry vehicle. This has been seen in the IRGC's coverage of its ballistic missile attacks against targets in Iraq and Syria since June 2018.
The parade included four Jihads on two launchers, making this the first time that the IRGC has displayed a twin-launcher for a liquid-fuel ballistic missile.
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