" Iranian radar-evading flying boats." Topic

Now here is yet another wonder weapon of the Iranians you can game with. Robert

Iran's Guard gets first squadrons of flying boats
– 1 hr 18 mins ago

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's state TV says the country's powerful Revolutionary Guard has received its first three squadrons of radar-evading flying boats.

The report says the domestically made craft can be used for surveillance and can carry guns and transmit data. Its production is part of Iran's effort to boost its arsenal and military capabilities despite international sanctions over the country's controversial nuclear program.

Iran announced last year it had successfully tested the plane, dubbed the Bavar-2, or Confidence-2. A flying boat is a seaplane with a hull that allows it to land and travel on water.

State TV broadcast footage Tuesday of the small craft in operation in the air and sea.

Iran's military achievements cannot be independently verified.

link

I can't wait to see what a Phalanx system dose to the first one that comes to close to a U.S. war ship.

link

Didn't the Russians have something similiar around 1988-1989?
I could swear I read about a prototype.

The Bavar-2 is ludicrously tiny:

link

Dennis0302, you may be thinking of a variety of Soviet wing-in-ground effect aircraft. Look up "wing-in-ground effect (WIG)", or "Ekranoplan" or "Caspian Sea Monster".

Allen

When it said "flying boat", I figured a modernized Catalina. These look more like surface-effect vehicles, which fly at a maximum altitude of two wingspans. And the Russians were working on them as fast heavy transports in the early '90s (theirs were the size of transport planes). The problem with these things is if the wave height exceeds some rather placid numbers (mildly choppy), they lose lift and drop onto the water, which causes severe drag at best and all sorts of hydrofoil race crackup badness at worst. Radar can see them just fine, it's how the navy finds surface boats.

Those look really cool.

Difficult/impossible to launch in anything but calm seas, and being prop driven, are considerably slower than the F-15's, F-16's, F-18's, and F-22's that will shoot them down.

No doubt, Phalanx/CIWS will shred them as well.

Still, at least they are trying…..

Yes, the Russians had a much larger variant, e.g. like a large jet bomber with many engines, and used to launch cruise missiles at carrier battlegroups, and other vessels.

Note it doesn't say stealth. It says radar evading. They are hard to pull out of sea chop because they aren't in it. However without standoff weapons and their slow speed I expect they will be short lived against a 1st world force. Might be useful against Azerbaijani fishing boats though, if the fishing crew is asleep at the start of the attack…

Only way I could see those evading radar is to be in another body of water, no where near the emitter.

I'm telling you, the designers watched an episode of HR Puff-n-stuff

YouTube link

Yeah, to be precise, they're small wing-in-ground effect aircraft, not strictly flying boats. Not the fastest aircraft in the world, that's for sure.

By the looks of these things, they'd be lucky to mount an LMG on it and stay airborne. I can't imagine these would be good for anything other than surveillance. I'd bet an Apache or Cobra could be used for intercepts…

Damon.

"Radar evading" means either "flies under the radar" or "is made out of wood." Could they mount sensors on a platform like that, specifically something to help guide SSM's to American carrier battle groups?

In spite of myself, I find that I really like those little vehicles….

If there are any left after hurting stops…dibbs!

WIG aircraft are very cool, and except for a few small-scale models of the huge Russian ones, I'm not aware of any models or minis.

Here's one of the more famous small WIG aircraft, the Rhein Flugzeugbau X-114: link link

I'd love to see an X-114 in 1/300 and 1/56.

It's possible to mount sensors on that small a platform. Where the they'd get sensors worth the effort is another matter. Still, I give the Iranians points for trying to develop an arms industrt of their own. In time, they may well develop some interesting and useful ideas. In the mean time, I could see this being useful as a patrol craft of some sort, possibly in some sort of tripwire scenario.

adub74 you complete and utter ba….d person!!! ;-p

I had wiped that from my memory and now its back, shudder.

Fatman

Who watched far to much crap TV in the 70's

I'm glad I missed the Puff-n-stuff era.

Damon.

Look somewhat similar to the kits offered by Universal Hovercraft, which people buy to build in their garages.

Doug

Anybody else think the Iranian Photoshop artists are at it again? Taking one and multiplying it by a factor of 10?

I doubt anyone at the Pentagon is quaking in their boots over this new wonder weapon. The only one wondering will be the pilot when he asks himself how he got into this mess when he is asked to fly against opposition that shoots back.

Would be a cool mini for gaming though.

Next they will be arming ultralites and paragliders like in the Bond movies.

I'd like one as well.

Could make a great commuter vehicle for the tropics, especially if it can fly out of the very low level surface effect altitude, like a real plane can.

Difficult/impossible to launch in anything but calm seas, and being prop driven, are considerably slower than the F-15's, F-16's, F-18's, and F-22's that will shoot them down.

Actually, they are so slow (and low flying) it will probably be hard for a jet fighter to reliably get a bead on one. Probably better to send a A-10 or a helicopter after it.

-Will

My god !

What were those pufnstuf people on ??

We didn't get this in the UK, man, I dig it, it's groovy, you know ? Man.

Not all the Soviet/Russian ekranoplan designs were huge; the Volga-2, for example:

link

You only need to commission ten of them, and you can have your own Evil Genius secret island fortress defense force!

Allen

H R Pufnstuf

Sid and Marty Kroft must have been on acid.

I always wanted a battle to the death between this show and Banana Splits.

Any surprise the HR Puffnstuf and Zardoz were made in the same decade?

