Possible U.S. Capabilities Behind the Strike on Iran’s Shahid Bagheri Drone Carrier.

U.S. forces destroyed Iran’s Shahid Bagheri drone carrier during the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, eliminating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s most ambitious sea-based unmanned warfare platform. The strike demonstrates that U.S. maritime forces can locate and neutralize high-value Iranian naval assets at long range before they shape the wider naval campaign.

U.S. forces neutralized Iran’s Shahid Bagheri drone carrier in the opening phase of Operation Epic Fury, removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s most ambitious platform for long-range unmanned maritime warfare and signaling that Washington can now locate, track, and destroy high-value Iranian naval assets before they influence the wider campaign. CENTCOM first said on March 2 that the ship had been struck “within hours” of the start of the operation, then released additional footage on March 6 showing the vessel ablaze after a fresh visible hit, while CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper later said the carrier-sized target was on fire as part of a broader effort that has destroyed around 30 Iranian warships.
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The Shahid Bagheri burns after a U.S. strike, marking the destruction of Iran's most ambitious sea-based drone warfare platform (Picture source: U.S. CENTCOM/ Screenshot from video by Iranian state media).

Commissioned in February 2025, Shahid Bagheri drone carrier was created by converting the former container vessel Perarin into a 240-meter, 40,000-ton-plus aviation support platform with an angled deck, a ski-jump launch ramp, and an approximately 180-meter runway for drones. Open-source reporting on its commissioning showed helicopters and UAVs parked on deck, confirming that Iran intended it to function as a real sea-based aviation node rather than a symbolic hulk. Naval specialist reporting and Iranian state accounts also described a top speed above 20 knots and endurance measured in months, attributes more consistent with an expeditionary mothership than a coastal auxiliary.

Iran’s strategic logic for Bagheri was clear: Tehran wanted a mobile base able to push surveillance, one-way attack drones, and helicopter operations beyond the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, and potentially farther into the Indian Ocean. Iranian reporting cited the ability to stay at sea for up to a year, sail roughly 19,000 to 22,000 nautical miles without refueling in port, and carry as many as 60 drones along with fast missile craft. Naval News, citing remarks by IRGC Navy commander Alireza Tangsiri, also noted claims for electronic support measures, signals intelligence capability, and the operation of guided uncrewed subsurface craft. In practical military terms, that would have made Shahid Bagheri a combined launch pad, sensor node, command post, and logistics hub for distributed drone and swarming operations against naval forces and commercial shipping.

That is why the ship was a strategic target from the first hours of the campaign. Destroying Bagheri did more than remove one large hull from Iran’s order of battle. It stripped the IRGC Navy of a platform designed to extend its operational reach beyond coastal waters, complicate maritime domain awareness for U.S. and allied forces, and provide a survivable offshore node for unmanned systems even if shore infrastructure came under attack. It also erased a platform of considerable symbolic value for a force that has long defined itself in opposition to U.S. carrier power while simultaneously seeking its own form of long-range naval presence. The fact that CENTCOM publicly singled out Shahid Bagheri as the only “carrier” hit underscores how central the vessel was to the opening maritime objectives of Operation Epic Fury.

The March 6 video adds an important technical clue, even if it does not identify the weapon. The footage shows a major amidships impact and subsequent heavy fire, and visually appears to include an initial strike followed by a second event, with the first producing the more dramatic immediate smoke plume. That does not necessarily prove that two different missile classes were used or that the first warhead was larger. On a converted container ship, a larger plume can just as easily reflect where the weapon penetrated, especially if the strike reached aviation support spaces, fuel storage, drone handling areas, or internal compartments that then produced secondary fires. FlightGlobal also noted that no drones or helicopters were visible on the flight deck at the time, which suggests the most significant damage likely came from internal ignition rather than burning aircraft on deck.

What neutralized Shahid Bagheri, therefore, was not merely a single missile but a U.S. maritime strike architecture built around persistent ISR, over-the-horizon targeting, and precision anti-surface weapons able to prosecute a moving or relocatable naval target without sending vulnerable aircraft into a close-range attack profile. The two most plausible weapon families are the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Maritime Strike Tomahawk. DARPA describes LRASM as a stealthy, survivable, precision-guided standoff anti-ship cruise missile designed to operate with reduced dependence on GPS, network links, and supporting ISR in dense electronic warfare environments. The U.S. Navy has publicly said LRASM is already fielded on Navy F/A-18 aircraft and Air Force B-1B bombers, making it a mature choice for exactly the kind of defended maritime target Shahid Bagheri represented.

The Maritime Strike Tomahawk is the other leading candidate, and in some respects the most intriguing one. Raytheon states that Tomahawk Block Va is specifically configured to strike moving targets at sea, restoring a long-range anti-ship role to destroyers and submarines carrying the weapon. Media separately reported that on the first day of the war, CENTCOM posted an image of a U.S. Navy destroyer launching the maritime-strike version of the Tomahawk, although it did not identify the missile’s target. That matters because a sea-launched cruise missile would fit the opening-hours timeline, the maritime target set, and the U.S. preference for firing from outside the densest threat rings while maintaining pressure across multiple axes.

A third possibility, but a less persuasive one, is the SM-6 in its anti-surface mode. Raytheon notes that SM-6 has demonstrated the ability to hit surface targets and provides over-the-horizon offensive capability from U.S. Navy ships. It remains an important anti-ship option, especially where speed and compressed engagement timelines matter. But for a deliberate strike against a large 240-meter drone carrier, the available evidence still leans more heavily toward a purpose-built long-range anti-ship cruise missile such as LRASM or Maritime Strike Tomahawk. The larger analytical point is that the heavier first smoke cloud seen in the video is more likely a function of impact location and internal secondary effects than a conclusive fingerprint for a specific missile.

The destruction of Shahid Bagheri was not simply the loss of “Iran’s aircraft carrier,” but it was the destruction of Iran’s most important attempt to create a mobile offshore drone warfare base, and it was executed by a U.S. strike complex able to collapse Iranian naval capability at long range with little warning. In operational terms, Washington demonstrated that any Iranian effort to disperse missile, drone, reconnaissance, and command functions onto large auxiliary hulls can still be hunted down and destroyed early. In strategic terms, Tehran lost not just a ship, but a concept: the idea that a converted merchant platform could survive long enough in wartime to extend Iranian sea control and drone reach beyond the Gulf.