The Makran IFV, an

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

armoured personnel carrier (APC), is the highly modernized and upsized copy of the BTR-50 APC. The vehicle is produced and designed by the Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization. It was unveiled in June 2020 by the

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC; fa, سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی, Sepāh-e Pāsdārān-e Enghelāb-e Eslāmi, lit=Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution also Sepāh or Pasdaran for short) is a branch o ...

. The vehicle is named after the Makran coastal region, a region that stretches between Iran and Pakistan. While the Makran is technically an infantry fighting vehicle, it has a large troop compartment as it is based on the BTR-50, allowing it to dual function as an armoured personnel carrier.

History

Origins

During the period of the Shah,

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

purchased and received around 300 BTR-50's, and during the

Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Ba'athist Iraq, Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations S ...

hundreds were captured. While only 150-270 are estimated to be in service, hundreds are currently in storage, and a couple were given to the

Popular Mobilization Forces The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) ( ar, الحشد الشعبي ''al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī''), also known as the People's Mobilization Committee (PMC) and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), is an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization ...

. The

IRGC The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC; fa, سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی, Sepāh-e Pāsdārān-e Enghelāb-e Eslāmi, lit=Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution also Sepāh or Pasdaran for short) is a branch o ...

realized after the

, that the BTR-50s and

BTR-60 The BTR-60 is the first vehicle in a series of Soviet eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers (APCs). It was developed in the late 1950s as a replacement for the BTR-152 and was seen in public for the first time in 1961. BTR stands for ''Brone ...

s it had needed more armour and firepower, leading to the development of the Makran, Heidar-6, and Heidar-7. The Sedad, a

PB with an unmanned

ZU-23-2 The ZU-23-2, also known as ZU-23, is a Soviet towed 23×152mm anti-aircraft twin-barreled autocannon. ZU stands for ''Zenitnaya Ustanovka'' (Russian: Зенитная Установка) – anti-aircraft mount. The GRAU index is 2A13. Developm ...

was developed as a temporary solution.

Development

A tour of an

run upgrade facility by

Tasnim News Agency Tasnim News Agency ( fa, خبرگزاری تسنیم) is a semi-official news agency in Iran. It has links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Launched in 2012, its purpose is to cover a variety of political, social, economic and int ...

appears to show some of the captured BTR-50s and

MT-LB The MT-LB (russian: Многоцелевой Тягач Легкий Бронированный, translit=Mnogotselevoy tyagach legky bronirovanny, literally "multi-purpose towing vehicle light armored") is a Soviet multi-purpose, fully amphibi ...

s currently in storage, with Raad unmanned turrets being produced in the factory. Videos posted on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

in 2021 appear to show an unpainted prototype moving through water. Another prototype or in-completed Makran was seen in the same Tasnim News Agency video tour, which only had the unmanned turret and side armor upgrades; it was painted in grey and tan, with some unpainted parts. In June 2020, the vehicle was displayed for the first time, alongside an upgraded T-72M dubbed "Rakhsh" and a heavily upgraded

dubbed "Heidar-7".

Design

Design and upgrades

The Makran has been so heavily upgraded that one may not be able to notice the BTR-50 hull. The IFV has upgraded hull modifications: a newly welded frontal armor plate, thicker side armor, and thicker floor plating. It also has a new unmanned turret called "Raad-2", armed with a

Shipunov 2A42 The Shipunov 2A42 is a Soviet/Russian 30 mm autocannon. It is built by the Tulamashzavod Joint Stock Company. Design The 30 mm 2A42 autocannon was developed as a replacement for 2A28 Grom and has a dual feed. One is for HE-T and th ...

