By Tom Sharpe*
Earlier this month, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) gained an interesting new addition – the Shahid Bagheri, described as “the world’s first purpose-built drone carrier” by Iranian government propaganda channel PressTV. The release goes on to say that “it is a true drone carrier, designed specifically to launch and recover wheeled UAVs. This sets it apart from aircraft carriers, helicopter carriers, and amphibious assault ships, where drone operations remain supplementary.”
The release is about as truthful and consistent as PressTV generally is, as the Bagheri was not designed or purpose built as a drone carrier: she’s actually a converted container ship, as even PressTV admits. She now has a ski-jump bow ramp, arrester wires on an angled flight deck and what look like pretty small aircraft lifts down to the holds/hangars below.
At 42,000 tons and 240 meters long, Bagheri is roughly two-thirds the size of a Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth class carrier, similar in size to the French carrier Charles de Gaulle and comfortably the IRGCN’s largest vessel. (The regular Iranian Navy, not part of the Guard forces, has an oil tanker converted into a forward-base ship which is even bigger.) The original container-ship superstructure sits awkwardly across the ship, two-thirds of the way back from the bow. Real purpose-built carriers almost always have their superstructure in the form of narrow islands set to one side. It seems as if cost and complexity prevented the Iranians from moving it. There is much talk in the announcements about how this isn’t a limiting factor: we’ll see. Time will also tell what adding another 14 metres to the beam of the ship so the runway can go past the superstructure will do to the transverse stability of the ship during flying operations.
Range and firepower feature heavily in the announcements, as you would expect. Bagheri will fly Ababil-3 and Mohajer-6 surveillance drones and Qaher-313 “combat UAVs” with a range of approximately 1200 nautical miles. The Qaher-313 is supposedly in the same class as a small jet fighter and has a stealthy design, though there is some doubt as to whether it really exists as a genuine flying system. There can’t be much doubt, however, that the Bagheri could loose off a big swarm of more basic one-way-attack drones, though there’d be no need for the angled flight deck in that case. The carrier will also operate various helicopters, including the Mil Mi-17, Bell-412 and Shahed 278. Between them they can conduct anti-surface, anti-submarine and ship-to-shore operations.
Qaher-313 jet drones on the deck of the IRGCN vessel Shahid Bagheri. There are some doubts as to whether the Qaher-313 is a genuine flying aircraft Credit: Sepah News
Organic and defensive weapons include eight Kowsar 222 short-range surface-to-air missiles, eight ship-to-ship cruise missiles, likely the Qader and Qadir, and 30 fast attack craft, probably the Tareq class who themselves can launch missiles out to 90 nautical miles. There’s no dock so launching and recovering those in anything other than calm weather will be interesting, but overall, this thing has teeth.
So why have they built it? Since the late 1980s, the IRGCN has specialised in small, mobile, and hard-to-counter weapon systems, including thousands of mobile ballistic missile launchers, fast attack craft, and mine layers. Operation Praying Mantis in 1988 – in which the US Navy sank or destroyed several Iranian warships, jets and armed platforms – made it abundantly clear to them what happens if you try to fight the USN on its own terms, and the IRGCN has spent billions on asymmetric systems ever since. Building something so large and vulnerable seems like a backward step.
I think the Bagheri will have several roles.
First and foremost will be as a forward observation and surveillance platform. You could see this being of use in several areas, the Gulf of Aden and approaches to the Bab El Mandeb being the most obvious. Ceasefire or not, one can never have too much intelligence on an area of interest, and they could provide that information to Russia, China, the Houthis, Somali pirates and so on. Their spy and weapons-transit ship Behshad has done good work for them here, but this would be a step change in capability.
Then there’s launching attacks against land targets, which Iran can now theoretically do from almost any piece of sea. A few months ago, if the Bagheri had been in the Eastern Med, Israel could have been attacked from both sides rather than only one. This ship can carry enough fuel to circumnavigate the globe; refuelling would not be an issue.
Start going much further, say to the vicinity of the UK, and general logistic support would be a challenge, particularly for a navy used to operating close to home. But here there’s an advantage in basing it on a proven commercial design. This thing is less likely to break down than a thoroughbred warship equivalent. Unless they fall into the trap of over-crewing her, operating her differently from her original design criteria and then thrashing her like a warship – which navies are prone to do when operating commercially built vessels.
Helicopters and drones on the deck of the Bagheri. The sole hangar lift appears too small for most of the aircraft Credit: Sepah News
What if Bagheri did come and sit off the UK? As long as a ship remains in international waters, i.e. outside 12 nautical miles, it’s completely entitled to be there. It could fly its drones there as well. If we consider the British military resources the Russian spy ship Yantar consumed the other week while hovering over cables, this would be similar. And if those drones did start encroaching into UK airspace, what would we do about it?
Before long, there would be warships, fast jets, and a nuclear submarine present – and rightly so – but these are scarce resources in today’s hollowed out British forces. If a Russian spy ship or naval flotilla turned up at the same time, and if all this took place while we had a carrier group deployed on the far side of the world (as we will for a big chunk of this year) there might not be enough to go round.
It’s this zone short of shooting where warships spend nearly all their time and are good at doing so. As a grey zone teaser, designed to shape thinking, consume resources and everything just sort of fighting, Bagheri will be formidable. That’s if – and it’s a big if – they have the confidence to operate her so far from home.
Apart from practical action, clearly there is a PR element to the Bagheri. The initial videos were crude but there will be more to come and it wont be long before she is photographed in company with Russian or Chinese warships. She will also be used as a shop window, sitting off the coast of interested countries to show her wares. Using warships in this manner is tried and tested and will certainly form part of our own carrier’s deployment to the Indo-Pacific later this year.
Iran’s weapons export trade is currently flourishing. Iranian weapons are cheap, battle proven by Russia, Hezbollah and the Houthis and they’ll sell to anyone – or in some cases, they’ll arm you for free. The opportunity to fill the void left by Russia needing to concentrate resources at home has not passed them by either. The Shahid Bagheri all forms part of that.
Her final role will be as a strike platform. The switch from drone surveillance to strike would happen very fast and unless your intelligence cueing was watertight, you would have little to no warning. This is how the IRGCN routinely operate in the Persian Gulf: constantly rushing at you at high speed, lighting you up with shore-based fire control radars, flying at you and peeling off at the last minute, warning you on the radio and so on. They get good intelligence from seeing how you react while you are left wondering each time if this was “the one”, knowing that if it was, you’d be late to react.
The appearance of the Bagheri means that this sort of thing is no longer limited to the Gulf. Iranian drones and fast attack craft can now, potentially, appear anywhere. The ship itself might be hundreds of miles away from the target being harassed or attacked.
Up against serious opposition, however, Bagheri would be unlikely to last long. We know from all the strikes in the Red Sea that container vessel hulls are strong, but once successfully hit, damage control inside the ship would be limited compared to her warship counterparts. Unfortunately, for survivability to be a factor in decision making, you have to care about survival.
From a pure maritime perspective, the Shahid Bagheri’s utility as a surveillance, PR, R&D, weapons sales platform and ultimately a strike weapon makes this conversion a smart move. Rough and ready she may be, and easy to mock if you are so minded, but she is ready to start trials now and at a fraction of the time and cost it would take any Western Navy to do the same. How the IRGCN manages such a large vessel and how far from home it is able to do so will be interesting to see, but as a tool of influence for both enemies and friends alike – which is a warship’s most common role – she will have utility.
As a genuine strike weapon, she might only be effective once – but what if that’s enough?
This article was first published in The Daily Telegraph and is republished with the permission of the author.
