U.S. Central Command has rejected claims circulating in Iranian media that a United States aircraft carrier has been sunk, stating instead that American forces struck an Iranian drone carrier in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury.
In a post published on 2 March, CENTCOM said “the Iranian regime’s false messaging machine continues to falsely claim that it has sunk a U.S. aircraft carrier.” It added: “The TRUTH: The only carrier that has been hit is the Shahid Bagheri, an Iranian drone carrier. U.S. forces struck the ship within hours of launching Operation Epic Fury.”
The vessel identified by CENTCOM, the IRIS Shahid Bagheri, is a converted commercial ship operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. Commissioned last year, it has been presented by Tehran as a sea-based platform for unmanned systems. Rather than operating fast jets, the ship is configured to launch and recover drones and helicopters, giving Iran a means of extending the reach of its unmanned aerial operations beyond its coastline.
Imagery previously released by Iranian state media showed a long, flat deck adapted for drone activity, alongside facilities to support command, control and maintenance functions.
No further operational detail has been released about the strike on the Shahid Bagheri, including the extent of any damage sustained. CENTCOM said additional information would be provided as it becomes available.
Noooo, it was so silly!
There are rumours the IAF have destroyed some of Iran’s Tomcats too, just wanting destruction of museum pieces.
More seriously all of the ingredients are developing for this type of converted carrier to become much more common and feasible, to the point where even Western navies might want one. STOL drones like Vanquish and Mojave make the angled deck and ski ramp relevant, while containerised strike and defence weapons would make outfitting a lot easier.
Then if the Iranians had the shipyard facilities to actually build a hangar and deck lifts instead of a football pitch the aviation facilities would have been a lot better, and most European refit yards would be able to accommodate that. A container ship of the size of Shahid Bagheri costs about £150M second hand in good condition, say the same again for the refit and you have an aircraft carrier for the cost of a T31. Of course it would be more complicated than that but if you want to rapidly increase aviation capacity…
except this is civilian tanker/cargo ship, cannot take hits, is slow and not mobile
it’s like painting a Ford Transit in green and calling it an APC 😀
Not supposed to be good, just cheap. Drones give standoff range that makes it a lot harder to coordinate attacks. If there were Brimstone hidden inside the Transit…
So how many sailors are you willing to let die on your cheap ship.
Was only thinking of this thing this morning and wondering its fate. A little difficult to hide it so wondering why we hadn’t heard anything about it being struck though when ten vessels sunk was indeed announced this morning I did presume it must surely have been a victim.
They sank the Fisher Price carrier. As with all claims, I will wait for photos. But, I won’t be surprised considering the target, and it’s having such poor defences. After watching videos of the IRIS Shahid Bagheri, even calling it a drone carrier would be a stretch. It had an indoor football pitch, if that counts for something.
I wonder if these raghead wearing creeps will even have a tugboat after all this.
I guess they will have bigger priorities after this than making sure if their men and women are keeping a respectful distance apart from each other in public places.
Does that wonky photo look photo shopped? the ships or odd shaps and shade on diffrent helicoptors is wrong, just saying
No, sadly it actually looked like that.
do they not own a sprite level,
I think Iran is the very definition of a paper tiger. What clowns.
Only from one aspect.
It successfully causes much trouble internationally.
With nuclear weapons – very different of course.
I think a couple more frigates (or corvettes) might have been sunk too.
Priority should be given to the Kilo Subs (two are in refit) one is active.
as well as the Ghadir mini submarines
The main problem are he IRGC small fast boats. Swarms of them could cause major issues, I did read they have hundreds.