In a first, US military used seaborne drones in attack on Iran port

Source: The Hill

07/13/26 2:09 PM ET


The U.S. military used one-way attack seaborne drones in an assault on an Iranian port on Sunday — the first instance of U.S. forces utilizing sea drones in combat operations.

The military utilized three Corsair unmanned surface vessels to strike a ship maintenance facility and a submarine at the Bandar Abbas Naval Base, the headquarters of the Iranian Navy, during Sunday’s fresh round of strikes, the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) announced on Monday.

“Last night’s strikes degraded Iran’s ability to continue attacking commercial shipping,” Centcom, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East, said.

Corsair, a 24-foot autonomous boat that carries up to 1,000 pounds of payload and reaches over 35 knots, is produced by Saronic, a Texas-based defense company founded in 2022. The same kind of vessel picked up a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache crew that went down last month near the coast of Oman.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5966167-us-military-sea-drones-iran/