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Commander: Several Ocean-Going Vessels to Join IRGC Navy Soon

TEHRAN (FNA)- Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Navy's Second Zone General Ramezan Zirahi announced on Monday that the IRGC’s naval forces will receive a number of ocean-going vessels in the next six months.
“A number of ocean-going vessels for deployment in free waters and oceans are being manufactured and they will join the IRGC Navy by the yearend (Iranian year which ends on March 20),” General Zirahi said.

 
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Interesting article, it links nicely to the recent deployment military speed boats carrying UAVs.

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The IRGC’s chief said in the 6th Speedboat Conference in Rasht’s Zibakenar: “If we combine light drones with speedboats, they will be able to strike any target within 10 kilometers. We have to put domestic capacities together. If the technological achievements are networked together, the country will see such a surge.”

What the IRGC chief refers to is a combination of aerial and naval drones that attack and destroy various targets. In that doctrine, a target such as an advanced enemy warship, despite all of its defense systems, could face a wave of incoming attacks and would be swiftly overwhelmed and destroyed.

Such a battle can be defined as the novel strategy of multi-domain battle, where sea warfare and ground-sea operations are central. Adopting such a strategy, within the framework of synchronized naval, aerial, electronic, and cyber warfare, and the simultaneous use of manned and unmanned combat platforms in the air and the sea, especially in the Persian Gulf, where the depth of the water is low and the width of the waterway is small, and around islands where Iran has sovereignty,
especially the Hormuz Strait, can turn the Persian Gulf into a slaughterhouse where multi-ton enemy vessels would fall prey to countless and coordinated attacks by much smaller units and military hardware.

One of the requirements of that strategy is deploying combined surveillance/combat platforms with the capability to operate in the air and on the sea and with adequate sustainability in the battlefield. Another is the use of artificial intelligence and image processing in order to operate semi-autonomously and in a coordinated fashion with manned units, as well as the use of different ground, sea, and air carriers and the establishing of an ISRTar.

The deployment of speedboats has long been one of the main strategies of the IRGC Navy in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. However, with the emergence of new battlefields and certain requirements for effectiveness in the battlefields of today and tomorrow, and of course the problems that have since the past existed in the IRGC Navy’s tactics, an updating was made necessary. The recent remarks by the IRGC chief represent a new outlook on that very subject.

A smart and seamless network of surveillance, monitoring, intelligence-gathering, and target acquisition, comprised of all types of ground, sea, aerial, fixed and mobile intelligence gathering and transmission systems that somehow has suitable sustainability, coupled with precise cruise weaponry, will spare no large and formidable warship from sea-based, surgical and plentiful attacks. To adopt such a strategy, besides the need to develop a new generation of platforms that can be used in multi-domain combat and are interoperable with other manned and unmanned systems, it is also necessary that changes be made in the existing systems and equipment.
In general, equipment must be procured in the three following categories:

 Surveillance, monitoring, intelligence gathering, and target acquisition
 Offense
 Defense (aerial)

Although Iran has operationalized a vast range of anti-ship missiles (Azraels of Persian Gulf), there is still room for more enhancement of armaments needed for this strategy. For instance, a large unit of the IRGC Navy is that of speedboats mounted with 107-milimeter, unguided rockets, which absolutely lack a suitable combat capability. These same boats can be used more efficiently if they are equipped with the right communication hardware, if those useless rockets are replaced with small, cruise missiles with fire-and-forget capability — for instance by making certain changes to the Akhgar missiles (which can be the subject of another article) — and if they carry and launch in motion at least six small, tube-launched drones with foldable wings. The modular load of those drones could be used in surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations if small but numerous sensors are put on mobile platforms to form a network that could act as a super-sensor.

Sea-based air defense in Iran has had certain serious shortcoming in the recent decades, which have not been fully addressed despite the efforts made in recent years. Those shortcomings are particularly more serious in small vessels. Although their agility and maneuverability had offset many of their shortcomings, those characteristics will not remain competitive for long due to the ongoing changes in the battlefield and novel weaponry.

Thus, equipping these vessels with alert and jamming systems, and soft kill and hard kill equipment is essential. Although creating a sea-based long-range air defense needs larger vessels with the capability to carry large and heavy radars and missiles, whose manufacture is both highly time- and money-consuming for Iran, the development of a new generation of suitable small and agile vessels in large numbers that can surveil and engage without stopping could put a large expanse under coverage.

Of course, Iran would ultimately need several-thousand-ton warships with long-range air defense capabilities to deploy in far-off waterways, but that could happen for now in the smaller areas of the Persian Gulf and the Hormuz Strait with vessels of 300-ton and lower weights and by equipping them with large numbers of missiles with ranges of 12 to a maximum 30 kilometers.
The simultaneous use of larger vessels with the capability to carry anti-ship, long-range missiles and MALE-class drones, the holding of calculated and coordinated drills, and of course the role that islands can play as fortifications for Iran will make that strategy all the more effective and lethal.


 
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Khanzadi, Commander of the Navy: The helicopter carrier that will be unveiled in December is called "Persian Gulf" and with one refueling, it can go around the Earth three times.



it carry 7 helicopters and is bigger then kharg ship



View attachment 676533
At some point they`ve fitted the Kharg with the same sort of optronic system that we see on the larger warships.
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Khanzadi, Commander of the Navy: The helicopter carrier that will be unveiled in December is called "Persian Gulf" and with one refueling, it can go around the Earth three times.



it carry 7 helicopters and is bigger then kharg ship



View attachment 676533
Approximately 230 meter long but can only carry 7 helicopters... The misral class is 200 meter long and can carry 16 helicopters, but the iranian one looks very much lighter.
 
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Approximately 230 meter long but can only carry 7 helicopters... The misral class is 200 meter long and can carry 16 helicopters, but the iranian one looks very much lighter.

Mistral is a dedicated carrier, this Iranian vessel is a support vessel which can also carry helicopters. It's layout is probably to the likes of Khargh.
 
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Khanzadi, Commander of the Navy: The helicopter carrier that will be unveiled in December is called "Persian Gulf" and with one refueling, it can go around the Earth three times.



it carry 7 helicopters and is bigger then kharg ship



View attachment 676533
Where have they hid such a monster all this time that no one has seen it?!
 
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thats my Q too, how did they hide it?

Only to continue in my hypothesis of modification of an existing commercial ship
For example, this image is from an open view commercial satellite and photographs the shipyard north of Bandar Abbas, these two ships shown are very similar in length to that indicated for the new support vessel.
d4591610ea4d62cd1260d730da835bcfo.png

It would be interesting if any of the users have the opportunity to access more recent satellite images of this shipyard to assess whether any work on board is identified, but also possibly images of other Iranian shipyards in the Persian Gulf.
 
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Only to continue in my hypothesis of modification of an existing commercial ship
For example, this image is from an open view commercial satellite and photographs the shipyard north of Bandar Abbas, these two ships shown are very similar in length to that indicated for the new support vessel.
d4591610ea4d62cd1260d730da835bcfo.png

It would be interesting if any of the users have the opportunity to access more recent satellite images of this shipyard to assess whether any work on board is identified, but also possibly images of other Iranian shipyards in the Persian Gulf.


yes they already have 7 helicopter take off and landing pads
 
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Navy Commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi says Iran plans to unveil its first domestically-made carrier vessel capable of carrying helicopters, drones, missiles and other warfare equipment in the near future.



 
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