Bavar 2

For the air defense system see Bavar 373.

Bavar 2
Role	Ground effect vehicle
National origin	Iran
Manufacturer	Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company
First flight	2009
Introduction	2010
Status	Active
Primary user	IRGC
Number built	12

The HESA Bavar 2 (Persian:باور ٢, meaning: Belief 2) is a ground effect vehicle unveiled in September 2010 by the IRGC Navy. It is designed to have a small radar signature, and therefore be difficult to track on radar, to be able to remain undetected while carrying out patrol missions. The boat can be equipped with different kinds of weapons including locally produced rockets and missiles. The design is based on the work of Alexander Lippisch and is similar in concept to the 1970s experimental RFB X-113.

Analysis

Because they ride on a cushion of air generated between their wings and the water's surface and don't actually fly, as such, surface-effect vehicles (SEVs) are able to sustain payloads approximately three times the weight of those carried by equivalent-sized airplanes. This fact - taken together with their small size, quick acceleration, high speed, close proximity to the water and ability to blend-in with small, stationary boats on radar while loitering - makes small SEVs like the Bavar ideal platforms for carrying-out asymmetric approaches to conventional naval surface forces, especially at night and within the confines of an area as restricted (and often congested) as the Persian Gulf. The Bavar II exhibits a small radar signature and is therefore difficult to pick-up and track, especially while lying passive/motionless, when set against a cluttered backdrop, while merely trolling (see photo) and/or at longer ranges. Its reduced cross-section is intended to allow the Bavar to remain undetected while carrying out reconnaissance/patrol/attack missions, but its tellingly quick approach is often given-away through its employment of a (radar-reflecting) high propellor and a (heat-emitting) high, exposed engine. For these reasons, future versions are expected to incorporate a smaller and lower, enclosed turbofan, as well as emphasize the more extensive use of carbon-fibre, facetted surfaces and radar-absorbing paint to further minimize their profiles.

Perhaps most ominously, their small size and light weight suggest the Bavar IIs are readily-trailerable/transportable. If so, this means they can be maintained well in-shore - within some broadly-dispersed array of hardened, underground shelters where they would be difficult to locate and strike but from which they could be brought to their operating areas fairly quickly and easily. Alternatively, as such SEVs are able to ride on their aircushions both over land and over water, they might be brought-up quickly from shelter, launched from suitable locations close by, then directed towards the sea across some relatively flat and straight, pre-planned course.

Primary weapons include Iranian-produced anti-ship guided missiles, as well as the Russian Shkval, a super-cavitating (250 mph) torpedo, which has a range of some 8000 yards and no known guidance system or warhead but that, even without either, can shatter the keel and/or tear the bow off a modern cruiser, destroyer or frigate. Secondary weapons include rockets and machineguns. The bright-red painted area across the bottom of the fuselage reveals (to other operators, and to a flight's commander) whether a given Bavar is or is not still carrying a Shkval within the (enclosed/enshrouded) primary weapons bay, located directly beneath the pilot.

The Bavar II is clearly a specialised platform, intended to perform the same range of missions once carried-out by its torpedo-boat predecessors, re: scouting, elusive/evasive probing and finally, direct attack upon a conventional navy's larger, far more expensive and more generally capable surface ships. Often detected operating within the Persian Gulf - always under cover of darkness and most often between Bahrain and the UAE - they regularly approach other nations' naval ships at very high speeds, then continue stalking them from a distance for several hours after. This bold, disturbing and apparently threatening behaviour often verges on violating a ship's designated security zones and - notably - continues despite Iran's pursuit of a nuclear agreement with the West.

Inasmuch as Bavar IIs actually in surface-effect (with their hulls riding some 18-36 inches above the water's surface, and at high speed) would be immune from the effects of mines laid at sea, fair numbers would comprise a key supporting element within an overall effort to provide security for an Iranian-laid minefield, such as could be employed to deny oil tankers passage through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz in a crisis. Minefields are hidden, powerful barriers. They constitute the most cost-effective means of inflicting damage upon an enemy's naval forces, are the first choice of disadvantaged navies as they prepare to confront superior ones and despite the long history of their clearly-demonstrated effectiveness, their altogether potent threat is commonly-overlooked, both by the strategists and within the budgets of great-power navies. Minefields are made much more formidable (both on land and at sea) to the degree they're afforded multi-layered forms of effective cover/protection. Thus, the Bavar IIs very existence is interpreted by some as evidence of Iran's intent to someday lay such an effective minefield.

Taken together with an emphasis upon the development of its Decima Mas-based, North Korean-trained Naval Special Operations Forces and their various critical support systems, coastal/littoral (and new, Air-Independent Propelled) submarines and multiple-platform/rapidly-surgeable mine-laying capabilities, weapons like the Bavar II affirm the IRGCN's clear embrace of an all-asymmetric philosophy in countering first-world nations and their otherwise generally superior naval surface forces. The Iranians are true pioneers in the employment of surface-effect craft in the armed reconnaissance/attack roles. It's clear they intend to bring a variety of knives to the gunfight we're promising them, should they revert to accelerated UF6 enrichment towards weapons-grade. Their willingness/determination to develop such a host of specialized and innovative, yet technologically-inferior bits and pieces suggests in and of itself that they may well intend to act first.

Operators

Iran

– IRGC-N

See also

• Islamic Republic of Iran Navy
• List of military equipment manufactured in Iran