30mm 30 mm caliber is a specific size of popular autocannon ammunition. Such ammunition includes NATO standard 30×113mmB and 30×173mm (STANAG 4624), Soviet 30×155mmB, 30×165mm, and 30×210mmB, Yugoslav 30×192mm, Anglo-Swiss 30×170mm, and ...

automatic cannon and a

7.62mm The 7.62 mm caliber is a nominal caliber used for a number of different cartridges. Historically, this class of cartridge was commonly known as .30 caliber, the imperial unit and customary unit equivalent, and was most commonly used for i ...

coaxial machine gun A weapon mount is an assembly or mechanism used to hold a weapon (typically a gun) onto a platform in order for it to function at maximum capacity. Weapon mounts can be broken down into two categories: static mounts and non-static mounts. Stat ...

. The "Raad" unmanned turret contains a brand new fire-control system, a thermal-imaging sensor, night-vision cameras, a

laser range finder A laser rangefinder, also known as a laser telemeter, is a rangefinder that uses a laser beam to determine the distance to an object. The most common form of laser rangefinder operates on the time of flight principle by sending a laser pulse in ...

, 3-6 smoke canister launchers, and is controlled via a display panel in the hull. The laser range finder has a range of 10,000 meters, and the thermal-imaging sensor has a range of 4,000 meters. The vehicle stores 500 rounds of

ammunition for the

auto-cannon, and 2000 rounds of

ammunition for the

. The vehicle's driver also has a new cupola and periscope, to fit with the newly molded frontal armor.

Missile capabilities

Images show two

anti-tank guided missile An anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), anti-tank missile, anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) or anti-armor guided weapon is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily armored military vehicles. ATGMs range in size from shoulder ...

s on display next to the Makran, which may imply that the Makran can carry

s. Some Iranian sources have also reported that the vehicles can fire "missiles". Reports from GlobalSecurity and various Russian news agencies say it is possible to install

ATGM An anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), anti-tank missile, anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) or anti-armor guided weapon is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily armored military vehicles. ATGMs range in size from shoulder ...

s onto the vehicle, and is an option for purchasers. The

s may be the

Almaz The Almaz (russian: Алмаз, lit=Diamond) program was a highly secret Soviet military space station program, begun in the early 1960s. Three crewed military reconnaissance stations were launched between 1973 and 1976: Salyut 2, Salyut 3 a ...

, which is believed by an anonymous "military technology analyst" on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

to have been developed from an Israeli Spike ATGM left behind in the 2006 Lebanon War. Iranian sources report that the

s displayed may be the

Toophan The Toophan ( fa, طوفان "typhoon", rarely Toofan) is an Iranian SACLOS anti-tank guided missile reverse-engineered from the American BGM-71 TOW missile. The Toophan 1, an unlicensed copy of the BGM-71A TOW missile, began mass production in ...

instead, another Iranian

SACLOS Semi-automatic command to line of sight (SACLOS) is a method of missile command guidance. In SACLOS, the operator has to continually point a sighting device at the target while the missile is in flight. Electronics in the sighting device and/or th ...

. However, closer up photos clearly show a

Sadid-1 The Sadid-1 (also known as the Sadid-361, the Fat'h 362, and the Sadid-342) is an Iranian TV-guided anti-tank missile derived from Iran's Toophan missiles. It is described by multiple sources as similar in design to the Israeli Spike-ER missile ...

launcher identical to those on Iranian helicopters.

Misconceptions

Some have claimed, be that incorrectly, that the Makran's turret is that of a

BMP-2 The BMP-2 (''Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty'', , literally "combat machine/vehicle (of the) infantry") is an amphibious infantry fighting vehicle introduced in the 1980s in the Soviet Union, following on from the BMP-1 of the 1960s. Development hist ...

. However the two differentiate in size, looks, capability, structure, and adaptability. The reasoning behind an unmanned turret is to increase crew survivability and adaptability, not to increase ammunition storage.

Operators

Current operators

* *

References

{{reflist Infantry fighting vehicles of the post–Cold War period Tracked infantry fighting vehicles Armoured fighting vehicles of Iran Tracked armoured fighting vehicles Military vehicles introduced in the 2020s