Q-Ships, Easily the Weirdest Warships Ever, Are Back. But They Don't Make Sense in 2024. (2024)

• An Iranian commercial ship has some analysts comparing it to the infamous “Q-ships” of the World Wars.
• Q-Ships are commercial ships outfitted with weapons, allowing them to ambush weaker ships.
• Modern commercial ships, especially giant container or tanker ships, can take on a lot of armament and are surprisingly difficult to sink.

The newest addition to Iran’s navy, Shahid Mahdavi, is a commercial ship armed with ballistic missiles. Analysts have described it as the return of the Q-ship—a lost type of warship popular during the World Wars. Designed to ambush both predators and prey, Q-ships are meant to blend in with local shipping, presenting themselves as ordinary commercial ships, before unmasking their weapons and opening fire.

The Modern Q-Ship

Shahid Mahdavi was originally built as a civilian container ship, designed to haul goods around the world in steel shipping containers. The ship is approximately 700 feet long and displaces about 35,000 tons empty. It can carry another 44,012 tons of containerized cargo.

All of that is pretty normal for a container ship. What is definitely not normal, however, is that Shahid Mahdavi has been outfitted to launch ballistic missiles. In 2024, the ship launched two Dezful medium range ballistic missiles. Dezful was originally developed by the state-owned Aerospace Industries and has a range of just 621 miles, delivering a 1400 pound conventional, high explosive warhead.

Shahid Mahdavi is not actually part of the Iranian Navy, but rather the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGC-N). The Revolutionary Guards are a paramilitary force that exist in parallel to the regular Iranian military, but are meant to protect the regime (as opposed to the country and its citizens). The IRGC-N is responsible for the western half of the Persian Gulf, while the Iranian Navy is responsible for the eastern half, the Indian Ocean, and beyond. The IRGC-N also controls the country’s ballistic missile forces.

Ambush Predators

The concept of the Q-ship goes back to World War I. German’s Navy used submarines, or u-boats, to interdict shipping between Europe and the rest of the world. The submarines would locate civilian ships they suspected of carrying Allied war material, order them to stop, and then crews would board and inspect them. If the ships were indeed carrying military supplies, the submarine would order the crew into lifeboats and then sink the ship—with a deck gun if possible, or torpedoes if necessary. This was legally permissible at the time, and fairly humane compared to what would happen next.

Allied navies responded to the sub threat by building smaller, faster sub chaser warships and organizing convoys. They also invented Q-ships, taking civilian merchantmen and outfitting them with rapid-fire deck guns capable of punching a hole in the submarine’s hull. The Q-ship would cover their guns with canvas or plywood and then steam around, waiting for a submarine to intercept them. If a German submarine came alongside the Q-ship with the intention of inspecting it, the Q-ship would unmask its guns and open fire.

Q-ships were not heavily armed and not particularly dangerous to other surface ships, but they were dangerous to submarines—once a submarine’s hull was pierced, it could no longer submerge. A submarine that could not submerge to escape would not last very long. Once Q-ships started racking up kills, submarines began sinking commercial ships on sight, firing torpedoes from a submerged, protected position. This led to allegations that the practice was a war crime, which it arguably was.

In World War II, Q-ships took a slightly different tack. The major maritime powers—Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States—all used Q-ships. Unlike the others, Germany used its Q-ships not just as bait for enemy submarines, but to lull Allied ships into thinking they were friendly, then board and sink them. Unfortunately for the German Q-ship fleet, it faced vastly larger navies. And once the Allies suspected a Q-ship was in the area, a superior naval force like the Royal Navy could organize an armed search, turning the predator into prey.

The Curious Case of Shahid Mahdavi

Q-ships fell out of favor in the Missile Age, with no real examples seen since 1945. Q-ships tend to be wartime expedients—desperate measures when the demands on a Navy stretch its resources. They are most often used during wide-scale naval combat over a vast area, and there’s been a distinct lack of that since the end of World War II.

Shahid Mahdavi meets the basic criteria for a Q-ship: it is a civilian vessel turned into an armed ship. Armed with ballistic missiles and sitting in the middle of the Persian Gulf, it can attack the Saudi capital of Riyadh with missiles—something that not all of Iran’s land-based missiles can do.

It might also pass a cursory visual inspection. However, it would have to spoof an AIS transponder signal—part of the worldwide maritime tracking and locating system that monitors tens of thousands of ships daily—and impersonate a civilian ship. It’s also painted a dark naval gray that is more common to warships than commercial ships, though it could always be repainted.

Why did Iran turn Shahid Mahdavi into a Q-ship? One reason is because it’s cheap—RUSI points out that the ship probably cost less than $20 million to acquire. But Iran also lacks the capacity to build large warships, maxing out at small, frigate-sized ships of 1,500 tons or less. A container ship is designed to carry hundreds of 20-foot long containers at a time, giving it plenty of deck space for helicopters, drones, and ballistic missile launchers.

Against a regional adversary like Saudi Arabia, which has fewer surveillance resources, Shahid Mahdavi could be useful for launching a surprise attack from an unexpected direction. It would not last long in a shooting war with the United States. U.S. forces would easily track and sink the gigantic container ship, no matter how it tries to blend in with nearby commercial shipping. Shahid Mahdavi is destined to become someone’s problem, but it won’t be the Pentagon’s.