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Iran's New Drone Carrier Starts Sea Trials

The Iranian IRGC's (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) latest ambitious naval project, the drone carrier Shahid Bagheri (C-110-4), has sailed. The vessel appears to be on sea trials and may now be anchored outside Bandar Abbas harbor. Work on the The 240 meter ship, a converted merchant vessel, begun in 2022, and she was launched in 2023.

The ship's distinctive outline is visible in Sentinel 2 satellite imagery from yesterday. Other sources suggest that the ship is still in the vicinity. The flight deck is now marked, possibly flight tests of some sort can be expected.

The ship has a unique angled flight deck on the port (left) side which heads across towards the starboard (right) side. This novel arrangement is a workaround to avoid the need to remove the pre-existing superstructure left over from the ship's past life as a merchant vessel.

The angled flight deck, with a ski-jump ramp at the front, shows that the ship is intended for fixed-wing operations. The aircraft, highly likely primarily drones (UAVs), will be landing as well as taking off, so will not be one-way types. Previous Iranian drone carriers have only been able to launch large drones, not recover them.

The utility of such a ship in the IRGC's fleet is open to question, but shows both the ambition of the country's regime, and the trend towards drone carriers.

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