EDIT: From Wiki: H.R. Pufnstuf is a children's television series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft in the United States. It was the first Krofft live-action, life-size puppet program.[1] There were seventeen episodes of the show originally broadcast from September 6, 1969 to September 4, 1971. It was so successful that NBC kept it on the Saturday morning schedule for a full three seasons until August 1972, when it was cancelled. The show was shot in Paramount Studios and its opening was shot in Big Bear Lake, California.

Zardoz is a 1973 science fiction/fantasy film written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of US$1 million.

These are likely wood/fiberglass and therefore the engine is the largest thing that will generate a radar return – and what a return it'll be with that flat radiator. About as dangerous as a Cessna 172, but overrated.

Any helo with a door gunner would be a threat to these things. You could possibly mount a missile on it much as we do with our Predators, but the sea spray would probably toast the electronics.

Wyatt

"We didn't get this in the UK, man, I dig it, it's groovy, you know ? Man."

It was shown in the UK, in the early to mid 1970s.

Oh yes we did get it in the UK it was crap like this, and Banana Splits, that Noel Edmunds Saturday Swap Shop and Tiswas were developed to replace.

adub74 you do realise that I have spent about an hour bringing up old TV themes and researching what happened to the cast of various kids shows of the period? I don't know wether to thank or curse you! ;-P

Guys if you have fond memories of girls or women from those shows DON'T repeat DON'T look them up now. If they were as pretty as our hormone charged pubescent memory says, and many weren't, they probably haven't aged well. :-(

Fatman

I didn't realize any major countries still used flying boats – man, am I behind the times or what!?

Oh yes we did get it in the UK it was crap like this, and Banana Splits

Well, you can knock me down with a feather – the superb banana splits I recall as if it werre yesterday, but from a childhood wasted watching TV I really don't recall HR PuffnStuff.

Maybe it was only shown regionally ?

"Look somewhat similar to the kits offered by Universal Hovercraft, which people buy to build in their garages."

Exactly Doug. Maybe they can make a "killing" selling them as sports vehicles LOL. Robert

Hr puff n stuff ,lidsville and the Banana splits and the original McDonald land characters….,so much sensory overload.

The Buggaloos . . .

And yay verily was this thread well and truly hijacked.

Sorry Kaoschallenged! :-(

Fatman

Who still can't get "The H R Puffin ____ing stuff Theme" out of his head.

No Prob there Fatman. Alot better then some responses LOL. Robert

"… truly hijacked"

Sorry, but I honestly that the craft looked like the boat from the intro. Blue, inverted wings, and the cockpit looked open. It's the first thing I thought.

By the way, that show creeped me out so bad as a kid I still get a little nervous looking at the intro.

adub74 I wasn't blaming you mate, you were right, iT did look a bit like it! ;-p

I was apologising for all the follow ons about 70's TV, several of which have been mine.

Fatman

Like I said Fatman and adub74 No Prob. :) Robert

Think the Iranians might build some for civilian use?
(I bet you can pack a lot of fishing gear into one of those things.)

From the BBC site: link

I wonder if they have enough fuel for the pilot to defect to the West.

I doubt a Revolutionary Guardsman would defect anywhere, certainly not the Sunni-dominated states that surround Iran.

They look like single-seaters, so the pilot would have to take his hands off the controls to use an RPG or anything else shooty. Besides, if it was good for anything offensive, you know Radio Tehran would be threatening the enemies of Allah with it. All it's good for is flying out to look at something, starting to report by radio, and then getting shot down.

It reminds me of the HE 162 Volksjager, for more than one reason.

Q: why didn't they make a land-based patrol plane instead?

So the Iranians have gone for ground effect aircraft..

The russians have some really big ones, dubbed the caspian sea monsters..

See pic; picture

link

Now the yanks should be scared if they had one of these..

picture

Hi

Israel has been making mach two fighters since the 60s…and this is the New Iranaian weapon?

Wow!

Rocky

That looks about the size of a Cessna 152.

Ok, so I can see these being used to get into range to deliver an anti-ship missile on the outer edge of radar capabilities, using them as more of a first strike weapon before a fleet comes within range of coastal launchers.

The problem with the idea is that defense satalites probably know where these are kept and can relay to the fleet in real time when a flock of these are heading their direction. I also can't help but think the coordinates of the moorings or hangers where these are located are now listed in the fire control system on whatever Boomer patrols under the Persian Gulf. Just more stuff for the Navy to blow up if the time comes

"on whatever Boomer patrols under the Persian Gulf"

That would be none then :)

Boomers, no. Attack boats with Tomahawks on board, you betcha. But that craft doesn't look robust enough to carry an anti-ship missile (a Harpoon weighs 1,523 lb, according to Wikipedia), so it isn't much of a direct threat. As I suggested earlier, its role is probably that of providing targeting data to the land-based missiles that Iran has already announced, with great Photoshopping skill.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world trembles at the realization that, in spite of sanctions and world isolation, Iranian scientists have successfully reverse-engineered the Liberty engine.

Those things like slightly larger than a Piper Cub, what kind of weapon could they carry? A RPG, a LMG? Its a open cockpit WIG, big deal. I guess they could try to load them up with C4 and try to fly then into the side of a ship, but I bet they have a max speed @ 150mph, a sea wizz would slice them and dice them before they even got close.

Hell I'm even a fan of WiGs, I had read about big ones proposed to be used as heavy lift express cargo carriers. Big ship sized seaplanes to carry a rack of cargo containers.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world trembles at the realization that, in spite of sanctions and world isolation, Iranian scientists have successfully reverse-engineered the Liberty engine.

LOL