Shahid Bahman Bagheri is seen with most of the aircraft that were shown on its flight deck when journalists visited for its commissioning. (Islamic Revolution Guard Corps)
The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) commissioned its first ship with a flight deck for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on 6 February.
Like Shahid Mahdavi (110-3), which the IRGCN commissioned in March 2023, the new Shahid Bahman Bagheri (C110-4) is a converted container ship, with the key difference being that it has a flight deck partially cantilevered over its port side and a ‘ski-jump' ramp to help fixed-wing aircraft take off.
Speaking at the commissioning event, IRGCN Commander Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said the ship's runway is 180 m long, but satellite imagery shows it is around 20 m shorter than that.
The aircraft that were displayed on the ship when journalists were brought aboard included three Bell 206s, at least one Bell 412, and at least one Mi-17 helicopter, as well as a two-seat gyrocopter and two vertical take-off UAVs, none of which require the ship's runway.
The fixed-wing UAVs included two Mohajer-6s, an Ababil-3, three labelled the JAS-313 that looked like smaller versions of the Qaher-313 ‘stealth fighter' that Iran unveiled in 2013, and four even smaller JAS-313s. While the Qaher-313 was widely derided by foreign observers at the time, the head of the Iranian Ministry of Defence's Aerospace Industries Organisation said in February 2023 that the aircraft had been developed into a UAV.
The tail numbers on the JAS-313s indicated the two types are respectively 60% and 25% the size of the original Qaher-313, and an overhead photograph released by the IRGC showed the smaller ones were a little more than half the size of the larger ones.
Armament
Shahid Bahman Bagheri
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